That’s why I stayed far away.
If anyone has listened to Tim Pool on YouTube, he’s talked at length of the leftists tactics of leading a mob however they want. For example, they get a small protest for something good, like living wage, but then steer them a few blocks away where a teacher’s strike protest is happening. No one with the small group knows what’s happening until it’s too late.
I wasn’t taking that chance.
I walked from the ellipse to the Air and Space museum. There were 1000s or tens of thousands of people who were entirely off of the mall , just walking around on the other closed roads. Until they heard all the sirens, they had no idea that anything was happening. Neither did we from our distance.