Capital poised for busy weekend, with thousands of Insane Clown Posse fans protesting FBI treatment while president’s supporters plan ‘mother of all rallies’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Washington DC’s national mall will be filled with clowns and Donald Trump supporters on Saturday, when fans of the band Insane Clown Posse gather to protest the FBI, and fans of the president gather to celebrate the commander-in-chief.

Thousands of Juggalos – the name given to fans of Insane Clown Posse – are expected to descend on the capital as they attempt to change the FBI’s designation of Juggalos as a “gang”, which they say has led to discrimination from police and employers.

The Juggalos have been planning their “Juggalo march” for more than a year, but its impact could be diminished after Trump supporters planned their own event on the same day, dubbed “the mother of all rallies”.

Organizers of both events claim thousands of people will attend on what is shaping up to be a busy day in DC.

The Juggalos will gather at the Lincoln Memorial at 1pm, while the Trump supporters will be stationed a mile to the east. A Race to Beat Cancer 5km run is also due to take place on Saturday, and a couple – unaffiliated with either the Juggalos or the Trump crowd – will be getting married in the midst of it all.

Insane Clown Posse fans from around the country are traveling to the capital, with many planning to wear the distinctive face paint worn by the band’s two members, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope.

The protest stems from the FBI’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, which referred to Juggalos – the name comes from the Insane Clown Posse song The Juggla – as a “loosely-organized hybrid gang”.

“Many Juggalos subsets exhibit gang-like behavior and engage in criminal activity and violence. Law enforcement officials in at least 21 states have identified criminal Juggalo sub-sets, according to [National Gang Intelligence Center] reporting,” the assessment said.

Are these clowns really gang members? Juggalos protest FBI's label Read more

Insane Clown Posse say that designation has had negative consequences for Juggalos and other fans of the band. At the march, some Juggalos will share personal testimony of how they have been profiled by police or otherwise suffered because of their allegiance.

“It’s about civil rights and what has been going on for the last seven years,” Jason Webber, director of public relations at Insane Clown Posse’s record label, Psychopathic Records, told the Guardian in July.

Webber said various people who commit crimes could often be said to be fans of certain musicians.

“It’s not really fair that Juggalos are considered a loosely organized hybrid gang and Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters are just considered harmless kids,” he said.

A number of Juggalos, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan and Insane Clown Posse themselves, have attempted to overturn that description in the courts, but have twice had cases thrown out. An appeal is currently pending.

The pro-Trump “mother of all rallies” was planned months after the Juggalo March, and the Juggalos have been keen to distance themselves from the pro-Trump crowd.

“It’s apolitical,” said Jason Webber, director of public relations at Psychopathic Records, Insane Clown Posse’s label and a march organizer. “We’re not doing this to espouse any sort of political event.”

The people behind the mother of all rallies, meanwhile, are attempting to distance themselves from the white-supremacist Unite the Right demonstration that sparked violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August.

That event – nominally organized to prevent the removal of a Robert E Lee statue – led to the death of Heather Heyer, who was hit by a car allegedly driven by a white nationalist, James Fields.

Organizers of Saturday’s rally, which will be held near the Washington Monument, insist that it is simply an event to support the president, rather than a far-right gathering.

Tommy Gunn, who is involved in planning the rally, said people with Confederate flags or Nazi or KKK memorabilia would not be allowed into the fenced-off space.

“We only need one flag that unifies us all, and that’s the red, white and blue,” he said.

Gunn, who declined to give his real last name but asked to be referred to as an “online personality”, said attendees would be people who “support American values, the constitution, the America first agenda for Americans”.

He said: “We actually picked the date because it’s the weekend following the 9/11 memorial, and the weekend following the 9/11 attacks we were more unified than we’ve ever been.

“It’s really just a day of celebrating our traditional culture, and not early 1900s culture, just American culture and agenda – the idea behind it.”

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