A message aimed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. https://t.co/Du2LFxlJ9d
— Kevin Whitelaw (@KevinWhitelaw1) June 5, 2020
Meanwhile, more concrete "jersey barriers" going in around the White House complex. #dcprotest pic.twitter.com/mQldubHARo
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 5, 2020
After week of protest, Saturday expected to bring largest crowds yet to Washington https://t.co/UTJdJwGehv
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 6, 2020
But seriously: Be careful out there, people…
… Starting at 6 a.m. Saturday, police will close much of downtown to vehicle traffic, creating a pedestrian-only demonstration zone stretching between the southern boundary of the Mall and L Street NW to the north. The western boundary is along 19th Street NW, and the eastern edge is roughly Ninth Street NW through downtown and Third Street NW along the Mall.
A fortified perimeter around the White House, including a tall black fence that was erected late this week after days of volatile confrontations between police and demonstrators, will remain.
Unlike many other large-scale demonstrations that the District hosts, no one person or organization is leading Saturday’s events.
Nearly a dozen different demonstrations run by as many organizations or individuals have been advertised for Saturday, starting at 6 a.m. and running into the night. Many protesters plan to stay out until the early hours of Sunday morning.
There are no leaders to speak to and no agenda to follow…
Even Black Lives Matter DC has repeatedly announced this week that it is not behind all the grass-roots activism that has taken hold and flooded the city with protesters. Online, people from around the Washington region and neighboring states announced their intention to join and encouraged others to do the same.
D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said no arrests have been made during protests since Tuesday. He said he hoped that that streak would continue as he expected on Saturday to see the largest crowd since protests began in the city on May 29…
Watch out. She’s going to paint BLM on your forehead while you doze. https://t.co/9wV16MfLhW
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 6, 2020
Honestly I have so much material I'm going to need a 3 hour special at this point
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) June 5, 2020
MattF
Yeah, so, Trump has gotten his wall. And the wall’s perimeter keeps… widening… day after day… Why is that, you think?
Ken
I’m getting really torn about what Biden’s first act as President should be. I’m still leaning toward an executive order undoing every Trump EO, but tearing down the chicken coop is moving up fast.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Talk about heightening the contradictions.
Ken
I wonder if Trump’s staff is trying to spin this for him?
“You’re the reason they’re all coming together, sir. Bigger crowds than at your inauguration, or any of your rallies, or even that Fourth of July thing you held last year. And all because of you, sir.”
Redshift
@Ken: Don’t worry, tearing down the chicken coop will happen before inauguration day.
Ken
@Redshift: How do you figure? Oh, right, Trump will want to strip it to sell the scrap metal.
Nora
I look forward to Sarah Cooper’s versions of Trump’s latest.
SFAW
@Redshift: @Ken:
I’m figuring that he reinforces it, and will shout his defiance at those trying to “usurp” his throne: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”
Of course, that would result in the White House burning, so maybe someone can build a WH-looking bunker that he can retreat to?
Redshift
It’s a small thing compared with the police attitude in Buffalo and elsewhere, but I keep thinking of an experience I had with our county government a few years back, in the years after the Great Recession.
I’m on a social services citizen advisory board, and in those tough budget times, every agency was asked to provide plans to cut ten percent and fifteen percent of their budget for the county executive and county board to pick and choose from to close the gap. It was rough, but everyone did their best to figure out the least harmful way to do it.
The sheriff’s department came back with “well, I guess we’d just have to stop providing security at the courthouse.”
The attitude that citizens are a mob of dangerous animals is particularly awful in the streets, but it also breeds a mindset of “we can extort whatever we want from you, because we’re sure we’re the only thing keeping back anarchy.”
Scout211
A headline from the NYT says that the Pentagon ordered the National Guard helicopter’s aggressive response in D.C.
It’s behind a paywall so can anyone can post a snippet of that article here? It seems to be “odd” that the military’s response for the past few days was to “investigate” who ordered this and to also ground the pilots. I can’t find (yet) any other news source making this claim. Hmmmmm. Something fishy here?
Ken
I’m sure after the commitment hearings are done, his kids will spare no expense at finding a really nice place for him to stay, redecorating his room so it looks like the presidential quarters, and tipping the staff generously so they call him “Mr President Sir” when dispensing his meds.
(Just kidding. If it came to it, that gang would strip him of all assets and get him in a Medicare home faster than you can say “sociopath”.)
Gin & Tonic
@Redshift: I’ve been engaged in a long, lonely and so far futile struggle over maybe 15 years with my local government (school board and town council) to get them to eliminate the cops in the school (School Resource Officer.) It’s fascinating that Minneapolis public schools have done just that.
