BLM protestors, including the nephew of George Floyd, have invaded the Iowa State Capitol, clashing with state troopers when they tried to arrest one woman.
BLM supporters gathered outside the Iowa Capitol on Thursday morning as part of a “Kill the Racist Bills” protest, organised by the “Advocates for Social Justice” group. The bills in question include an anti-defunding the police bill, a bill that allows citizens to legally push through protestors blocking the road with vehicles, and another bill that would ban any diversity and inclusion training in schools, universities, and Iowa government agencies. On the Facebook page for the event, the legislation was described as “racist and dangerous.”
The event was livestreamed by Cortez Rice from Minneapolis, the nephew of George Floyd. “This is the new Jim Crow,” Rice said. “If we don’t put our foot on this sh*t’s neck, this will be happening everywhere,” he said. After graffiting the steps of the Iowa state capitol with chalk, the BLM protestors moved inside the building itself, where they attempted to perform a socially distanced “die-in” for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the length of time that George Floyd was held on the ground for.
During the “die-in,” leaders were informed that the graffiti had to be cleaned up, angering protestors. “Where was this energy on January 6th with the insurrectionists,” one woman shouted. At one point, Rice and another man commented that people should “pull up” to the houses of elected officials. “We do that in Minnesota,” one man remarked.
After being undisturbed by police, state troopers arrived, where one young woman pushed one of them. The woman was arrested, at which point the protestors became violent, attacking the troopers during their attempted arrest of the woman from all sides. Rice continued to film the event, cursing the troopers for arresting the woman.
Happening Now: BLM getting arrested at the Iowa State Capitol building!
pic.twitter.com/JJGEen814A
— CIA-Simulation Warlord
(@zerosum24) April 8, 2021
The protestors continued to follow the troopers out of the building, where Rice claimed that the young woman was only being arrested because she had been asking for the badge numbers of the troopers, despite a clear scuffle being caught on his livestream. “We have lot of responsibilities to the Capitol complex,” one state trooper later said, “and she got in the way and then shoved one of the officers.”
Earlier footage from Rice’s livestream shows the same woman, identifying herself as high-school student from Norwalk, just outside Des Moines. The student admitted that she had been attempting to get the superintendent of her school district fired for allegedly covering up “hate crimes and harassment,” and that she and her friends were planning on crashing the school board meeting this Monday. “We’ve been diplomatic about it for six months,” the woman said.
Despite the veiled threats to state legislators from the protestors, and violent attacks on state troopers caught on camera, at the time of writing there has been no mainstream media coverage of this protest. Media coverage has also been sparse on the most recent attack on the US Capitol by radical black supremacist Noah Green – a follower of the Nation of Islam who murdered one Capitol Police officer in a car and knife attack last week.