It’s been nine months since police brutalized protesters demonstrating against the war in Gaza outside the Washington headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Now, as tens of thousands of protesters are set to march next week on the party’s national convention in Chicago, protesters attacked during the D.C. crackdown are suing the police.
Nine plaintiffs are named in the suit against Metropolitan Police and U.S. Capitol Police, brought by the nonprofit civil rights legal group Civil Rights Corps. (Neither the D.C. police nor the Capitol Police immediately responded to requests for comment.)
At the November 15 protest last year, hundreds of protesters, including a coalition of multiracial and interfaith groups, held a candlelight vigil with one candle representing every person killed in Gaza at the time. Demonstrators projected messages calling for peace on the building housing the DNC headquarters.
The suit alleges that police responded by strangling protesters with their own keffiyehs, physically and sexually assaulting protesters, including throwing at least one person down a set of stairs, and using carcinogenic chemical weapons.
Israeli forces have trained Metropolitan Police Department cops and Capitol Police, and the tactics police used against protesters in D.C. were not unlike the violence waged by Israeli forces against Palestinian-led protest movements, said Sumayya Saleh, senior attorney at the Civil Rights Corps.
“We see the parallels between the use of brute force to repress free speech and particularly to repress the expressions of solidarity with Palestine,” Saleh said. “And we know historically that the tactics of brutality that police in the United States, including MPD and Capitol Police, use are emblematic of the types of force that the Israeli military and police use.”
The timing of the suit ahead of next week’s convention in Chicago is significant not just for its symbolism, said Sam Rise, a plaintiff who alleged they were pushed down the stairs during the protests. Almost a year after the fact, the call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza has only grown stronger, they said, with hopes that Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would listen.
“We have a red line, whether the Democratic Party has a red line or not,” Rise said. “Right now there are tens of thousands of uncommitted voters that Kamala Harris needs to win this election. And the issue for us on the table is a ceasefire and an arms embargo, and we’re not alone. The acceleration of this demand is only going to continue.”
Beyond the pressure on Harris to heed demands of uncommitted voters, the suit also brings attention to the fact that responding to protests with violence is undemocratic and illegal, said Kiah Duggins, an attorney at Civil Rights Corps.
“Brutally trampling protests is unacceptable,” Duggins said. “Siccing police on people who are expressing their First Amendment rights and have specific policy asks of their elected officials is unacceptable. It’s both violent and morally unacceptable, but it’s also undemocratic and legally unacceptable.”
The suit calls for the court to recognize that police violated protesters’ civil rights in the course of the response to protests at the DNC headquarters, asking for monetary relief for damages suffered as a result of the crackdown. The only MPD officer named in the suit is Cmdr. Jason Bagshaw, identified in the filings as one of the leaders orchestrating MPD’s response to the protest. Last July, Bagshow shot and killed a Black man while he was off-duty. He was never charged for the killing and remains on the force.
The November protests were not the first time MPD was accused of violating First Amendment rights. The Council of the District of Columbia issued a report in 2022 that highlighted the discrepancy in MPD and USCP’s nonviolent responses to other kinds of protests, including peacefully escorting white supremacist protesters, while they attacked protesters demonstrating against police brutality in 2020.
“The onus is on the state to protect people’s First Amendment rights, not on the protesters,” Duggins said. “We’ve seen that the state is capable of protecting protesters’ First Amendment rights.”
The police response to the November protests at the DNC headquarters were part of a pattern of militarization of protests in support of Palestinian rights that has carried through the police crackdowns on college and university encampments for Gaza this spring, Saleh said. “They’re literally singing and chanting and projecting messages uplifting the sanctity of life. They came with this beautiful message of peace, and immediately upon arriving at the protest, Capitol Police and MPD responded with brute force.”
Democratic officials and police put out inaccurate information about the protests that was used to distort the narrative of the evening’s events, CRC attorneys said. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., tweeted that he was evacuated after “pro-terrorist, anti-Israel protesters grew violent.” Sherman thanked Capitol Police for getting him out safely. Semafor reporter David Weigel fact-checked the narrative and noted that protesters blocked entrances but did not try to storm the DNC offices.
“It’s part of a long-standing practice of people in authority distorting the facts to serve their interests or their agendas,” Saleh said. “They said these things in order to justify the level of absolutely unprovoked violence that they used on that night.”
The Democratic National Convention is expected to bring tens of thousands of people to the streets of Chicago pressing the party to make substantive policy changes to stop Israel’s destruction of Gaza, said Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
“We will defend our right to march on the DNC and against any institution complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Abuznaid said.
If Democrats continue to ignore protesters, it will be at their own peril, Rise, the plaintiff, said. “To dismiss us or erase us as myopic is going to be the biggest mistake that the Democratic National Committee could make in 2024.”