Redshift
@Ken: The new president doesn’t show up with moving vans on Inauguration Day, they’re already moved in when they walk or drive over. So unless Trump is actually enough of an asshole to humiliate himself by refusing to leave until he officially loses power and everyone stops talking orders from him, he’ll move out. Since the #babygate is only to protect him, not the building or the government, I can’t imagine him fighting to keep it.
Immanentize
@SFAW: I love funkadelic and go go music:
Paint the Whitehouse Black
Just Chuck
@Redshift:
Spite.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
And it’s being talked about elsewhere too.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Good on you! That is a noble cause! Bored cops in schools lead to nothing but capital T trouble. Respect and carry on.
Immanentize
@Redshift: He is a physical coward. He won’t fight. But he may call the Boogaloos to do it for him. Risking nothing personally.
Mike in NC
Somebody noted that Fat Bastard is creating his very own “Green Zone” by isolating himself behind a series of barriers that will keep out the riff-raff (i.e., anybody not on the WH payroll).
Ken
Kind of an “asked and answered” situation there, I’d say.
Jinchi
They’re going to have to tear down the chicken coop just to extract Trump.
Cheryl Rofer
Would be great to get reports from jackals who may attend today’s festivities in DC. Send them to the Front Pager of your choice at “Contact Us.”
Redshift
@Gin & Tonic: Good for you. I haven’t kept track of that recently here, but I’m optimistic we’ll be able to get rid of them, since there was a requirement established last year to examine the equity implications of all policies and programs. I’m ashamed it took so long for people to understand “cops in schools means more Black and Brown kids getting roughed up and arrested, because cops.” School Resource Officer is so orwellian.
scav
@Scout211: I’ll grab a few.
Matt McIrvin
There’s a lot of worry that Trump is preparing to mount a military coup if he loses the election.
I think that if it’s obvious and generally agreed he lost, the military will almost certainly not go along with this–at noon on January 20th, he stops being President and no orders he gives will be real orders.
But he can do a lot of damage before that, to fuck with the election and make it uncertain who won. It’s a bit harder because of the distributed nature of elections, and I guess a bunch of the swing states now have Dem governors who would make it harder to get state cooperation.
Maybe he could fuck with the certification of the Electoral College vote. That happens in early January with the newly elected Congress. To reject electoral votes, you have to get both houses to vote to do it independently, so he couldn’t just rely on Mitch McConnell stonewalling him to reelection. Maybe he could try the 1933 Hitler move of sending paramilitary groups into the Capitol and basically telling them to do what he wants or get shot. Might be a battle.
Redshift
@Cheryl Rofer: I have a friend who’s going to be down there as part of a documentary crew, I’ll see if I can share photos.
I so wish I could be there. I was seriously considering risking it, but what tipped the scales is that I have a follow-up screening appointment at the cancer center on Monday, and I don’t want to risk bringing the virus around people who are way more vulnerable than me.
Jinchi
We’re gonna need some names here. Esper, Milley and even Barr are out there claiming innocence, despite all the “battlespace” language and strutting the three of them did. So which ‘top’ officials were ordering this nonsense.
Scout211
@scav:
Thank you.
But wow. That last paragraph is something.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Scout211: There’s also this section:
scav
@Jinchi:
LuciaMia
MORE barriers around the White House? Why dont they just get that huge plastic dome from the Simpsons movie.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Trump’s ability to deny reality comes to a screeching halt at the point where it could conceiveably affect his physical safety. So, carrying out the various coup scenarios seems unlikely to me. Threats, bluster, and so forth are quite possible, though.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
I’ll take Because Dump Is A Scared Manbaby Bitchwaffle for 1000, Alex.
ETA – this just makes it easier to throw them all out on January 20th.
Don’t wanna govern for the people? Out you go!
Nixon makes you look like a scared little bitch? Out you go!
Barbara
@MattF: He doesn’t want to hear them, but since he watches tv all day he is going to see and hear them anyway. I remembered this morning that the first time I visited DC on my own, for a protest against nuclear proliferation, I took the train and arranged to meet my BF at St. John’s Church, and we walked from there down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, and I managed to visit the new wing of the National Gallery for the first time. I have now lived here for more than 30 years and we have demonstrations and protests all the time and no one has ever used force like that to clear Lafayette Square.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: Oh, bye bye to the fat orange fascist’s fortress of chain link at 12:02PM on January 20, 2021.
Jinchi
@mrmoshpotato: I’m hoping he flees in the night long before then.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize:
Do they float, because I then foresee a lot of Trump trash military cosplayers getting thrown in the Potomac?
germy
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: In the late ’70s, the principal in my HS in Dayton, OH refused to have cops in his school. He was able to prevail, and I have always appreciated his efforts. He set a very good example and was a good man.
Keep up the fight. It’s important.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Jinchi: No. We don’t have the old guard Nazi hunters anymore.
germy
We all know trump lies.
