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A mixture of marijuana and irritating gas, which itches in the throat and makes a little tear. This is how the corner of 16th Street and H Street smelled yesterday at quarter past six in the afternoon. Marijuana was from several hundred peaceful protesters protesting the murder of George Floyd. The irritating gas was from the riot gear.
The former were a diverse amalgam of young, black and white people, looking like students, shouting slogans and sometimes, putting their knees on the ground, in the position in which, according to two different autopsies, white policeman Dereck Chauvin murdered the African American George Floyd. There were people who went and people who came. All young. They were more and shouted more than in other protests that were taking place at the same time in the city, such as the vigil of the Dupont Square, or the demonstration that was happening on Q Street. Because the corner of 16 with H it is one of the sides of Lafayette Park. Across the park is Pennyslvania Avenue, and there, 1600, the White House.
Then the small stampedes of people began. Every two minutes or so, people would run down the 16, from the H in the direction of the K, that is, backwards. It was evident that someone was pushing them from the left of the White House. There weren't many people, but it was a little unsettling. Even more so because the 16th was cut by several police cars and a couple of Humvees, the mammoth jeeps of the United States Armed Forces.
The first stampede was at 6:27. "Walk, don't run!" Some yelled as people ran. It only lasted a couple of seconds. The congregants calmed down. They were peaceful protesters. They were actually amateurs. Nothing to do with the professionals who had gathered there in the last two nights and who had set fire to and damaged a part of the historic St. John's Church, which is on that same corner.
At 6:30, there was another race. People entered from the H at the left corner of 16, exactly where St. John's Church is. That is not just any church . It was completed in 1816, and all the presidents of the United States have attended since then. It is a small and diaphanous temple, cream colored on the outside and white on the inside, with wooden benches covered with red cloth. And a temple, like all of the Episcopal Church, very 'progressive'. On Sunday night, a protester threw at least one Molotov cocktail inside the sacristy, but even so, the church continues to support the protests.
When the stampedes occurred, the protesters had milk - which they mix with water to cope with the effects of tear gas - and medicines inside the temple. The parish priest, Robert Fisher, was helping them, and had publicly expressed his support on the church's website on Facebook and on the conservative television network Fox News. Not for nothing is it an episcopal church, that is, the American 'version' of the Anglican Church, and also the confession of 'old money' and 'progress'. It is the perfect church for Washington. The antithesis to evangelical churches that see Donald Trump as literally a new King David: a person full of flaws but who is reinstating the Kingdom of God.
In H, next to the church, a riot police barrier advanced . They took a few steps, stopped, and moved forward again. His intention was clearly to clear that stretch of the street, right where the part of St. John's that was damaged by the fire is. The protesters did not confront them. On the contrary, they recorded them with their mobile phones.
The protesters were obviously amateurs. They did not realize that the last policeman, the one on the far left of the line, next to the church, was all the time aiming at people with his rubber ball shotgun. If the riot police show their weapons that way, it is because they are telling you that either you are leaving or they will use them against you. But no one found out. Neither do journalists. One, after all, is going to Washington to cover the White House, not the protests in front of the White House. Not even the fourth stampede they found out. When the police reached the corner of H and 16, there were still almost more journalists than protesters. A boy with a guitar on his back stood in front of the guards.
It was then that they started to throw the rubber balls, and the stun grenades , which make a deafening noise. And they kept going and stopping, now on 16. Little by little. Repeating the same process. When they found a straggler or, frequently, a journalist, they pushed or beat him. It was not a difficult task. The most people threw at them was empty water bottles. It was like a joke. Because very few of those who were there were serious protesters. Those, the ones who had nearly burned down St. John's church, and Saturday the Hay Adams luxury hotel - just across the street - and the Hollywood 'lobby' - the American Motion Pictures Association - were left for the night shift. They were so 'amateur' that an Australian journalist kept broadcasting live after the first balls, with her back to the riot police. The police moved forward and kicked people out of the H, until they left it on the corner with the K, behind the building of the AFL-CIO union, the largest in the US, whose entrance had also been set on fire by protesters on Sunday.
A city under siege
This is how the police opened the way for Donald Trump to display the Bible in front of St. John's Church. Half an hour later, the President of the United States crossed Lafayette Street and displayed the book on camera. The book he doesn't know how to read , as he made clear when, in the 2016 election campaign, he visited Liberty University, an evangelical center in Virginia that is a strict creationist - that is, he claims that God created the Earth in six days - and, instead of saying, "second Epistle to the Corinthians," he said "Corinthians-2," as if it were a Hollywood movie. Little did it matter. A year and two days later, Trump would be sworn in as president. The miracle had been worked. The David of the 21st century had arrived.
The President appeared on television, prominently teaching the Bible. The Episcopalian bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, called the operation a "propaganda photo," and has already accused the president of "using the church as a setting." Trump, the great conjurer of the reality show, had scored another electoral goal. Your photo is key to evangelicals. And his decision is critical to dividing the Democrats , split in two between an activist wing that defends violent protests and accepts looting - like Father Fisher - and a majority that opposes it.
At night, amid the buzz of Black Hawk helicopters - like those in the Ridley Scott movie - chasing protesters and looters with their headlights and dissolving them in the wind as they raised their blades as they flew at a height of less than thirty meters, Washington seemed, for the third consecutive night, a city under siege.
In fact, it was. The curfew takes effect at 7 in the afternoon. The 7-Eleven underneath my house had put wooden boards in their windows so that the liquor store next door, which had been razed on Sunday, would not happen. In fact, the assailants not only ransacked the store, but also destroyed a car parked in front of it. The owners of the 7-Eleven are Ethiopians. The one from the alcohol shop, Palestinian.
So it was no wonder that, on the front porch, the neighbor of the first one - a 64-year-old black ex-Marine - was sitting at one in the morning, waiting for the looters . At home, he has weapons. Like other neighbors in the area with whom he was in contact. "You don't need to thank me," he said when I started chatting with him. Dressed in a black T-shirt, and in camouflage pants and military boots, he had in front of the sofa where a small table with a Tablet and a book with the title 'Miracle' stood guard.
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