On Saturday, April 21, a rally for Neo-Nazis was being held in Newnan, Georgia. The rally was met with swift opposition from hundreds of peaceful protesters. In response to the rally, militarized police showed up and created a barrier between the protesters and the neo-nazis. Likely to avoid a similar situation that occurred last year in Charlottesville , Virginia.
The heavily armed police aimed their guns, and attention to the peaceful protesters for wearing masks. Many protesters wear masks to conceal their identity in fear of retribution from violent neo-nazis. The police quoted a rarely enforced law from the 1950s to force protesters to remove their masks. The law was to stop members of the Ku Klux Klan from rallying and becoming violent. However, when the peaceful protesters refused to take off their masks, the police intervened by aggressively arresting the protesters. Below is a video of the protest. Credit to Daniel Shular, @xhularx on twitter.
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frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>After an hour or so after the rally began, police ordered the neo-nazis to stop their rally and they complied with no hesitation. Latest reports say that ten peaceful protesters have been arrested. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured or killed, but this issue brings up a pressing issue within American politics; are the police overly aggressive to stop a peaceful protests? Should police be using semi-automatic weapons to stop peaceful protesters from expressing their first amendment right?
