Activists trade insults near ADL offices

Shouting match between white, minority groups lasts for hours

Waving banners and hurling obscenities, White Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter protesters faced off in an angry hours-long shouting match Saturday in front of the Anti-Defamation League’s southwest Houston office.

One activist hoisted “Stop Killing Our Police Officers” signs and waved images of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon image recently declared a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

“This isn’t about Nazism. We are here because white lives matters,” said Ken Reed, 41, the Trump hat-wearing rally leader.

Police — on horseback, bike, foot and in patrol cars — fanned out across a large area surrounding the protest site, spilling into nearby parking lots with emergency vehicles and blocking one lane of traffic along the Southwest Freeway service road. Police kept the feuding activists separated with barriers as a chaotic chorus of chants and counter-chants volleyed for hours.

A broad coalition of about 50 counter-protesters, including everyone from Students for a Democratic Society to Latinos Inmigrantes Triunfadores to Black Lives Matter, gathered in opposition, far outnumbering the white nationalists who initiated the event.

“We’re here to drown the voices of the White Lives Matter white supremacists out. They’re out here protesting the Anti-Defamation League, but it’s more than that,” said organizer Ashton P. Woods, 31. “They’re white supremacists. They no longer matter; they never did. And it’s time for their voices to be drowned out.”

When one WLM protester showed up with a gun, counter-protesters objected — and Reed shouted, “The only way his finger will go on the trigger is if you all come over here.”

At one point, Black Lives Matter supporters scrounged up a flag and started gathering lighters. But ultimately they decided to rip the stars and stripes to shreds, waving it along the roadside for passersby on U.S. 59 service road.

Last month, a group of gun-toting white activists made national headlines when they waved Confederate flags in front of the NAACP’s Houston office in the historically black Third Ward. keri.blakinger@chron.com