In Both DC, And Portland, BLM Suits Filed -- All As "Moms United Portland" Are Now Joining: Against Trump, Wolf And Barr...

I am thrilled that the "Moms United" group has joined the suit, out of the lawless brutality in Portland -- and I expect that shortly, the Navy veteran we saw that night beaten with steel batons, and pepper sprayed -- all without provocation, on multiple angles of video-feed -- in Portland. . . will join as well.

But for now, here is the detail from the amended federal class action complaint out of DC, related to the June 1 Lafayette Square attacks orchestrated by William Barr. I will post the Portland versions as the same become available online, but here is the 40 page DC version:

. . . .On June 1, 2020, a group of demonstrators, including Plaintiffs, gathered peacefully in Lafayette Square to protest the gross, systemic injustices perpetrated by law enforcement against Black people in the United States, exemplified by the recent brutal murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was shot eight times and killed in March 2020 by three Louisville police officers who entered her home in the middle of the night without knocking. This was a continuation of protests in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere since Mr. Floyd’s killing. Without provocation, Defendants directed their agents in the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Park Police, D.C. National Guard, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and U.S. Military Police to fire tear gas, pepper spray capsules, rubber bullets, and flash bombs into the crowd to shatter the peaceful gathering, forcing demonstrators to flee the area. Many peaceful demonstrators were injured, some severely, by this unprovoked attack. . . .

Defendants had no legitimate basis to destroy the peaceable gathering. Defendants’ professed purpose -- to clear the area to permit the President to walk to a photo opportunity at a nearby church -- was a wholly illegal reason for abridging the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and the others assembled in Lafayette Square. Indeed, the President has consistently demonstrated hostility towards viewpoints different than his own, and in the days and moments leading up to the attack expressed his intent to violently attack protesters and “dominate” them. . . .

The Department of Justice has officially acknowledged that Defendant Barr ordered Lafayette Square cleared minutes before the assault started. Defendant Barr issued this order following a series of statements from Defendant Trump in the days and hours leading up to this attack in which he clearly threatened to use and encouraged violence against protesters. The police violence that Plaintiffs and other lawful, peaceful demonstrators were met with on June 1, 2020 is a continuation of an unlawful history of oppression of civil rights activists. The peaceful assembly of people seeking systemic change in the criminal justice system, like the assembly of Plaintiffs and others on June 1, 2020 in Lafayette Square, is based on a decades-old history of civil rights activism in this nation. Following the long tradition of those who marched for voting rights on Sunday, March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, Plaintiffs seek to address racial inequities. But like that “Bloody Sunday” fifty-five years ago, Plaintiffs’ peaceful, lawful assembly was met by police violence. . . .

It is precisely. . . centuries of white supremacy and subjugation of Black lives -- that was the core focus of the peaceful demonstration in Lafayette Square. Just as in Tulsa, Scottsboro, Anniston, Birmingham, Selma, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Ferguson, New York City, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and countless other times in our nation’s bloody history, the Lafayette Square assault was violence against Black people and their supporters committed by state actors. What differentiates the actions here from the others is that the President and Attorney General of the United States ordered the violence. . . .

These suits will prevail. They honor the memory of the "good trouble" the late John Lewis pointed us all toward. We must dump this malevolent, lawless clown at 1600 Penn -- and his sycophants -- they all must be put out, come November. Onward.

नमस्ते