What i find enervating is how often he lies about the littlest things, in the service of a larger narrative.
For example, when the press first showed up, the chairs were far apart. Then one of his lackeys started pushing them closer together:
And then, during his remarks, he says we’re making progress in the fight against the virus, and people are so confident they’re going out again, and “I even see you members of the press sitting closer together than you used to, and you look better doing it.”
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Kimpossible! Sorry not sorry.
Which number impeachment for breathing inquiry would Madame President be on from the Russthuglicans by now?
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato: Some are flotsam. Some are jetsam. They may decide that based on tattoos.
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
She would have been slapped with a subpoena while delivering her inaugural address.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
The fencing will be taken down, instantly declared government surplus, instantly plus three seconds later ‘saved’ by some Dolt 45-supporting entity who pays pennies on the dollar for it, subsequently to be transported for installation at the palace of malice in Florida, the buyers claiming a tax deduction – at full original retail price – for a “gift to the government.”
lamh36
Whatever. Put up or shut up Mitt. If u ain’t putting feet to the ground then don’t be trying to use your dad’s actions like it’s represents your own ?
NotMax
@lamh36
50+ years ago – that would back before the trees in Michigan became “just the right size.”
//
WereBear
Love in the time of COVID-19:
Mr WereBear: Did you hear the latest? [tells me about Trump saying George Floyd “was looking down at us” happy about the (rigged) unemployment numbers]
Me: What? That loathsome pustule!
Mr. WereBear: I love you, sweetie.
Ken
@lamh36: Let’s see, carry the 2… I get 50 years plus since George Romney’s moment, is that right?
Aleta
@NotMax: exactly
Unless T adds it to the list of things he’ll claim belong to him when he leaves
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Or – and hear me out – all the traitorous Trump trash get their asses beaten with the chicken coop.
Fair Economist
@WereBear: ROTFL. It’s much the same in my house.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: We could always ship part of it to various cities and towns in Germany, pay them back for souvenirs of their wall.
randy khan
@Ken:
Well, if they they want the traditional end point for the inaugural parade, they’ll have to do something, since it goes past a reviewing stand in front of the White House and ends down the street from there. (Lafayette Park usually gets more or less closed down a few days ahead of time, so I can imagine them leaving the fence in place on the north side, though.)
FWIW, my current belief is that there’s a decent chance that if Trump loses he will get out of Dodge sometime between Election Day and the inauguration, so they might be able to remove the fence before Inauguration Day.
Ken
Might be hard to tell, since he spends so little time working. I have no doubt he’ll skip the inauguration ceremony.
Caphilldcne
Off to a demonstration (To take my fair share of abuse) at Dirksen Senate Office building. May try to walk the Mall afterwards. I’ll try to send some pix to front pagers.
Miss Bianca
I’m sure this is a dead thread, but listen up y’all. Just went to the Black Lives Matter rally and march in my little frontier, ruby red county. Pissing down rain in the beginning. I was afraid I’d be one of about seven people when I got there, but no, OVER ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE. And terrific support from local law enforcement – the sheriff issued a powerful statement on social media about “these are our friends and neighbors, they are NOT ‘outside agitators’ (the right-wing groups had apparently been having a mass freakout online, unbeknownst to me), and they have a right to do this.’ And he MARCHED with us, and had all his deputies in line along the route.
This…this is huge. I can’t tell you how huge. I’m almost shaky.
have photos and video footage, will try to submit some to WaterGirl at some point.
Shalimar
@lamh36: Mitt is bragging that his dad was a better person than he is. Which seems obvious, but it’s nice to see Mitt realizes it too.
Shalimar
@randy khan: My best guess is Trump spends a week or two in November whining that he was cheated and really won, then retreats to Mar-a-Lago for the remainder of his term and never steps foot in the White House again.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Really nice to read this!
Mart
@Nora: Sarah Cooper simply by taking away the stage and pomp and circumstance; reveals the true Trump idiocracy. Amazing to me how moronic she makes him sound just by miming him and adding a few facial ticks. Mad at myself for hearing so little of it without her. Cooper wrote a book in 2016(?) on how clueless folks successfully sell themselves with endless blather. I’ve known about five of them. They make a lot of $$, but have no idea about what they are selling. Need to buy this afternoon.
Procopius
@Scout211: I’m dubious about this story. An investigation shouldn’t take long. Five minutes, maybe? There has to be a piece of paper, and it has to be signed by someone. Below the (illegible) signature is usually a typed “signature block,” giving the person’s name and title. Usually there will be an original, which will have been circulated for approval. In an emergency, someone will have walked it around to the necessary people and they will have acknowledged seeing it by initialing a block, usually rubber-stamped on it. If you have a longer investigation you can find out who initialed the original draft. We won’t find out anyway. I imagine the person who wrote the order will be promoted.