White supremacist groups have called for demonstrations this Sunday in cities across the United States under the slogan “White lives matter,” an allusion to the slogan “Black lives matter” championed by anti-racist movements.
The rallies have been called through Facebook and the encrypted messaging application Telegram, and are scheduled to start around 1:00 p.m. (local time).
At the moment there is evidence of demonstrations in New York, Fort Worth (Texas) and Chicago, only some of the cities that will see demonstrations, as well as counter-demonstrations in Albuquerque (New Mexico).
“Join us at the Albuquerque Civic Plaza as we demonstrate against white supremacism in all its forms,” said one of the counter-protesting groups.
The Police of the designated cities are on high alert to the possibility of clashes between the two groups, as confirmed by a spokesman for the Raleig Police Department (North Carolina, scene of another rally) to the magazine ‘Newsweek’.
However, there is nothing that seems to indicate for now that the marches, if they do take place, will be as crowded as the lethal “Unite the Right” in which thousands of neo-Nazis, members of the Ku Klux Klan and far-right extremists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
These demonstrations coincide with the ongoing trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with the murder of black citizen George Floyd in Minneapolis last year during an arrest.
“It is no accident that they are coming together to flaunt their racist ideology during the trial of George Floyd’s killer, and at a time of increased violence and misogyny against Asian Americans and the inhumane detention of refugee children at the border.” , according to the description on Facebook of the page “Picket against white supremacy”, another group against the demonstrations.
