Again I was have a quiet evening at home enjoying Indiana Jones and his father searching for the Holy Grail. Starting around 9 pm, WUSA9 started intervening when it was advertising time with information about the demonstrations in downtown Washington, DC near the White House. There was an 11pm to 6am curfew scheduled. The film was nowhere near over when media broke in at 10:30 and was filming action in the streets nonstop. We were told that POTUS was squirreled away the same safe space as was used for 9/11. Around midnight, the lights at the White House were turned off. no move was made toward the White House, but around midnight National Guard vehicles and hours troops began to line up.
A utility building in Lafayette Park across from the White House was set ablaze and allowed to burn. A fire was started in the lobby of the AFL-CIO building but went out after a while. Was this in retaliation for damage to the facade of a Ronald Reagan building in the same block? A car was set afire. After 11pm, the regular demonstrators began to leave the area, and people remaining were breaking more windows, especially in several banks, but also a deli, a clothing store, etc. Also setting fires in all the trash containers. A piece of broken plywood that had been ripped off a broken window was leaned up against a trash container until it was burning. Then a man in black with white writing that I could not ready picked it up and threw it back into a store through the broken door.
I switched to the “Peacock” station where they were covering looting in affluent Georgetown. Looting last night had been boarded up but boards were being ripped of and windows broken. I don’t know whether it was downtown or in Georgetown, but one guy ran in, came out carrying stuff, jumped into his car and drove away. There were cars driven into town from Virginia, and there were cars with license plates removed. Many were wearing a mask, many for Covid protection because social distance was not being observed, but a few who I saw actually taking pipes to windows for disguise. At one point during the day demonstrators were dialoguing with police and asking them for a show of support of their goals, and some police took a knee in support.
So far it is nowhere near as bad as the MLK riots, but it was significantly worse than the minor stuff that happened at POTUS’s inauguration day that I witnessed in person while downtown. I am going to print today’s statistics for Covid in all the states that is at Worldometer so I can compare Covid statistics for riot areas and states that opened in the past week or two with states that were quiet and maintained careful controls, during the next few weeks.
Plus the historic St. John's Church across from the the White House was set on fire, and seemed to burn an awfully long time, from what I saw on TV. (Fire was extinguished... supposedly mostly the basement was damaged)
Kevin Cork (Fox News) reported about two hours ago: "A group of young males arrived in the Lafayette Park area very late... all armed with hammers. They set fires *everywhere*, and smashed ALL the shop windows along a 4-block route. You got the feeling it was organized/coordinated."
Antifa!