White supremacists outnumbered
Their White House rally overshadowed by larger anti-hate crowd
WASHINGTON — Marching shoulder-to-shoulder in the nation’s capital, large crowds turned out Sunday to denounce racism as a small contingent of white supremacists gathered for a rally in a park across from the White House — a size disparity that was heartening to many but belied deep fears over rising racial divisions across the country.
A year after deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., became a nationwide symbol of polarization and mayhem, police braced for potential clashes as the two sides converged on the same small patch of greenery in Lafayette Square. But they managed to keep the two sides apart, with the white nationalists surrounded by barricades and outnumbered by police.
The chants and music that echoed across much of downtown Washington weren’t heard by President Donald Trump, who was at his New Jersey golf resort. As the
march grew in size, however, the president sent a series of angry Twitter posts about the Russia investigation, castigating the Justice Department, the FBI and the news media.
Counterprotesters began gathering in a square several blocks from the White House hours before the arrival of the “Unite the Right 2” marchers, who gathered at a suburban Metro station before heading into town. Elizabeth Oka, 28, a musician originally from Monrovia, Calif., said she felt morally obliged to protest against hatred in all its forms.
“If enough people do this, it sends a message,” she said. “As a citizen, it is my right and responsibility to do this.”
Garold Jacob, a 36-year-old African-American man from Brooklyn, N.Y., said he was afraid the country was moving backward in race relations. “This regression to the past cannot be allowed,” he said.
Recent polls show a majority of Americans believe race relations have worsened under Trump.
A large law enforcement presence awaited the white supremacist marchers at a Metro stop in Washington, with dozens of motorcyclemounted police forming long ranks as they emerged. Paramedics were on standby as counterprotesters in Freedom Plaza began marching toward Lafayette Square.
The president said on Twitter on Saturday that he condemned “all types of racism.”
“Riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division,” he wrote in a Twitter message. “We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”
Last August, Trump triggered an outcry when he said “both sides” were to blame after a self-declared neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman. Trump also said many of the white nationalists were “good people.”
Last week, however, Trump appeared to stoke racial tensions when he insulted the intelligence of NBA star LeBron James and CNN anchor Don Lemon, both of whom are black, and again condemned black pro football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
One of the few AfricanAmericans who has worked in the Trump White House, Omarosa Manigault Newman, accused him of being a “racist, misogynist and bigot” who used racial epithets, according to a memoir being released Tuesday.
Trump on Saturday slammed his former special assistant as “a lowlife,” and senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway dismissed her charges Sunday as untrue. On ABC’s “This Week,” Conway said she had “never a single time heard” Trump utter a racial slur, and never heard Manigault Newman complain that he had done so.
In Charlottesville, 115 miles south of Washington, more than 100 anti-racism demonstrators gathered near the site where Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was run down and killed last Aug. 12.
Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, marked the anniversary by laying flowers at a makeshift memorial.
On the Sunday TV talk shows, critics faulted Trump for helping foment racial divisiveness, while supporters said he had not been sufficiently credited for decrying hate groups.
A former senior White House aide, ex-legislative director Marc Short, said the outcry over Trump’s initial blaming of both sides for the Charlottesville violence obscured his condemnation, two days later, of white supremacists and other hate groups.
Critics painted a picture of a polarizing president who uses racially charged language and cultural grievances in the partisan debate over immigration and other issues.
“There is a concerted effort that [Trump] has been engaged in to divide people, including dividing them based on race,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” citing Trump’s tepid response to the violence in Charlottesville as a watershed moment.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who is AfricanAmerican, said Trump’s call for unity Saturday did not go far enough in condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
“I think it’s a low bar for the president of the United States to simply say he’s against racism,” Cummings said on ABC. “He’s got to be better than that.”