Big-money groups are helping to organize and fuel ‘AstroTurf’ progressive uprisings.
When left-wing organizers were recruiting people to travel to Washington, D.C., to try to “shut down the inauguration of Donald Trump” and “paralyze the city itself,” they offered a number of incentives — free housing, food, and also legal assistance in case of arrest. They also organized training camps, workshops and media-encounter events in the run-up to the main event: the big riot.
On Jan. 20, rioters met at Logan Circle in downtown Washington, D.C., armed with crow bars, metal poles, hammers, bricks and explosive devices, according to the indictment. They were dressed all in black with hoods and masks to conceal their identities, and goggles and gas masks to reduce the effects of tear gas.
They rampaged through downtown Washington, D.C., using verbal commands to move as a black bloc and smashed the windows of an Au Bon Pain, broke the windows of a parked limousine and assaulted the limousine driver, and pulled trash cans into streets. The group also smashed the windows of a Starbucks, a Bank of America, a Bobby Vans restaurant, a McDonald’s and a second Starbucks inside the Crowne Plaza hotel before breaking the windows of a police car and attempting to crash through a police line, injuring a police officer.
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