Even Shadow Senator Paul Strauss had a car in the parade. And a classic one, to boot.

When the Italian restaurant Maggiano’s hosted a dinner for a white heritage think tank last week, protesters demonstrated outside and even briefly entered the building, though they were unable to reach the diners.

Ultimately, the Friendship Heights establishment apologized for “inadvertently hosting this meeting, which resulted in hateful sentiment,” and pledged their profits from the evening to the D.C. office of the Anti-Defamation League.

“I really think that Friday was a win,” says Mike Isaacson, an organizer with Smash Racism DC. “Maggiano’s made a genuine apology and donated as a token of atonement.”

He takes the restaurant at its word when representatives say they didn’t know that the National Policy Institute was a white nationalist group. Former reality star turned neo Nazi Tila Tequila posted a photo of herself and two men doing a Nazi salute in Maggiano’s.

“It’s not surprising that a business wouldn’t be aware of who these guys are, but hopefully the more we expose them the more people will be plugged in,” says Isaacson. “[Maggiano’s] said they’ll endeavor not to help Nazis politically organize again. That’s the point of what the whole weekend was about, right? When you give groups spaces to facilitate privately, you’re providing them with political power.”

NPI president Richard Spencer admitted as much to DCist last year, saying the group’s conference “is about people meeting up, not just being an anonymous Twitter handle but building community.”

While the 2015 NPI gathering received far less attention than this year’s, Smash Racism DC—which formed in 2012 to counterprotest an Aryan Nations march on Capitol Hill—was there protesting.

After years of monitoring these groups, Isaacson says the growing mainstream focus on NPI and its ilk is “the worst kind of vindication you could have. The movement making these strong gains is really scary for everybody and it’s really unfortunate that these people don’t get taken seriously until after they’ve managed to take quite a bit of power.”

NPI claims President-elect Donald Trump as one of their own. “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” Spencer said at the conference, and the crowd responded with Nazi salutes.

Trump has since said he disavowed the movement, though he has installed a number of bigots in key positions in his administration.

Smash Racism DC is an antifascist (also known as “antifa”) group that, in addition to demonstrating at gatherings of white supremacists, is trying to educate people about the reality of organizations like NPI, though he acknowledges that “exposing every Nazi doesn’t mean as much when they’re growing in popularity.”

One strategy is to shame establishments from holding events for these groups. The Hamilton, for instance, was initially the scene for the NPI dinner, but cancelled on the group after a flurry of calls from activists.

“We should be helping businesses make good decisions about who to give political power,” Isaacson says. He recommends organizations like One People’s Project, Political Research Associates, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Rural Organizing Project as resources.

According to multiple reports, D.C. businesses have the legal right to deny service to white nationalists.

“A place of public accommodation may take appropriate action to prevent a hostile environment based on race, sex, religion, or other protected characteristic,” Stephanie Franklin, director of policy at the D.C. Office on Human Rights told WAMU. “Thus, while a place of public accommodation may not refuse service based on political affiliation, it may restrict behavior that could reasonably be regarded as hostile toward other patrons based on race, religion, sex or other protected characteristic.”

However, the site of the actual NPI conference—the Ronald Reagan Building—could not do the same, because it is a federal government building. That didn’t stop protesters from demonstrating outside.

Isaacson says that, since the election, he’s heard from people who have never participated in activism looking to get involved. “People are waking up to the reality that white nationalists have been organizing,” he says.

“While we are looking as best we can for more resources, what we ultimately need is more people to reach out and put whatever effort they can into personally seeing to it that where they are is an anti-fascist space,” says Isaacson. “Leave no room for fascism.”

Filed Under: antifa, antifacist, national policy institute, npi, richard spencer, smash racism dc,