On day of protest, police make 13 arrests as pro-Trump crowd clashes with ‘anti-fascists’ in California and thousands call for financial disclosure elsewhere
Anti and pro-Donald Trump supporters clash at Martin Luther King Jr Civic Center Park in Berkeley, California on Saturday.
undreds of self-described anti-fascist protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clashed in Berkeley, California, in sporadic brawls on Saturday. Protests in cities around the rest of the country, including a number of “tax marches” in which demonstrators called for Trump to release his tax returns, proceeded more peacefully.
In Berkeley, police told media they had arrested 13 people by mid-afternoon, as opposing rallies spilled out of a park and into the streets. With several hundred people on each side, the crowds mostly taunted each other with bullhorns, chants and shouts. Occasionally, anti-Trump protesters threw fireworks. Small bands on both sides chased each other or brawled, sometimes with wooden planks, homemade shields, poles and pepper spray.
One standoff at a downtown intersection ended only when a smoke grenade detonated. In confusion, anti-Trump protesters fled as supporters of the president charged after them, attacking stragglers. In one altercation, demonstrators threw a pot of beans at each other.
Pepper spray is used as anti- and pro-Donald Trump protesters clash.
In another altercation, a protester who stole a Trump flag was chased down in front of a store and punched, until allies ran to his side and started to beat the Trump supporter involved. As with the other fights, it was eventually separated. At least a dozen people were seen bloodied or suffering the effects of pepper spray.
The first event planned for Saturday was a “pro-free speech rally” by a group of Trump supporters. Opposing groups quickly organized their own event.
Demonstrators in both camps bemoaned how hard it was to communicate with the other side, though occasionally they came together, often helping bystanders caught off guard. At one point an anti-fascist shared her marijuana with a Trump supporter. For most of the day, each side shouted slogans, like “neo-fascists got to go” and “just plain commies off the streets”.
Unlike previous clashes in Berkeley – such as a February protest that forced the far-right writer Milo Yiannopoulos to cancel an event, and a March rally that led to 10 arrests – Trump supporters numbered at least as many if not more than their rivals. At one point an older man shouted: “I claim Berkeley for the alt-right.”
Lauren Southern, a Canadian activist popular in rightwing media, similarly declared: “We won the battle of Berkeley!” By 4pm local time, the various factions had mostly dispersed, leaving streets by and large calm and the park quiet. “They picked Berkeley because they want to feel they could do this in the most liberal place in the country,” said Geoff Millard, an anti-Trump protester, Iraq war veteran and Mr San Francisco Leather 2017. “It’s important that we shut them down and let them know they can’t pull this crap here.”
Millard said the “antifascist” protest was meant “to make Nazis afraid” and said “the ideology that they propose puts public citizens at risk”. A Trump supporter assists an injured man.
Others against the president variously argued that there were limits to free speech or that their goal was to use their own voices to overwhelm and marginalize certain views that have appeared on the far right, for instance antisemitism and racism. Anti- and pro-Trump protesters share marijuana on the streets of Berkeley.
Several Trump supporters said they also felt uncomfortable about those elements. One man, who would describe himself as a Trump supporter from the Bay area, held a sign that read “Da Goyim Know” next to an image of a cross. He said the sign “means we’re sick of living under neocon rule”.
“I think there are too many Jewish supremacists in the government and in the media,” he said. “If people of European descent want to stand up for their rights and just want equal rights, they’re called white supremacists.”
Accusations of antisemitism, he said, were used “to justify anti-white racism”.
Trump supporters nearby said they did not agree, and stressed the eclectic mix of ideas on their side: self-described “non-progressives”, libertarians, populists, “traditionalists”, reluctant converts, and a faction called the Proud Boys: a Bay area group of men, mostly in their 30s, who call themselves “western chauvinists”.
One Proud Boy, who called himself Nick Money, said he was a Bernie Sanders supporter until he had “an awakening” last year.
