Historic Black church is suing Proud Boys for burning BLM sign during D.C. protests
A historic Black church has filed a lawsuit against members of the Proud Boys after an influential leader of the far-right group took credit for burning a Black Lives Matter sign belonging to the Washington, D.C., church.
“We are suing the Proud Boys and their members for the racist attack on Metropolitan AME church in Washington DC,” Kristen Clarke, head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, wrote in a tweet announcing the lawsuit.
The burning of Metropolitan AME’s sign was one of several attacks against churches supporting the Black Lives Matter movement during December protests in D.C., Clarke said.
The rallies held the weekend of Dec. 12, in support of President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, often devolved into violence and clashes between protesters, outlets reported.
“Our suit seeks to hold accountable those responsible for vandalizing and terrorizing a historic Black church because of its support for racial justice,” Clarke wrote. “This attack is a new chapter in a long and despicable history of mob violence targeting Black houses of worship.”
Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys, claimed responsibility just days after the Dec. 12 incident, WAMU reported.
“In the burning of the BLM sign, I was the one that lit it on fire,” Tarrio said on War Boys, a podcast tied to the group. “I was the person that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I am damn proud that I did.”
Tarrio was arrested Monday evening on charges of destruction of property, after arriving in Washington D.C. to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, the New York Times reported.
Established in 2016, the Proud Boys promote themselves as a “Western chauvinist” organization for men that is anti-political correctness and anti-white guilt, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are described as racist, Islamophic and misogynistic, and many of its members share the views of white nationalists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
They frequently engage in violent clashes with left-leaning protesters.
The SPLC has denounced them as a “hate group,” and the ADL calls them an “extreme, right-wing gang.”
Tarrio argues that what he did isn’t a hate crime and wasn’t motivated by racism, because Black Lives Matter “isn’t about race,” he told WAMU.
“The crime that was committed was, yeah, OK, it was destruction of property, fine,” Tarrio said. “But I wanna see if this hate crime thing is a thing … I want to see what a jury of my peers would think.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights is also pursuing a lawsuit against a North Carolina sheriff’s office for using pepper spray to disperse a crowd of “peaceful and non-partisan” demonstrators in the city of Graham, The Raleigh News & Observer reported.
Pepper spray was used on elderly marchers, children, and people with disabilities, according to the suit.
Police said the use of force was justified, as an officer was assaulted while dealing with an unpermitted gas generator that was posing a fire hazard, The News & Observer reported.
This story was originally published January 4, 2021 at 4:39 PM.