Five antifa radicals were arrested in Kansas City on May Day after they clashed with police in an incident the entire local media except for one blogger seems to have missed.
May Day Aftermath: Kansas City Communist/Anarchist/ANTIFA International Worker's Day Protesters Clash With Police And Claim Brutality During Arrests As They Crowdfund To Help Pay Legal Bills: https://t.co/k3kPYOZDZx pic.twitter.com/EsUp6h91Nd
— Tony's Kansas City (@TonysKansasCity) May 2, 2018
The Red Guards Kansas City wrote about their May Day activities in posts on their blog and Facebook page.
The Red Guards is a Maoist group that has chapters throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, where members on May Day burned an effigy of President Trump and called for “revolutionary violence” against “the capitalist state.” The group identifies as “antifascist” and aims to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
Donning masks, the Red Guards of Kansas City marched in the middle of the street without a permit, burned an American flag, waved communist flags, and carried a large banner honoring five murderous 20th-century communists.
Here is the full report on that cell:https://t.co/xgyaya5CZt
— Far Left Watch (@FarLeftWatch) May 9, 2018
A recent post on the Red Guards Kansas City blog described the clash that led to five arrests:
As soon as the police informed us that we would need to move to the sidewalk, comrades in the center began to instruct other marchers to tighten the formation and carry on. Comrades more prepared to be met with police aggression moved themselves to the edges of the procession, but even the less experienced and confident marchers did not make an effort to remove themselves or to suggest compliance. Every one of our marchers stood firm and carried on chanting and marching and waving red banners high. For some comrades in the mass orgs, this was their first action of this nature and their consistent courage and enthusiasm was even more impressive in this light.
In very short order, more than five cop cars were following us, with more on the way. They did not wait long after we had refused their warnings to take action. Although they profess to be protecting public safety and enforcing the law, their first actions were to block the entire street and snatch up a comrade who was exercising his right to open carry.
No permit is necessary to carry a concealed handgun in Missouri, but the law does prohibit exhibiting “any weapon readily capable of lethal use” in an “angry or threatening manner in the presence of one or more persons.” Apparently, the antifa “armed comrade” was deemed to be holding his weapon in a threatening manner. Understandable, since the group was defiantly disobeying the police officers’ lawful orders.
Instead of backing down and scattering when the armed comrade was removed from the fray, we tightened our ranks and rallied around our arrested comrade until he encouraged us to continue our march.
Once again, undeterred by the initial arrest, our comrades took the streets with a renewed energy. They held the flags high and their chants were louder and more defiant. In between calls for revolution and affirmations of the power of the masses, comrades were able to quickly add chants expressing their anger at the pigs at this injustice. More comrades than ever were confident enough to lead new chants and carry on well-established ones.
The pigs’ fear and confusion at our display of resistance and indifference to their orders was evident in their escalating use of force against our gathering. They were desperate to instill in us the fear and compliance they are used to seeing from the people they brutalize daily, and they were disappointed.
This next part is written with a certain degree of bitter sarcasm:
These brave protectors of the people and traffic brought in even more cars to stop the flow of traffic, effectively shutting down an entire block of Troost, and began grabbing comrades and throwing them to the ground, tackling them, and striking and shoving the comrades who rushed to the defense of the ones being brutalized in the streets. They pointed rifles into our ranks and, on one occasion, into the face of a marcher who had already been thrown down and handcuffed. They threatened us with pepper spray and waved guns recklessly around, courageously protecting those standing by from the danger of our one-lane march.
But the folks in the “community” were rooting for the communists and against “the pigs” who “terrorize their neighborhood,” according to the earnest blog post.
The community members who had been watching did not appear to feel any safer due to this display. One man approached the fray to try to inform our detained comrades of their rights while others filmed the police actions. When we continued our march and directed our chants against the police, we were stopped on a corner by someone excited to see people resisting the police who routinely flex their muscles and terrorize the neighborhood. Some threw up fists and honked in support, and one woman cheered on our chants against the violent and cowardly pigs, slowing her car to shout along.
According to their own account, the radicals proceeded to physically attack the arresting officers.
The pigs blows did not go unanswered however. Communists have every right to defend their comrades when they are being attacked by foot soliders (sic) of the oppressive state apparatus, and during the clashes anonymous rebels were able to land hits on the pigs, before retreating back into the group.
Five of the “comrades” were arrested during the fracas, a fact that didn’t seem of interest to the local media.
Far Left Watch found this to be somewhat curious:
So armed, masked, far-left extremists marched through the streets while praising a political ideology whose adherents have killed tens of millions of people. When confronted by the police, members of this group attacked officers and were taken into custody. In spite of ALL OF THAT, we could not find any media coverage of these arrests. Why do you think that is?
You know that if a group of white supremacists was walking down the street carrying Nazi flags — or even Confederate flags — the Kansas City media would have been in a tizzy.
After the arrests, the antifa activists fundraised for bail money to get the comrades out of jail.
“The cops stacked the charges on our comrades, so we have legal battles coming up. Please keep the donations coming in so we can fight this political repression in court,” the Red Guards posted on Facebook.
The group added: “We have every damn right to rebel! This type of unjust repression and police brutality is only more evidence that we live in an illegitimate and decaying system that is coming apart at the seams. When the state comes down on us like this it only emboldens us, consolidates our ranks, and makes us fight harder.”
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