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BLM and Shutdown DC plan election day protest at White House: report

Report claims DC protesters have been organizing for months to bring thousands to “shut down” the White House.

By World Israel News Staff

Black Lives Matter and other groups are planning a massive election protest they hope will bring thousands to the White House in a bid to shut down federal buildings, Fox News reported Tuesday.

The report said BLM and a group called Shutdown DC have been holding training sessions for demonstrators to protest on election day with a large-scale event across the street from the White House with thousands of people.

The Shutdown DC website on Tuesday carried the message “After You Vote, Hit the Streets,” claiming that “Donald Trump and his enablers have waged an attack on the democratic process. They’re mobilizing an army of thugs to intimidate voters at the polls.”

The group wants thousands of people to show up at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, making claims that some unnamed group or body might attempt to stage “a potential coup and a potential insurrection” against the United States.

“Votes will still be coming in, so this will (probably) not be the time we need to create disruption to stop a coup – yet. But we’ll be in a good place to respond to whatever might happen,” the message on the Shutdown DC website said.

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The protesters are planning a party atmosphere with “GoGo bands, salsa dancers, artists and cultural workers,” and they intend to stop the protest at midnight Washington time so that “we can be energized and ready to hit the streets again on the [Nov.] 4th.”

A recording alleged to be of a protest training session hosted over Zoom by the “Sunrise Movement” featured a “protest consultant” named Lisa Fithian, who shows a map listing police stations, key government buildings, media outlets and buildings that she claims are “occupied by ‘Trump boosters’ in Washington,” Fox News reported.

“We’re facing an administration and a potential coup and a potential insurrection,” Fithian said in the video. “Is there going to be a war? Are people gonna get killed? Like is that on anybody else’s mind? I’m guessing it is. We’re going to see potential fighting all over the country or in some hotspots, and we’ve already seen that, so how do we work together across the country to help support each other no matter where we are and to maximize our impact by doing similar things on similar days at similar times?”

In the video, Fithian calls on any demonstrator willing to do so to break windows on government buildings and get inside, saying “we have to be willing to put our bodies on the line and take on some discomfort and sacrifice risk in order to change things.”

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Fox reported the protest goal is “to continue the civil unrest from Election Day until at least later this week — and potentially until the presidential inauguration in January.”

However, Fox admitted it could not verify “the legitimacy of the recordings and documents” that it had on the protests, and neither the Washington police nor the FBI would confirm the claims.

The FBI headquarters told Fox it would be working to provide national security for the election and was “coordinating an FBI response to any election-related incident.”