VIDEO THREAD: Today a controversial coalition of activists included libertarians, conservatives, socialists, communists, and anarchists held a #EndTheDamnWars march in Washington DC.
All footage in thread by me for @N2Sreports and available to license.
"Free Edward Snowden! Free Julian Assange!" the @EndTheDamnWars activists chanted as they marched on Penn Ave today, the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
"Jail war criminals!"
"Fuck Biden! Fuck Trump! Fuck Obama! Fuck Bush!"
"Happy wedding day!" the activists chanted as they passed a couple doing a wedding photoshoot on Freedom Plaza.
"Happy wedding day!"
"Fuck the CIA!"
Several speakers spoke at John Marshall park, where the @EndTheDamnWars rally took place before marching.
@medeabenjamin of @codepink spoke first advocating to "End the damn wars and stop pouring our money down the blackhole of militarism!"
Next spoke @PanvidyaMagnus, an organizer of the event and a "boogaloo."
"Alone, we are isolated, we are marginalized. But together, hand-in-hand, we can send a message that cannot be silenced, cannot be jailed, cannot be divided, and cannot be ignored."
Radio host @GarlandNixon spoke out against the use of sanctions as a form of warfare.
"We gotta stop the sanctions," he said before leading the rally in chants of "Free Julian Assange" and "End the damn wars!"
"Free, free, Julian Assange!" he led the crowd in chants.
"Twenty years in now: More than a million dead, ten trillion [dollars] blown," said @scotthortonshow, detailing history since 9/11.
"It's not giving in to terrorists to abolish empire that we never should have had in the first place."
"We have to quit being divided," said @paulajean2020, who ran to primary Joe Manchin (D) in 2018.
"I left the Democratic Party because of the corruption. I joined the @PeoplesParty_US because we need to hold these people accountable."
"You have libertarians, you have leftists, socialists, communists, whatever. They have less in common but they get that something really wrong is happening," said @MaxBlumenthal at #EndTheDamnWars.
"What we need to do is unite against the common foe."
"No more fighting. No more crying. No more dying. Let's start trying. Let's end damn wars."
"End the damn wars."
Organizer @MeanPanduh described that part of her motivation to assemble the @EndTheDamnWars rally was to bridge the gap between activism for whistleblowers and anti-war activism.
I asked @PanvidyaMagnus to address controversy surrounding the #EndTheDamnWars event, particularly himself as a "boogaloo."
Is it contradictory to be in a movement surrounding the concept of (armed) revolution/civil war while also holding an anti-war event?
His answer:
I also asked @AndrewZigmund about the concept of political coalition.
He described himself as an "Assangist" and quoted Julian Assange: "All political ideologies are bankrupt to a greater or lesser extent."
He says issue of ending wars transcends the political differences.
Most of the speeches are also linked as separate videos in thread.
As always, all footage available to license.
PHOTOS: Today's @EndTheDamnWars rally and march made its way from John Marshall Park to the White House, condemning the last four presidential administrations (including the current one) and demanding the release of @wikileaks Julian Assange.
Participants in the @EndTheDamnWars rally ranged from Communist Party to the progressive @PeoplesParty_US to Libertarian to "Boogaloo."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
IN HIS OWN WORDS: Antifascist activist @JasonRCharter was charged with felonies and misdemeanors and arrested three times amidst civil unrest in 2020.
I sat down with Jason for a wide-ranging interview following his guilty plea to one misdemeanor.
The Trump admin characterized @JasonRCharter as the antifa "ringleader" in an attempt to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson outside the White House.
Jason tells the story of finding this out from the news while in jail.
"You can't be the leader of an idea," he says.
It was because of President Trump's "10 years for destruction of federal property" executive order that he originally faced 20 years in prison.
THREAD: Tonight protesters led by @ShutDown_DC marched to Brett Kavanaugh's house to protest the court's recent decision not to interfere in Texas's new abortion restrictions.
"My body, my voice!"
"When abortion rights are under attack, what do we do? Rise up, fight back!"
"I am angry," said the first speaker outside Kavanaugh's house tonight.
"They're not stopping abortion. They're stopping safe abortion."
"And all those police standing there, you could be somewhere else, doing your actual job. You're just standing there."
"This moment is not only about productive rights," said @KristinMink_, an activist currently running for Montgomery County Council (this neighborhood).
"This a danger to every fundamental right in this country."
She calls for adding more judges to the Supreme Court.
"I'm totally sympathetic to the Taliban right now," claimed Libertarian, anti-war activist and Iraq War veteran @adamkokesh because, "They're the rebels who just beat the empire."
"We don't need tanks and F-15's to defeat the U.S. government, do we?" is the lesson @adamkokesh says he takes away from the Afghanistan.
"If the U.S. government is as effective in Alabama as it was in Afghanistan, some day, we can drive the U.S empire out of America."
This afternoon, a coalition of anti-war activists led by @codepink held a rally to cut Pentagon funding where they brought a cake shaped as the Pentagon, so they could literally cut it.
@medeabenjamin joked about the billions of dollars that each cake bite would represent.
Sean @SeanBlackmon9 with @pslweb and @answercoalition described the history of the anti-war movement over the past 20 years (receiving "boos" for a mention of Bush).
He describes how even other anti-war activists criticized ANSWER for protesting the war so early after 9/11.
"We have to stop the global violence, we have to divest from global violence," said anti-war veteran andDC organizer @ReddIsAri.
"If they can spend $300 million per day in Afghanistan, they can invest $20 billion to house everybody. That's a one-time investment."
Something I find enormously interesting is the concept of political coalition.
For what issues can what types of activists build coalitions in spite of what differences?
This is a very complicated subject - for which many have very easy answers.
Today I’ll be streaming a rally called @EndTheDamnWars here in Washington DC.
I’ve covered hundreds of anti-war events, but this is unique for its claim of “post-partisanship.”
So far, I’ve mostly seen leftists and hardcore libertarians advertise it.
I’ve also seen many on the anti-fascist left condemn the event, suggesting that the @EndTheDamnWars coalition’s inclusion of libertarians including “Boogaloos” is problematic.
BREAKING: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has just turned himself in to the DC jail to begin serving a 155 day sentence for his role in burning a Black Lives Matter banner his group took from a church in December.
4K video on the way as well.
Photos: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio turns himself in to DC jail to begin 155 day sentence after speaking with the media.
Uncut video still on the way.
4K video: Enrique Tarrio and a friend sung as they approached the DC jail and hugged.
"Hey, you all can back up now, the monkey show's over. The goddamn monkey show's over," his friend said to press, waving in their cameras.