from Idavox
John Francis McCarthy IV
It will never surprise us how much conservatives short circuit the minute they see Black people.
Over the weekend, the anti-Trump “Hands Off” rallies that have been held across the country over the past few months continued (the next big protest date is planned for May 1). Most were peaceful with few arrests, primarily from conflicts with neo-fascists like the Proud Boys who counter the protests. Participants of a small rally just outside Philadelphia, which happened a few days before the big weekend rallies, were also confronted by the racist son of a New Jersey judge who is also Trump volunteer with open criminal cases in Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas.
On April 15, Chester County Indivisible had posted that they were going on an overpass in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania with banners in support of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month, and who the Trump Administration is not returning to his home in Maryland. At least ten persons stood on the overpass spanning Rt. 206. Kadida Kenner of the New Pennsylvania Project, an organization that advocates for voting rights and works to expand the voter rolls in Pennsylvania, joined the protest after it was going on for a few hours. “I saw a pop-up pop up on my timeline, and I said, I’m going to go because I want to be out there with this group. I want to support this group that is doing this,” she said.
There were no incidents until John McCarthy approached just minutes after Kenner arrived. He claimed he was a reporter for “First Right Media,” and immediately the group felt he was a bit off. “When he came, he just looked completely out of place,” Kenner recalled. “I mean, he was dressed in a suit, he has his own personal phone out and he’s cosplaying as and saying out loud that he’s an independent journalist and made-up a publication of some kind.”
Kenner advised the group to ignore McCarthy and not engage with him, which prompted him to become more irate, repeatedly suggesting that not wanting to speak to him is why they lost the last election. “He wasn’t getting the attention that he was looking for. He wasn’t getting the soundbites he was looking for,” she said, noting that this was when McCarthy focused his attention on her, the only Black woman in the group. “He came towards me and said, ‘I want to get your sign. I want to get a picture of your sign.’ And as he came towards me to do that, I kept turning away from him because I didn’t want to be on his camera. I didn’t want my sign to be on his camera. And that is what was the final draw for him, the final straw for him, was me completely ignoring him.”
That last straw prompted him to fling even more invectives as he left the overpass, and as he walked away, he directed his last missive to Kenner; “Go back to Africa!”
As McCarthy was a bit away from Kenner and started a quicker walk to his car it wasn’t until someone replayed the video of the racist comment that Kenner first heard it. “I didn’t hear him say that to me and I’m glad I didn’t,” she said. “And I believe the ancestors protected me. (I) believe the ancestors protected me from hearing that!”
Kenner was not surprised by that response from McCarthy, as there seems to be a heightened hostility toward Blacks from the right, particularly when they are advocating for human rights. “Whenever black folks are out and about trying to defend democracy trying to protect the rights of everybody, we solicit such racist responses,” she said. “What’s interesting to me is I wasn’t treating him any differently than anybody else was but he left, he only pointed to me on his way out. He only pointed to me, only me, to go back to Africa. I was the only black person there. There a Latina woman there as well, but I was the only one that he had to have a comment for.”
John Francis McCarthy VI is the estranged son of a municipal judge in Princeton, NJ. Online records note that he trademarked “First Right Media” in September and the only other instance that could be found of that name being used is associated with McCarthy’s Twitter handle on an account where he mostly retweets other tweets. During the presidential campaign, he was interviewed by reporters while he was outside an appearance of then Vice-President candidate Tim Walz, where he expressed his support for Donald Trump. Also, his criminal record dating back five years shows that he has violence associated with his political leanings.
He was arrested in January 2022 in Tallahassee, Florida on a battery charge stemming from when he allegedly accosted television reporter Madison Glaser in an effort to get on live television to satisfy a “bounty” put out by Infowars’ Alex Jones, according to the police report, where he produced a video calling for his followers to, “Get on get on national live, or international live TV, legally and lawfully, to a COVID wake-up slogan of your choice,” while promoting his website. McCarthy followed Glaser into a police headquarters lobby but eventually was arrested the following days later after Glaser filed a police report. The case is ongoing with an active warrant for McCarthy who acknowledged the warrant in emails to local news outlets last month that is a misdemeanor battery charge. He also admitted to having a Texas warrant for unlawful restraint, which he claims was the result of a “double parking” dispute outside a laundromat. Records show that the incident occurred on February, 17 2022 in Texas Bastrop, TX with charges filed on May 20, 2022.
The emails were in relation to one of McCarthy’s more recent arrests two months ago in which he was charged with impersonating a public servant and harassment for identifying himself as law enforcement multiple times to people in Quarryville, PA. According to news reports, he approached two officers on patrol, identified himself as a “volunteer with the United States Attorney’s Office” and was investigating a drug case in the area and asked to assist him, saying that he worked with Lancaster, Pennsylvania police as well. He only had a Texas driver’s license and Uber driver business card as identification, and did not have the necessary security clearance. Lancaster city police said they never worked with McCarthy. McCarthy became agitated and drove away, according to police.
A few days later, a local Turkey Hill convenience store employee told police McCarthy two weeks earlier he told her he was an “undercover drug buster,” and inquired about certain employees, calling the store multiple times on Feb. 16. He was told they were there not at the time and became angry when he was told they were off, saying he would be investigating all of them and he hoped the woman’s unborn baby would be stillborn. In the emails he sent to news outlets, McCarthy denied the charges and said he is a concerned Uber driver who has “legally and lawfully” volunteered information to law enforcement.
In March, McCarthy was arrested when it was learned that he had been at Morr Range in Lampeter, PA firing a weapon despite having the outstanding warrants as well as a restraining order against him in New Jersey. He was released on $50,000 bail but the charge was dropped. Records show that he is supposed to have a court appearance on Tuesday in Lancaster County Court on harassment charges stemming from the Quarryville arrest.
While the Hands Off rallies have been successful, there has been an equally successful effort by Black people to sit them out with the contention that it is ultimately not a fight Black and Brown people need to wage, at least not this way. Kenner will participate in the rallies as she is the CEO of an organization that fights for voting rights but her presence should not be taken by granted. “We’ve been saying for many, many years now what’s going to happen if we don’t get ourselves together, do the right things,” she said. “And we should be out here defending all of our rights and our freedoms and not just when it’s convenient or when it’s starting to affect certain people.”
