In a “protest” gone wrong, former Charlottesville City Councilor, Wes Bellamy, was arrested by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) in Washington D.C.’s Hart Senate Office Building.
A July 15 USCP Tweet described the situation:
“This afternoon, nine people were arrested for demonstrating in a prohibited area on Capitol Grounds. At approximately 3:30pm the United States Capitol Police responded to the Atrium in the Hart Senate Office Building for reports of illegal demonstration activity. After officers arrived on the scene, they warned the demonstrators three times to stop. Those who refused were arrested for D.C. Code §22– 1307. Two males and seven females were transported to UCSP headquarters for processing.” – United States Capitol Police
U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was among those arrested.
The protest was in opposition to Republican State legislative efforts to secure elections following multiple and ongoing investigations into voting irregularities and alleged fraud in the November 2020 United States Presidential Election.
I wonder if he will be locked up in solitary confinement, denied bail, called an insurrectionist like the other protesters on Jan 6th….NAH…he’s black so they probably already let him go.
bill baily He certainly will not be treated the same considering his political affiliation. His race is not as important. Black republicans would be treated the same as any other republican. It is the left that puts everything through a racial lens. Your statement assumes his race will provide a less harsh treatment when in fact it is his political views.
Sorry Dan but you don’t know this guy as well as we all do in Charlottesville and his race has EVERYTHING to do with this. He is a race hustler and will scream “Racism” till they let him out with a pat on the head and let him go on his merry way.
POS Wes Bellamy put this asshole in jail he is the problem
Elected in Cville…employed by government schools in Albie. Now in a make-pretend position at a play-college. Funny how the head of a Congressional subgroup can oversee a protest where people go onto grounds illegally and occupy them, refuse to leave…are called mere “protesters.” Melanin can be a wonderful thing!
Bellamy’s action was part of an honorable and distinguished American tradition of non-violent but illegal protest, something that was crucial to the civil rights revolution.
Honorable and distinguished? Being “non-violent” doesn’t make a protest honorable or distinguished. If that were true, we’d have to use the same words for the “unite the right” torch-lit protest. After all, it was non-violent–at least until antifa showed up. Will you go there? The context matters, and there is nothing either honorable or distinguished about Bellamy’s intent, which is to build his career by perpetuating race-based conflict.
There is nothing honorable or distinguished about cynicism unless no other view is plausible. In this case, as best I can tell, Bellamy was arrested for protesting voter suppression laws — laws you guys claim are necessary despite the fact that one conservative think tank found that the rate of voter fraud over the past 20 years was only 0.0006%.
That was an honorable protest. But there is nothing honorable, although sadly it’s a Far Right tradition, about pretending you can’t tell one kind of protest from another because they are alike in specious ways. Parading around with torches shouting anti-black and anti-Semitic slogans isn’t technically violent, but it’s bigoted and it’s threatening. Bellamy’s own protest, of course, was neither.