The burnings of Black Lives Matter banners at historic Black churches is Washington, D.C., are being investigated as possible hate crimes. Banners were burned at Asbury United Methodist Church and Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. ”It pained me especially to see our name, Asbury, in flames,” the Rev. Ianther Mills, senior pastor at Asbury, said. “For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings.”
”White supremacists are tearing down and burning Black Lives Matter signs from churches. These are acts of both racial terror and religious violence,” Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, tweeted. She continued, “Burning Black Lives Matter signs ripped from churches is an explicit threat to the sanctity of the Black church and to Black lives and freedom, even if the church itself is not historically Black.”
”White hoods have given way to black-and-gold militarism. Such hatred grieves the very heart of God, and we cannot turn a blind eye to such displays of white supremacy,” the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the Rev. Randall Marshall Hollerith, dean of the National Cathedral, said in a statement supporting the vandalized churches and condemning the Proud Boys by name. “We believe that Black Lives Matter because Black lives matter to God. The Proud Boys and their hatred are not welcome here.”
Washington, D.C., police basically stood back and stood by while the Proud Boys and their buddies terrorized the District. As one person tweeted, “I’ve been at BLM marches all summer and fall where people are attacked and arrested by cops just for standing in the street. Tonight in DC dozens of Proud Boys maced and attacked people and cops didn’t do shit.”
Meanwhile, across the country in Olympia, Washington, an armed Trump supporter shot a counterprotester at a pro-Trump rally, the second week in a row that happened at such an event.
There’s a core of Trump supporters who are violent, dangerous criminals in the service of their Trump support, and authorities need to shut that down before a whole lot more people get killed. Unfortunately—but unsurprisingly—police have showed how little interest they have in putting a stop to it.