D.C.’s Metrorail system has reportedly killed a proposal to provide dedicated trains for white nationalists planning to march through Washington D.C.
Yesterday, Metro’s board chairman and District of Columbia Councilmember Jack Evans (D) said the transit system was considering providing dedicated rail cars for white nationalists attending the planned “Unite the Right” rally, in an effort to keep the peace between them and expected counter-protesters. However, after Metro’s largest union argued that hate groups should not receive special service, Evans and transit system leaders have nixed the idea.
Evans told NBC 4 in Washington, D.C. that “Metro will not be having a separate train, or a separate car, or anything separate for anybody at this event that’s gonna happen next Sunday.”
During last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists and some Nazis attacked counter-protesters. One drove a car into a crowd, killing counter-protester Heather Heyer.
One of Metro’s scenarios for keeping the peace would have allowed white supremacist rally participants to board three dedicated rail cars at the East Falls Church Metro stop in Virginia and take it to Foggy Bottom in downtown D.C., then receive a special police escort to the rally on the National Mall.
Metro’s ATU Local 689 union leaked the plans to the press, noting that because 80 percent of its membership are people of color, “the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated,” the union would not take part in the unprecedented “special accommodation” plan.