Thousands of Americans gather for Fourth of July protests across the US

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Protesters in Baltimore hauled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into a harbor in defiance of President Trump hours after he compared them to ‘Nazis and terrorists’ in a Fourth of July address as demonstrations overtake the country. 

As Donald Trump hosted hundreds at the White House for a July Fourth fireworks display, a large group of protesters pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the city’s Inner Harbor. 

Demonstrators used ropes to topple the monument near the Little Italy neighborhood, news outlets reported.

It’s unclear how many police officers were at the scene, but spokesperson Baltimore Mayor Bernard Young said that targeted statues were not a priority of the police department amid homicides and other crimes. 

Cell phone footage shared to Facebook shows two long fastened around the statue as a bustling crowd anxiously waits. 

The group simultaneously yells ‘pull’ and the gargantuan statue is swiftly tugged onto the brick ground.  

Loud cheers can be heard and several protesters were seen jumping out of joy.  

From there, a group of protesters gathered around the now-broken statue, grabbed the ropes and began transporting it to Inner Harbor. 

Several people can be hear cheering off camera as the statue crashes into the water and appears to sink.

According to The Baltimore Sun, the statue was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan. 

A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. ‘Jack’ Young said the toppling of the statue is a part of a national and global reexamination over monuments ‘that may represent different things to different people.’

‘We understand the dynamics that are playing out in Baltimore are part of a national narrative,’ Lester Davis said. 

‘We understand the frustrations. What the city wants to do is serve as a national model, particularly with how we’ve done with protesting.’

The group protesting on Saturday were reportedly demanding funds from the police department be diverted to social services, the public education, housing for the homeless community, reparations for Black Americans and the removal of all statues ‘honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers.’

For police officers in Baltimore, who like may other departments are facing increased scrutiny, reprimanding civilians over statues is not at the forefront of their agenda.

‘Our officers in Baltimore City, who are some of the finest in country, they are principally concerned with the preservation of life. That is sacrosanct. Everything else falls secondary to that, including statues,’ said Davis.

But President Trump has taken the the debate around statues and used it as a polarizing campaign point ahead of the 2020 November election. 

Last week, Trump said civilians caught toppling the Confederate monuments could face up to 10 years in jail. He authorized federal officials to ‘arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison.’

His apparent distaste for Black Lives Matter protesters seeped into his Fourth of July address at the White House, where he compared them to Nazis and terrorists.

‘American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles, and chased down terrorists to the very ends of the earth,’ he said. 

Statues of Columbus have also been toppled or vandalized in cities such as Miami; Richmond, Virginia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated.

Elsewhere, similar acts of defiance and demonstrations were held in several cities across the country,

Flag burnings were also seen in Washington, as well as in New York City outside the Trump Tower, and on Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star. 

And at the nation’s biggest Confederate monument, which has been used as a meeting place by the KKK, the Black Panthers gathered to demand the removal of the racist sculpture. 

Georgia

In Georgia, as many as 100 reported members of the Black Panther Party descended into Stone Mountain Park as calls to remove the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial boomed.

Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial, a nine-story-high base-relief sculpture carved into a sprawling rock face northeast of Atlanta, is perhaps the South’s most audacious monument to its pro-slavery legacy still intact. 

Despite long-standing demands for the removal of what many consider a shrine to racism, the giant depiction of three Confederate heroes on horseback still towers ominously over the Georgia countryside, protected by state law.

It, as well as many other Confederate statues, have become a debate between Americans who argue they celebrate hate ideologies and those who believe it honors the traditions of the South. 

The monument had been closed to public amid the coronavirus pandemic but reopened on Thursday, just in time for July 4. Photos taken at Stone Mountain Park showed a crowd of armed Black Panther Party members hidden behind various face coverings on Saturday. 

The Black Panther Party, originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was founded in Oakland, California, by then-college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in 1966.

The political group was initially founded to monitor the behavior of Oakland Police Department officers, who were accused of police brutality, with armed civilian patrols called ‘copwatching.’

More than 50 years later, the current protests over police brutality have picked up where the founders left off after the death of George Floyd and several other Black Americans by law enforcement.

‘Here we are in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement and still we have the largest Confederate monument in the world,’ said Gerald Griggs, a vice president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP civil rights group, which staged a march last week calling for the carving to be scraped from the mountainside. 

‘It’s time for our state to get on the right side of history.’

Stone Mountain has long held symbolism for white supremacists. 

The Ku Klux Klan, a hate group that was formed by Confederate Army veterans and has a history of lynchings and terror against Black people, held its rebirth ceremony atop mountain in 1915. The KKK was originally founded in 1865 but by the mid 1870s had all but disappeared after a federal crackdown during the Reconstruction era.

In 1915, former Methodist preacher William Simmons launched a campaign to relaunch the group. The relaunch culminated with a rebirth ceremony in November 1915 atpo the mountain where they set crosses ablaze. They set the date ahead of the Atlanta release of racist propaganda film Birth of a Nation.

Longer than a 100-yard American football field, it features the likenesses of Jefferson Davis, the president of the 11-state Confederacy, and two of its legendary military leaders, Robert E. Lee and Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, notched in a relief 400 feet above ground.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is an organization that staunchly defends Stone Mountain and other Confederate statues and emblems.

Dedicated to teaching the ‘Southern Cause,’ according to its website, it believes their removal is akin to purging American history.

Klansmen still hold occasional gatherings in the shadows of the edifice, albeit now met with protesters behind police tape. Many of those cross-burnings took place on or around July 4.

