Reportbacks from Mayday

DC's Mayday march was a two-part affair, beginning with an immigrant march from Mount Pleasant that linked up with a worker's march at Malcolm X Part before continuing to Freedom Plaza and a much larger immigrant rally at the White House. A third march started at Dupont Circle and proceeded directly to Lafayette Park. The Worker's March was marred by harassment from both neo-Nazis and police. Two protesters were detained but both were released as police could not find or fake any kind of probable cause.

The march as a whole was only one part of Mayday in DC. There was also the strike, which was sufficiently effective that one participant in the march reported seeing many restaurants with signs indicating they had closed for the day because of the walkout. "Walk-backs" in which striking workers are escorted back to their workplaces as a precaution against retaliation on May 2 have been offered to those who may need them.

Jack Posobiec was confirmed as being one of the alt-right (neo-Nazi) figures who showed up in an attempt to disrupt DC's Mayday march. He was spotted just after the immigrant march had joined the worker's march, and anti-Fascist protesters formed a semicircle separating him from the march. At one point he grabbed a transgender woman's flag, and police responded not be detaining Posobiec for assault but instead by detaining his victim for quite a while. She was eventually released when even the police realized they had no legal way to arrest her.

Posobiec went so far as to request a police escort out of the area, but the cops realized such a thing would showcase the "cops and the Klan work hand in hand" connection and refused. He left anyway, and the antifa contingent returned to the march.

When the march reached Freedom Plaza, police again detained a marcher, and when a videographer started filming this they suddenly opened a porta-potty door, partially blocking the camera. Other photographers started filming from other angles-and one of them got a shot of a cop reaching into the toilet to retrieve a cell phone. It is confimed the cop went digging in feces for the phone! Again police found no legal reason for an arrest, again they had to release their detainee. It appeared that police were going out of their way to harass as many people they believed connected to anti-Fascist or anti-Capitalist organizing as possible without exposing the department to yet another lawsuit.When this meant having to literally get their hands dirty, the result was glares of hate from police that seemed like steel-cutting lasers.

Elsewhere on Turtle Island police aggression was far worse. There were violent arrests in NYC's Mayday parade, and in Portland police revoked the march permit and threatened to kettle all marchers, allegedly in response to anarchist setting a trash fire in the street, which was described as "setting fires" as though limousines were burning again. The Portland cops responded by hurling explosive "flashbang" grenades and charging into marchers,as though this was DisruptJ20 all over again and they were MPD or US Park Police.

Video from the Mayday marches in DC preceded by a stirring speech about the Mayday labor holiday's origins in 1886 (the Haymarker Martyrs)