Trans teen arrested for protesting abhorrent Capitol riots. Meanwhile, thousands of white supremacists walk free
NYPD officers flooded the area around Trump Tower, in stark contrast to the thin police presence outside the Capitol. (Twitter)
Nikki Stone, a 19-year-old transgender teenager, was arrested Wednesday (6 January) outside Trump Tower for protesting the Capitol riots.
Five people died after riots broke out at the US Capitol this week, perpetrated by supporters of Donald Trump, in scenes that shocked the world.
An enormous mob of extremists and white supremacists successfully breached the Capitol on Wednesday as Congress met to officially count the Electoral College votes of the 50 states and Washington DC – a formality that usually goes by without incident.
Members of Congress were evacuated and the certification process suspended while Washington DC police clashed with violent rioters, resulting in a shoot-out in at least one of the Capitol’s two chambers.
Stone, who goes by the name Stickers, was charged with disorderly conduct and released on a desk appearance ticket, authorities said. This means she will be summoned to criminal court and is likely to receive misdemeanour charges, them reports.
She had been protesting the attempted coup at the US Capitol at a demo organised by the activist group Abolition Park in Manhattan on Wednesday (6 January) evening, the New York Post reports. Protesters carried banners reading “Trump Is Guilty” and “Stop the GOP Coup”.
Stone was arrested alongside seven other protesters for “walking in the roadway” outside Trump Tower, authorities said, and was also charged in connection with four graffiti incidents in Manhattan.
— Abolition Park (@AbolitionPark) January 7, 2021
The LA Times reports that 82 people have been arrested connection with the Capitol riots, mostly for violating a 6pm curfew installed amid the unrest.
It’s estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 people were a part of the mob, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint venture of the University of Connecticut and Harvard that tracks protests.
Video of Nikki Stone being arrested during Black Lives Matter protests went viral.
A video of Nikki Stone being arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest in July went viral after New York City police officers, several in plain clothes, abruptly poured out of an unmarked minivan and dragged her inside.
Activists filmed the incident on their mobile phones, with footage quickly going viral and becoming a wholesale example of the increasingly violent scenes playing out in a country struggling to grapple with its racist histories.
In an incident likened to a “kidnapping” by some protesters, Stone was jockeyed by officers into a plain white vehicle. Stone was, according to those who knew them, homeless at the time.
The New York City Police Department said in a Twitter statement that Stone was singled out and taken into custody for “damaging police cameras during five separate criminal incidents in and around City Hall Park”.
Stone’s mum, Brooklyn-based artist Carly O’Neil, said then that her daughter was “physically accosted by the arresting officers, which included several punches to the face as she started to panic and exhibited that anxiety in the moment”.
“While they did use her pronoun, they insisted on calling her by her legal name, and not her chosen, female name,” O’Neil continued.
“While in the van none of the officers wore a mask. She experienced inhumane treatment as the officers yelled insults like, ‘Act like a normal f**king human being and not some animal.'”
At the time, New York mayor Bill De Blasio condemned the police for their mishandling of the situation, saying that it was “the wrong time and the wrong place to effectuate that arrest”.
NYC is taking after Portland – a trans femme protestor was pulled into an unmarked van at the Abolition Park protest – this was at 2nd Ave and 25th Street pic.twitter.com/1PDhSYuK9h— michelle lh࿊࿊q (@MichelleLhooq) July 28, 2020
