Violent protests after Trump inauguration
(CNBC) – Police fired tear gas on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrested at least 95 people as protesters angry over the inauguration of President Donald Trump smashed windows of businesses, upended trash cans and scuffled with cops.
“Donald Trump is a racist!” shouted one woman nearby Trump as he was sworn in as president on the steps of the US Capitol. She was quickly led away by authorities.
The business targeted in the capital’s downtown included a McDonald’s, branches of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and a Starbucks, whose window were all smashed.
Agitators among the hundreds of people protesting on streets also broke windows of parked cars ahead of the inauguration, threw bricks at police cars and set fires in trash cans.
One protester was seen on video swinging a long metal pole at a police officer. The cop gave chase to the man, spraying some kind of liquid at him, but the man turned and jabbed at the officer again to ward him off.
At least two police officers suffered minor injuries “from coordinated attacks by members of the group that were attempting to avoid arrest,” D.C. Police said, according to NBC News.
Video posted on Twitter showed shards of broken glasses spread across the sidewalks, and mask-clad activists pushing over garbage cans, with one of those activists toting a black flag with the “A” symbol for anarchy.
Police used pepper spray and fired tear gas shells in an effort to control protesters.
At least one older man who was bleeding from the back of his head was taken away in an ambulance. A law enforcement officer said he may have been knocked over accidentally by protesters.
“We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear,” the group Disrupt J20 said in a manifesto posted on its web site. Disrupt J20 organized protests designed to disrupt the inauguration activities.
A truck covered in “Trump” bumper stickers was denuded of many of them by protesters walking by the vehicle.
Not all of the protesters were violent.
One draped the fountain in DuPont Circle in Washington, long a focal point for the capital’s gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender population, with a red banner saying one word: “Resist!”
NBC News reported that more than 10,000 people gathered at DuPont Circle on Friday morning to collect marijuana cigarettes being handed out for free by a pro-pot legalization group. Marijuana use is legal in D.C.
CAPTION:
Top: A protester is dragged away from a public access point to the National Mall on 14th Street NW prior to the inauguration on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Photo Getty Images via CNBC
Inset: Demonstrators set fires in protest against inauguration of Trump. Photo: Andrew Caballero Reynolds via AFP and Getty Images and again via CNBC
SOURCE: CNBC’s Dan Mangan
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