The agitators from Black Lives Matter
TWO leading members of the Black Lives Matter movement were involved in the protests on Sunday night.
One of those involved in the demonstration was middle- class university dropout Joshua Virasami.
The London-born musician, 27, was the organiser of a Black Lives Matter protest that caused ‘utter chaos’ when Left-wing demonstrators blocked a major route into Heathrow Airport last year.
Virasami staged the protest to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Mark Duggan, who was killed by police.
He said it was a success as it had sparked ‘a conversation around the violence of institutional racism’.
And he was at the East London demonstration on Sunday night – claiming police were responsible for Mr Da Costa’s death. He wrote on Twitter: ‘They killed Edson in his car. They beat him to death and now they are terrorising his people on road. F*** the police.’
He also wrote: ‘Having just left there I’ll say this, if Feds try and arrest someone they will get licked
‘Grief, rage and turmoil’
down. I can’t even describe the levels of tension.’ Earlier this year Virasami – who claims to be an ‘artist and an abolitionist’ – was convicted of a public order offence after pushing police officers at a peaceful protest over housing costs in Brixton. The judge told him he should be ‘ashamed of himself’ and asked why he had been there given he lived in Hounslow.
The mob also had the support of singer Amina Gichinga, 27, who also has links to the UK’s imitation of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.
The singing teacher from Newham was a poster girl for the group when protestors stormed the runway at London City Airport in 2016.
The nine protesters shut the airport down when they chained themselves to a tripod in the middle of the tarmac to campaign against what they described as the UK’s ‘racist climate change’.
Miss Gichinga – backed the demonstrators who clashed with police in East London.
She wrote online: ‘The grief, rage, turmoil that I saw at the #JusticeforEdson protest today... :’( this is a community hurting and fighting for justice.
‘People wanna talk about protestors rage... but then fail to address the rage of officers who killed Edson. I can’t. #justiceforEdson’
Miss Gichinga is also a leader in a grassroots political campaign group called Take Back The City.
She has claimed that Goldsmith’s University, where she studied, is ‘incredibly mono-cultural and elitist’. She also said she was ‘the only person in my GCSE English class who wasn’t cheering when we found out that we’d won the Olympic bid in 2005.’
Miss Gichinga refused to comment last night.