An LGBT+ bar in Des Moines, Iowa, was “violently raided” by police after club organisers gave medical assistance to Black Lives Matter protesters.

The protesters limply wandered into the bar, their bodies bruised, their voices hoarse, strained from chanting. On Monday night (June 1) Des Moines police violently raided a queer bar on the first day of Pride Month, arresting three people, in what LGBT+ people have wearily dubbed “Stonewall Two”. Law enforcement claimed it was because club-goers had broken the 9pm curfew enforced by city leaders to hush unrest, but surveillance footage release by Blazing Saddle sets a different scene.

It showed powdered-up showgirls tending to Black Lives Matter demonstrators’ wounds who were, a witness said, in “agonising pain”, as clashes happened just blocks away.

According to local media, nearly three hours into the city’s curfew and several dispersal orders, police advanced on protesters packing the grounds of the Iowa State Capitol at around 11:45pm and used tear gas canisters and flash bangs to decamp them.

Footage shows two police cruisers rolling in, “packed with police officers in full armour with big f***ing guns” and storming the front of the bar.

The devastating symbolism of a scene seemingly pulled straight out of the history books – police raiding a gay bar some 51 years after doing the same to Stonewall – was not lost on the queer community. Read more via Pink News