from Mainstream Media
An anticapitalist group taking part in what it called the “Summer of Rage” has claimed responsibility for unrest that erupted near the University of Pennsylvania campus Tuesday night, leaving windows smashed and prompting campus police to warn students and staff to remain indoors.
Roughly 60 people in black clothes and donning black masks gathered at Clark Park, near the intersection of 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue, and began marching just before 9:30 p.m., campus police said. They quickly cut a swath of damage along 40th Street — building barricades, vandalizing several buildings and a marked Penn police car — before dispersing about 40 minutes later.
In their wake, several businesses were left damaged along 40th Street, including a PNC bank, a coffee shop, a pizza parlor, a bar, the Free Library branch at 40th and Walnut Streets, and a university residence hall that was spray-painted with the phrase “Nerds Call 911.”
A post that appeared Wednesday morning on Philly Anti-Capitalist, a clearinghouse for local antiauthoritarian and anarchist groups, and submitted by a person claiming to be an organizer of the demonstration, declared the event a success.
“Over 45 people marched through the streets chanting and smashing windows of banks, business and developments,” the post read. “There was a surprising amount of destruction.”
It went on to describe demonstrators using barricades to elude police intervention and covering identifying tattoos and facial features to avoid detection by authorities.
Philadelphia police declined to comment on whether their investigation of the vandalism was focused on the “Summer of Rage” group, saying only that the probe continues. Penn police didn’t respond to requests for details.
But as business owners and university staff boarded up windows, cleared broken glass from sidewalks, and power-washed antipolice and anarchist graffiti off building walls Wednesday morning, many were still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Most of the businesses along the corridor were closed when the destruction began.