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Roswell Encina, a gay Filipino American civic leader, said the Fourth of July encounter with Patriot Front was frightening and impossible to separate from American history.
On Saturday, Roswell Encina was on his way from Washington, D.C., to meet friends for a Fourth of July party in Maryland when the train car changed.
A few stops earlier, the Metro had felt like the nation’s capital on Independence Day, with families in red, white, and blue, tourists heading toward the National Mall, parents pointing out landmarks to children, the ordinary choreography of a holiday built around a national story Americans are still arguing over.
For Encina, the president and CEO of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, it was the kind of scene that usually affirms the work. Then, at either Eastern Market or Potomac Avenue, he saw them: men in masks, hats, and sunglasses, waiting to board.
“I think I froze a little bit,” Encina told The Advocate in an interview. “At first, I’m like thinking, oh my, who are these folks?”
They were members of Patriot Front, the white nationalist group that marched through Washington, D.C., on Saturday as the capital marked the 250th anniversary of American independence. Hundreds of masked members moved through the city near the U.S. Capitol and Union Station before boarding Metro trains and exiting at New Carrollton, a D.C. suburb in Maryland.
https://www.advocate.com/news/people/roswell-encina-patriot-front-metro
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Man in viral D.C. Metro photo says he was ‘terrified’ as masked white nationalists surrounded him