RSS Feed
September 25th, 2020 
Awake Goy 
Kentucky Democrat Rep. Attica Scott was arrested while protesting in Louisville on Thursday night and charged with first-degree rioting after the windows of a library were smashed and a flare was thrown into the building.
Rep. Scott, who proposed the ‘Breonna’s law’ legislation in Kentucky, was arrested and charged with the class D felony alongside her daughter Ashanti and dozens of other BLM protesters in the parking lot of the First Unitarian Church, where police and rioters engaged in a two-hour standoff after a 9pm curfew elapsed.
Scott and her daughter are both facing charges of first-degree rioting as well as failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, after a group of protesters smashed the windows of a nearby library and a flare was thrown into the building, police said.
DailyMail report: Around 1,000 Black Lives Matter activists had taken to the streets of Louisville during the day Thursday to protest after one of the officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor while mistakenly raiding her home on a no-knock warrant was indicted over the shooting, though not for firing the shots that killed her.
The news reignited demonstrations across the country, many of which have been ongoing since the killing of George Floyd in May, including in LA where one protester was run down by a truck in an unprovoked attack.
In St. Louis, protesters blocked westbound lanes of Interstate 64, and in New York City, a large group of demonstrators marched into Manhattan from Brooklyn over the Williamsburg Bridge.
As night fell in Louisville, hundreds of activists stayed on the streets of past the 9pm curfew, with around 200 occupying the grounds of the First Unitarian Church after the clergy agreed to grant them sanctuary from arrest.
The standoff eventually ended after police made arrests in relation to the attack on the library, then negotiated with protest leaders to allow the rest of the demonstrators to leave peacefully.
Broken glass and flare inside library on third pic.twitter.com/J8EeDvKBLQ
— Sarah Ladd (@ladd_sarah) September 25, 2020
In Louisville, BLM protesters smashed the windows of a downtown public library and threw a flare inside as authorities extended a citywide curfew into the weekend and the National Guard prepared to deploy.
Late on Thursday, what appeared to be armed militiamen were spotted guarding a gas station in downtown Louisville.
Shortly before 11pm on Thursday, about 200 people remained in the area outside the First Unitarian Church in Louisville.
The stone Gothic-style church was built in the late 19th century and is known for its progressive ideology. A large Black Lives Matter banner hangs outside it.
A church leader at the scene explained that churches were exempt from the emergency curfew order, and said that the demonstrators had been invited onto the church grounds to avoid arrest.
Video from the scene shows some of the demonstrators at the church demanding that white protesters leave the grounds of the ‘sanctuary’. ‘All you white motherf***ers leave!’ one man was seen shouting.
Soon after 11pm, the protesters at the church began to disperse after police told them that they could go home without being arrested.
Rep. Scott was among a group arrested near the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library and First Unitarian Church at the intersection of South Fourth and York streets, officials said.
She is the author of ‘Breonna’s law, the proposed Kentucky legislation would ban the use of ‘no-knock’ warrants statewide.
Initially, reports claimed Louisville police executed a ‘no-knock’ warrant to enter Taylor’s home in the early morning hours of March 13.
Although this particular type of search warrant was requested and approved to search the home, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Wednesday said an independent witness verified that officers knocked and announced their presence during the raid.
Several dozen demonstrators left the First Unitarian Church around 11pm Thursday after a negotiated end to the tense confrontation there. Police who had gathered there with riot gear also pulled back.
Several arrests had been made earlier that evening at an intersection outside the church. But there appeared to be no police interference as the protest disbanded.
Demonstrator Nicole Aghaaliandastjerdi said she knew several people taken into custody and believes they were arrested unfairly.
‘I am not sad, I am angry,’ she said, vowing to return downtown Friday to help her friend.
At the Louisville church, people in the crowd chanted ‘Black Lives Matter’ as tensions continued for a second night in the city.
Video released by Louisville Metro Police Department shows protesters chanting and taunting officers in riot gear.
Police appeared to be keeping their distance from the protesters, who did not appear to be willing to disperse.
At around 11pm Eastern time, police began pulling back after apparently reaching an agreement with the protesters, who pledged to leave church grounds and continue marching on the pedestrian sidewalk.
The police asked the protesters to pledge not to vandalize property.
Before the march began, protester Shameka Parrish-Wright told the crowd to stay together and take care of each other if they were met with force.
‘We want to show the country and the world what we’re about,’ Parrish-Wright said.
Baxter Dmitry
Email: [email protected]
Follow: @baxter_dmitry
Latest posts by Baxter Dmitry (see all)
Posted in 
Tags: 
