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Jun 27, 17

Anti-Racist Coalition Rallies Against Fascism and State Repression at DC Police HQ

A ‘speakout’ event took place on Sunday outside the Washington DC Metro Police Headquarters. The rally was held in part to condemn the aggressive prosecution of Trump inauguration protesters arrested on January 20, over two hundred of whom face up to eighty years in prison. It was organized by ‘Smash Racism DC’, a coalition made up by several different local organizations. 

Two white supremacist ‘alt-right’ rallies also took place in Washington, DC on the same day. What was originally planned as one white nationalist unity event ended up splitting into two competing rallies after some ‘alt-right’ personalities refused to share a stage with the famously punchable Richard Spencer.

The call-out for the anti-fascist gathering also expresses solidarity with victims of recent deadly attacks by white supremacists, and addresses the irony of authoritarian far-right racist groups organizing under the banner of “free speech”:

The right wing can have their sham “free speech” rallies, but we know they are mobilizing to deny even the right to exist to those who don’t look like them…Unlike the right wing, we actually are facing state repression and we have a legitimate fear of our speech being taken away—repression that the fascists hypocritically endorse. We must rally together to show all that we won’t be silenced, and we won’t let the state or the right wing mobilize to take our right to assemble, our right to protest, or our right to exist. We will rally at the headquarters of one of the worst suppressors and deniers of speech—the police.“ – Smash Racism DC

Shortly before 3 PM, the crowd took the streets in downtown DC and marched behind a formation of antifascist flags, banners, and spider puppets.  The group eventually dispersed without incident.  The white nationalist events taking place elsewhere in the city also ended around the same time but there were no physical confrontations reported between any of the various groups.

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Unicorn Riot is a volunteer-operated decentralized media collective comprised of multimedia artists and journalists. Born from the Internet in 2015, we operate non-hierarchically, independent of corporate and government funding. Our non-profit media organization currently spans across multiple US cities including Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, and New York City. Unicorn Riot’s purpose is to amplify the voices of people who might otherwise go unheard, and broadcast the stories that might otherwise go untold, as we further understanding of dynamic social struggles. We are committed to producing media that exposes root causes of social conflict and explores sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.

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