On December 12, 2020, a far-right, belligerent group of street thugs assembled in Washington, DC for the "Million MAGA March" to demonstrate their rage that their autocratic and delusional Dear Leader had lost the election to President Biden. Leading the parade of "Proud Boy" brown shirts was their leader, low-life Cubano gusano Henry "Enrique" Tarrio of Miami. During the course of the day, as his thugs roamed downtown Washington looking to start fights, they stopped at the Asbury United Methodist Church, an historically black congregation. There they ripped down a Black Lives Matter banner on church property and set it on fire. Weeks later, Tarrio was arrested for burning the banner, and on a weapons charge.
Yesterday, DC Superior Court Judge Harold Cushenberry, Jr. sentenced Tarrio to five months in DC jail for the crimes, ordering him to report to jail in two weeks (hope they put an ankle monitor on him). Prosecutors had only asked for three months imprisonment. The victim's impact statement read at the sentencing says much about the pain he and his thugs caused to the congregation:
"In a victim impact statement, Asbury’s senior pastor, the Rev. Ianther M. Mills, wrote of the 'emotional and psychological impact' of the banner-burning on the church’s 'aging congregation, many of whom, if not part of it themselves, are direct descendants of individuals who traveled north during the Great Migration' in the early and mid-20th century, when millions of African Americans fled oppression in the Jim Crow South.
'They migrated here in search of opportunity, but also to escape the stress, fear and anxiety of terror, including acts of social and racial injustice,' Mills wrote.
'Imagine, if you please, a marauding band of seemingly angry white men moving about the city, apparently looking for trouble,' she added. 'Now imagine the images conjured up in the minds of Asbury’s congregants as a result of these white men burning the BLM banner: visions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings. . . . '” (our emphasis)
Tarrio's "Proud Boys" were active during the January 6 violent insurrection at the Capitol, and although he was not physically present that day (he had been arrested two days earlier on the weapons charge in DC), investigators are looking at the group's leaders' and organizers' role in the January 6 insurrection. As the judge noted during Tarrio's trial, additional charges may be brought against Tarrio in connection with January 6. Let's hope so.
(photo: Proud Boy brown shirts burning church's banner. Books next? CNN )
