Mayday marchers confront white racists at White House

On the 1st of, a Mayday march hundreds strong arrived at the White House to confront 9 white supremacists.

Video of the confrontation with the racists

The racists hid behind a massive police presence including barrricades and even a cop with a grenade launcher, except for one who appeared to be drunk. The drunk racist was challenging people to fight, but never strayed far from his police protection. He was a few feet in front of the barricades, and was eventually isolated from contact with anti-racist activists be a reinforced "Troll Supremacy" banner. With orange netting on the banner, cheers of "kettle them!" went up when the banner was deployed.

Finally two African-American cops ordered the drunk racist to leave with them-and he complied, letting African-American cops tell him where to go! This was while the rest of the racists were withdrawn by what appeared to be a police motorcade. Update: It has been confirmed that a total of 11 racists were present, and were driven away in the police van seen departing the scene in the video. When you hear a "cops and the Klan work hand in hand" chant, this is what people are complaining about!

Normally a confrontation with white racists would have been more aggresive, but with major fighting at Mayday 2013 activists feared that a second round of fighting would mean every Mayday parade from here on would have to do battle with cops and racists. Interestingly, the cops seemed to be on their best behavior. I spent part of the march down 14th st on the left forward flank, the place where provocation by cops seems to be most common on street marches and where it began in 2013. This time around, they took no action other positioning their motorcycles to keep opposing lanes. There was none of the ramming with motorbikes, insults, and physical assaults that started all the fighting on 14th st in the 2013 Mayday march. Also, this march did not take place just one week after 1,200 workers were killed in a complex of sweatshops making clothes for the Gap.

The inbound Mayday march

Nine racists. The bicycle fence barricade is below the sight line of this photo

The "troll supremacy" banner used to keep a drunk racist out of people's faces

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