What If You Threw a ‘Free the Insurrectionists’ Rally and No One Cared?

If you thought the so-called ‘Justice for J6’ at the Capitol last weekend was a bust, wait until you see how bad their nationwide follow-up went!

Last weekend’s “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, DC planned for 700 attendees demanding that the insurrectionists that stormed the U.S. Capitol just over nine months earlier be released. Instead, most of the 400 that came out were either those opposed to them or media outlets with the few that turned out for the rally itself most likely not even half that number. If the numbers were disappointing last week for Look Ahead America, the group that organized the event, they were absolutely abysmal this weekend as rallies they sponsored across the country turned out paltry numbers at many of them.

Unlike the DC rally, media largely stayed away from many of the rallies that were taking place Saturday, leaving the coverage of some of them to various Twitter accounts. Matt Braynard, the founder of Look Ahead America had so few attend his rally in his home state of South Carolina, that one Twitter user quipped about how much of an accomplishment it was for him to outnumber the media. Meanwhile, Braynard could not even cover his own event as YouTube denied him privileges to livestream.

One account noted Boston’s event as sparsely attended with “Only me and one other local ENG guy covering the demonstration. Not even any counter protester,” While Richmond, VA’s rally was represented with a 27-second video of a few attendees posing for the video camera. A rally in Phoenix, Arizona might have had the largest number to their rally with fifty attendees including some Proud Boys.

The rally held in Trenton, New Jersey was only able to muster just under twenty persons, but they were met by counter-demonstrators who were there early on. Despite how rally organizers have repeatedly stressed that they were defending non-violent protesters, the placards on display featured violent Proud Boy members as “political prisoners”, and the organizer of the rally read letters from those in prison for their roles in the insurrection, including that of Alan Byerly of Pennsylvania who was arrested for assaulting Capitol police officers with a taser. There were some acts of aggression, particularly from men participating in the event who tried to snatch phones away from the women recording them. Eventually police moved those countering the rally away from the event.

Only one other rally has been announced for a future date, one at the New York State House in Albany, NY on Oct. 2 at Noon.