There were no arrests or confrontations with heavily armed police at Monday’s gun-rights rally in Richmond.
This caused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to wonder aloud why that was … and blame racism.
The New York Democrat and avowed socialist said in an interview for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday that was posted on social media that the United States was founded on, among other things, “racism and the protection of capital over human beings.”
.@AOC contrasts today’s gun rights march in Richmond with protests against Eric Garner’s killing: “Why were there almost no police officers” despite protesters “flying confederate flags and [carrying] semiautamtic weapons”? pic.twitter.com/JRL9B76EQW
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2020
She claimed that the policing at Black Lives Matter and similar racial protests as the image that has stuck with her about “this gun rights protest that’s happening in Richmond.”
SEE ALSO: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Democratic Party ‘center or center-conservative’
“When we go out and march for the dignity and the recognition of the lives of people like Freddie Gray and Eric Garner the whole place is surrounded by police in riot gear without a gun in sight,” she claimed.
“And here are all of these people flying Confederate flags with semiautomatic weapons and there’s almost no police officers at that protest,” she continued.
There was at least one Confederate flag photographed at Monday’s rally of about 20,000 people in Richmond.
She then concluded that “who or what are our institutions protecting from who? And that image conveys it all, conveys it all.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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