The Rev. Gini Gerbasi was helping hand out snacks and water to peaceful George Floyd protesters from the patio of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday night when she said she was “driven off” by police ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to take a photo in front of the church, The Hill reports.
In a Facebook post, Gerbasi said she and the church’s seminarian, were forcibly removed from the patio less than an hour before the president walked from the White House to Lafayette Square to take a picture holding a Bible in front of the church.
“We were literally DRIVEN OFF of the St. John's, Lafayette Square patio with tear gas and concussion grenades and police in full riot gear,” Gerbasi wrote. “We were pushed back 20 feet, and then eventually - with SO MANY concussion grenades - back to K street.”
People have been protesting in D.C. for days over the death of Floyd, a black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
She said she is OK, but is “shaken” by the incident.
“I am shaken, not so much by the taste of tear gas and the bit of a cough I still have, but by the fact that that show of force was for a PHOTO OPPORTUNITY,” she said.
She said she saw people getting hit with tear gas and shot at by rubber bullets as police cleared the area prior to Trump’s arrival.
“The patio of St. John's, Lafayette square had been HOLY GROUND today,” she said. “A place of respite and laughter and water and granola bars and fruit snacks. But that man turned it into a BATTLE GROUND first, and a cheap political stunt second.”
She concluded her post stating she is “now a force to be reckoned with.”
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