Berkeley Trump foes, supporters clash as Tax Day rallies are held nationwide

BERKELEY - More than a dozen people were arrested Saturday after violence broke out Saturday between groups of supporters and detractors of President Donald Trump holding rallies in downtown Berkeley, police said.

Demonstrators have left Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park and are blocking several streets in the city’s center, Berkeley police said.

According to organizers, the clashes were independent of nationwide rallies protesting Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns.

About 200 people were at the park when some started pushing each other. Dozens of police officers in riot gear were standing nearby and quickly arrested one man. Others were arrested as several fistfights broke out.

Officials say officers have confiscated knives, flagpoles, helmets and sticks with signs on them among other things that were being used as weapons. Thirteen people had been arrested by midafternoon.

Photographs of the scene published online show at least two men with bloodied faces.

Elsewhere, thousands of chanting, sign-carrying protesters took to the streets demanding Trump release his tax returns so Americans can scrutinize his business ties and potential conflicts of interest.

Trump was the first major-party nominee in more than 40 years not to release his tax returns, saying it was because he was under audit. He later said that voters don’t care.

But 71-year-old Ilene Singh said he’s wrong. She rode a bus from New Jersey to New York City with her friend Geraldine Markowitz, 83, to take part in protests. “We’re here to say we care,” said Singh.

Pushing her walker, Karin Arlin, 85, a Holocaust survivor who came to the U.S. from Germany when she was 9, said she’s also worried about the direction of the country.

“You don’t know which way the country goes,” said Arlin next to her 89-year-old husband who fled Czechoslovakia during World War II. “I hope Republicans see it.”

The Tax Day protests appeared to have come off peacefully, in contrast to the clashes in Berkeley between Trump opponents and supporters holding unrelated rallies in a downtown park. After Trump supporters said they would hold a “Patriot Day” rally, counter-protesters decided to hold a rally at the same place.

Trump, who spent the morning at his Florida golf course, avoided several hundred protesters when his motorcade took a circuitous route back to Mar-A-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, estate. Protesters marched across the bridge that divides West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, chanting and hoisting signs that read “Don the Con,” “Go back to New York” and “Show your taxes!”

In Washington, D.C., one of Trump’s sharpest critics in the House spoke to protesters at the U.S. Capitol just before they set off on a march to the National Mall. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, said there’s nothing to prevent Trump from releasing his income taxes and that “the simple truth is he’s got a lot to hide.”

“If he thinks he can get away with playing king, he’s got another thought coming,” Waters said.

For four decades, presidents and major party nominees have released some of their tax returns, with the exception of Gerald Ford. Trump’s break with precedent has raised questions about possible conflicts of interest.

Protesters in Raleigh, North Carolina, said they suspect that Trump’s returns might show he has paid little or nothing to the government he now heads, or that he was indebted to Russian, Chinese or other foreign interests.

“His reputation ... as a businessman and, more importantly, as a true American, a person who is concerned with American values, would be totally destroyed if all his financial information was made public,” said Mike Mannshardt, a retired teacher.

Democrats are pushing for a vote on a bill from Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from California, which would require the president and all major-party nominees to publicly disclose their previous three years of tax returns with the Office of Government Ethics or the Federal Election Commission.

Republicans also have rebuffed Democrats’ efforts to get the House Ways and Means Committee to act. It has legal authority to obtain confidential tax records, and could vote to make them public.

Many demonstrators said they hoped Saturday’s marches would convince Trump to voluntarily release them.

“We do care. We want to see his taxes,” said Ann Demerlis, who was among hundreds who marched in Philadelphia from City Hall to an area in front of historic Independence Hall, carrying signs and chanting “We want your taxes now!”

Tuesday is the deadline for taxpayers to file returns.