A trans-identifying city council official who prefers they/them pronouns was arrested during a protest at Trump Tower last week, and some of his leftist colleagues on the council are coming to his defense.
On Thursday, June Rose, chief of staff of the Providence City Council, joined a raucous group that stormed into Trump Tower in New York City to protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an apparent terrorist sympathizer accused of orchestrating violent, destructive demonstrations at Columbia University last year.
Wearing shirts emblazoned with anti-Israel slogans, a mob of about 150 members of Jewish Voice for Peace burst into a dining area of the Trump building and refused to leave. Nearly 100 of them, apparently including Rose, were arrested as a result.
“Those arrests are for trespassing, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest by virtue of us having to carry some of the people out of the escalator,” said NYPD Chief of Department John Chell.
“We gave warnings on our pager system, and once we did that warning three times, the NYPD with its professionalism, as you saw, went in and made the arrests. There were no injuries. There were no incidents. There was no damaged property.”