But with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, segregationist officials in the state pushed for the creation the Stone Mountain Memorial Association in 1958 and purchased the park. The carving was completed in 1972.

‘This debate has been going on for years, and we’re sensitive to it,’ John Bankhead, a spokesman for the group, said. 

‘We want to tell history as it is, not as some say it is.’   

New York City

Further north, residents brought their fight to the front steps of President Trump’s 58-floor Trump Tower on Saturday with chants, protest signs and even several instances of flag burning.

Footage taken outside of Trump Tower near New York City’s Columbus Circle showed a large group of demonstrators reportedly with the Revolution Club preparing to set the flags ablaze.

A speaker at the event cited ‘police murder, terror and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people’ as one of many for why the ‘United States of America is irredeemable.’

A large America flag was set on fire while people chanted ‘slavery, genocide and war…America was never great.’

The burning flag was then set on the ground and fellow protesters used to fire to lit smaller American flags.

According to FNTV, the group did one flag burning in Columbus Circle and one directly in front of Trump Tower.

New York City Police Department officers were reportedly at the scene and watched as the American flags were burned.

An NYPD truck stationed near Trump Hotel played the Star Spangled Banner through speakers afterwards.

In Brooklyn, New Yorkers held a ‘Confronting July 4th’ rally to honor Black and indigenous activists, USA Today reports.

The groups reportedly ‘refuse(s) to celebrate the whitewashing of this country.’

Event organizer Jo Macellaro referenced a speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, titled ‘What to the slave is Fourth of July’ as still relevant today.

‘So much of it is still relevant,’ said said. ‘What does the Fourth of July mean to people who are still oppressed, marginalized – who don’t have all the freedoms we’re supposed to have in this country?’

The expansive and large protests even stopped traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening, CNN reports.

‘Due to protest activity, all Brooklyn-bound lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge are closed. Consider alternate routes and allow for additional travel time,’ the New York City Emergency Management announced on Twitter.

The New York Police Department said there’s an estimated 1,200 orderly protests inundating the city as part of the United New York Fourth of July Rally & March. 

Washington, D.C.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to converge on Saturday in the heart of Washington, where U.S. President Donald Trump will host an Independence Day fireworks display and military flyover  

Disregarding the Washington mayor’s warnings of the risk of gathering as many U.S. states mark a record number of new COVID-19 cases, crowds began to assemble early on a hot Saturday morning.

Police officers blocked off streets around the White House, Black Lives Matter Plaza and the Lincoln Memorial, where demonstrators planned to join one of the dozen organized protests in advance of Trump’s nighttime address on the South Lawn.

Activist groups pledged to hold peaceful protests for reforms following the May killing of George Floyd. 

Similar to New York City, protesters were pictured burning several American flags in defiance of both Trump and prejudice policies. 

Trump’s Fourth of July event follows a Friday night speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota where he accused ‘angry mobs’ of trying to erase history and used the speech to paint himself as a bulwark against left-wing extremism. 

Roar of the Deplorables, a bikers group, said via social media that they, too, were planning to gather in Washington on Saturday to stand in protest against what they call ‘the anti-Trump regime’ and to celebrate the nation’s birthday.

Freedom Fighters DC, a new activist group which seeks to rally an ethnically diverse generation of supporters behind liberty for all people, especially the Black population of Washington, is one of the anti-racism groups ignoring the mayor’s heed to refrain from gathering.

‘Black folks are not free from the chains of oppression, so we don’t get to truly celebrate Independence Day,’ said Kerrigan Williams, 22, one of the founders of the group, which will host a march and an arts demonstration on Saturday afternoon.

‘We’re marching today to showcase that Black folks are still fighting for the simple liberties that the constitution is said to provide.’President Trump has repeatedly been critical of the Black Lives Matter movement and has unequivocally sided with law enforcement. 

Richmond, Virginia 

Armed Black Lives Matter activists and right-wing groups came together in Richmond, Virginia on Saturday in a united show of support for the 2nd Amendment at an Open Carry rally.

At least 200 people, the majority proudly toting rifles, semi-automatic weapons and other firearms, gathered outside Capitol Square to protest against gun control and the violation of constitutional rights. 

The rally, organized by activist group Virginia Knights, also served as a memorial for Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old man who was fatally shot in his Maryland home in March during a no-knock police raid.  

‘This rally on July Fourth is to show that gun owners will not be trampled on! We are citizens who demand our 2nd Amendment rights be protected by the very people who swore an oath to protect us. Any and all gun laws are an infringement and are unconstitutional!’ the Facebook event read. 

‘Duncan Socrates Lemp was our brother unjustly murdered in his sleep [under] the same laws in Maryland that Governor Northam has signed into law in VA.’

Organizers said they aimed to show Governor Northam ‘that we stand strong as patriots, Americans, and free men and women’. 

Photos showed protesters, from both ends of the political spectrum, mingling as they exercised their right to bear arms.

Among the crowd of guests was Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase, who is running for governor.

Chase, strapped with a rifle, spoke to activists on her stance on police and the ongoing protests taking place across the nation.

‘We don’t have any tolerance for bad apples,’ she said. 

‘We mostly have good police officers that do the right thing. And I don’t believe in defunding the police, but we need to help people who have mental health issues. We need to add more, not take away,’ she added.

The event comes six months after a Virginia gun rights rally that drew more than 22,000 armed activists to the state’s capitol building to protest gun-control legislation making its way through the newly Democratic-controlled state legislature.

The protest came after Governor Northam banned carrying weapons onto the capitol grounds. 

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