A protest outside of the Democratic National Committee headquarters devolved into chaos on Wednesday night as police in riot gear violently clashed with the crowd. At least one person was arrested at the protest, where dozens were gathered urging Democrats to call for a ceasefire on the Gaza Strip.
Protesters from groups including IfNotNow, Jewish Voices for Peace, and Democratic Socialists of America linked arms outside of the DNC headquarters, placing 11,000 candles on the steps to represent Palestinians killed since Oct. 7.
U.S. Capitol police said that protesters were engaging in an unlawful violent protest, forcing them to evacuate lawmakers. According to their X account, six officers were treated for injuries at the scene, including one officer who was pepper-sprayed.
However, activists say they were peacefully protesting when police violently ambushed them without allowing them to disperse. Video shows police shoving and pulling protesters; according to Al Jazeera, police used pepper spray and fired chemical irritants into the crowd.
“Tonight, hundreds of peaceful anti-war activists came to the DNC to call for an end to bombs and violence in order to save Palestinian and Israeli lives,” said Beth Miller, Political Director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, in a statement obtained by The Root.
“They were met with brutal assaults by the police. The Democrats need to decide: will they stand on the side of peace and justice, or will they continue to support war and genocide?”
The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. noted the difference in the reaction to pro-ceasefire protesters versus rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th.
“We are concerned by this aggressive response. Initial video evidence prompts serious questions about the police action, particularly about the level of force used and the absence of warnings or opportunities for protesters to disperse,” wrote the ACLU-D.C. in a statement. “The stark contrast between the police response to ‘Let Gaza Live’ demonstrators and the groups of people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 to overturn a democratic election is not lost on us.”
This isn’t the first time people have made the comparison between the treatment of protests focused on people of color and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who were allowed to breach the Capitol building. A CNN analysis from days after Jan. 6 revealed that police initially arrested five times as many Black Lives Matter protesters on June 1, 2020 (the height of the Summer of Racial Reckoning) as rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. CNN noted that more officers were injured during the insurrection than during the Black Lives Matter protest.
Anthony Lorenzo Green, an activist with Black Lives Matter D.C., told CNN that had they tried to storm the Capitol, “we would be shackled, we would be carried away, we would be shot, we would be dead.”