WASHINGTON – The Trump administration's use of smoke bombs and pepper balls to rout civil rights demonstrators from Lafayette Park near the White House has emboldened protesters and added a new chapter to the site's storied history as soapbox for social and political unrest. “Gas us.
Shoot us. Beat us. We're still here,” says a sign hung on the tall black fence erected to wall off the park after law enforcement officers clashed with demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.
Undeterred by the administration's show of force, Lia Poteet, a 28-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., who was injured during the demonstration, has already returned to the area to demonstrate again..