Washington, Jan 20 (IANS) A group of teenagers wearing caps with US President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”, taunted a Native American elder and other activists during a march at the Lincoln Memorial here.
Videos of the incident on Friday show a smiling young man wearing the red cap standing directly in front of the man, who was playing a drum and chanting. Other teenagers could be seen laughing, jumping around and making fun of the chants, CNN reported on Sunday.
“I did not feel safe in that circle,” said Kaya Taitano, a student at the University of the District of Columbia who participated in the Indigenous Peoples March and shot the videos.
She told CNN that the whole incident started when the teens and four young African-Americans, who had been preaching about the Bible nearby, started yelling and calling each other names.
To help defuse the situation, Nathan Phillips, the elder with the Omaha tribe, started playing his drum and chanting a healing prayer.
Phillips walked through the crowd, and Taitano said things were starting to calm down until he got to the grinning boy seen in the video.
“They just surrounded him and they were mocking him and mocking the chant. We really didn’t know what was going to happen there.”
The group was also heard saying things like “Build the wall” and “Trump 2020”.
The standoff continued until a chaperone came and led the teens away.
–IANS
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