On a Sunday morning, Dec. 13, 2020, Reverend William Lamar, pastor of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., was home preparing to livestream for his virtual congregation, who were among the thousands forced indoors in the throes of the Covid pandemic. “As I was going down to my basement to go live, my phone began to vibrate and it was people offering their support saying they were sorry about what happened. I was unaware but then someone sent me a link.”
The link was a video of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group known for violence, entering his church’s yard the previous night, tearing down the Black Lives Matter banner that hung within a metal frame and cutting it into pieces with knives. The pro-Trump organization was rallying through D.C., facing off with any and all antifa and Black Lives Matter activism, be it people or vinyl signage. Motivated by Donald Trump’s election loss a few weeks earlier, the group marched down M Street toward Metropolitan AME — a Black-owned house of worship since 1822 that held the funerals of Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks — where they trespassed, vandalized the sign, and screamed “Fuck Black Lives Matter!” The Proud Boys also vandalized a Black Lives Matter sign hung by the neighboring Asbury United Methodist, a Black church since 1836, setting the sign aflame on the street.
“I couldn’t address it then because I was about to go live in a few minutes,” says Lamar, who is set to release a book on spirituality rooted in his experience with the church. Instead, he sat on his basement steps in meditation and prayer. “I had an ancestral moment where I felt Elizabeth Freeman, Ida B. Wells [an anti-lynching advocate and speaker at the church in the 1800s], my own ancestors, and the Spirit of the Living God say, ‘This is our moment. Get through what you’re doing and get ready.’”
By the following day, a solution came in the form of advocates like Cornell Brooks, the former NAACP president, who connected Lamar and the church to attorneys willing to represent them pro-bono. “They asked if we’d be willing to sue, and the people of Metropolitan stood together and said yes,” Lamar says. “I had the only unanimous vote in the history of church.”
After four years of litigation, the church has a conclusive judgement. D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier ruled on Feb. 3 that Metropolitan AME now owns Proud Boys International LLC, which means the church owns the group’s name, materials, and any and all proceeds, including dues, they may receive.
The church is already taking advantage of the ruling. The livestream of Lamar’s service on Sunday included a QR code linking to a statement on the ruling, which noted that the church is selling “limited edition” T-shirts featuring the extremist group’s signature black-and-gold laurel around a bold “PB.” The text around the Proud Boys logo, now owned by the church, reads “Stay Proud, Stay Black” on one shirt, and “Stay Proud, Black Lives Matter” on the other. The proceeds go to the church’s community justice fund.
“We are doing Spirit work, soil work, and solidarity work,” Lamar told his congregation, adding that the shirts are “our version of the trademark that now belongs to us.”
The saga began at the end of a fraught 2020. The nation was in crisis in the midst of the pandemic shutdown, and an emotionally charged presidential election year made tensions even higher. Following the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that spring, protests broke out across the nation. In the “Chocolate City,” known for its Black population and culture, Metropolitan AME and Asbury Church advocated for Black folks, as they have since the time of enslavement. Lamar described the church’s Black Lives Matter signs to the court as a “contemporary way of lifting up the fact that, for many generations, persons of African descent in America and around the world had to assert our humanity.” The Proud Boys demolishing those symbols exemplified more than just a violation of church property but one of human rights. Related Content Trump Pardons Seditionist Proud Boys Leader Among 1,500 Jan. 6 Defendants The Trump Resistance Inside Washington’s National Cathedral Proud Boys Honcho Sentenced to 22 Years for Jan. 6 Asks Trump for Pardon Does Trump Jan. 6 Pardon Plan Include the Seditionists?
Metropolitan AME sued on Jan. 4, 2021 for trespassing, theft, bias-related conspiracy, damage of religious property (under the FACE Act), and defacement of private property. In June 2023, the church won a judgement of just over a million dollars in damages from former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four other members. Around $36,000 of it was for physical damages done to the church, covering expenses for the destroyed sign and frame, and compensation for the time and work of the church members and volunteers who provided aid. The additional million dollars was for punitive damages. The judgement was later upped to $2.8 million to include legal fees, and is now over $3 million with interest. The Proud Boys didn’t pay, though, prompting the church to go after the trademark. Judge Bosier gave it to them last week.
Tarrio — whom Trump pardoned last month for crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — sees the ruling as unjust, impossible to pay, and unlawful. He released a statement after the ruling was handed down attacking the church and calling for the impeachment of Judge Bosier. “I hold in contempt any motions, judgments, and orders issued against me,” he wrote.
Tarrio elaborated in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I wipe my ass with it,” he says of the ruling. “I don’t care about this fake church. I don’t care about the judge. It’s an unjust ruling. They’re acting like Pharaoh in the Old Testament. They’re overdoing it and harassing my family by subpoenaing their bank records.”
Tarrio claims there was a “mix up” and that he burned Asbury’s banner, not Metropolitan AME’s, and that he didn’t know it came from a church. “I saw a banner on the floor that said Black Lives Matter and we’ve historically opposed most of the views, if not all, that Black Lives Matter hold,” he says.
Regardless of whether Tarrio personally helped destroy Metropolitan AME’s banner, similar to his Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy conviction, his role as a leader of the group was enough. The court determined Tarrio and the four other members “planned and led the December 12, 2020 Prouds Boys rally,” making them liable and prone to judgement for the crimes committed against the church.
Asbury did not sue the Proud Boys despite Tarrio serving prison time for burning their banner. Instead, the church released a statement: “It was an unprovoked act of violence and vandalism. It is no less reprehensible because the burned object was a banner rather than a cross. It was an assault on Asbury and its values as a member of the Christian community, a repudiation of the important message the banner sought to convey, and an affront to people of faith and goodwill in our community and the world over.”
Tarrio also claims he was not able to defend himself sufficiently because he was incarcerated, but court records hold that he and the other Proud Boys “fail(ed) to respond or otherwise to defend against the lawsuit … despite notices to the defendants — including those who were incarcerated.”
Tarrio and other Proud Boys have been taunting Metropolitan AME on social media since the ruling was handed down last week. Tarrio called Metropolitan AME “a church of Satan” and shared a video of Lamar set to reggae music. He has also posted that the Proud Boys are changing their name to “African Methodist Episocal Boys.”
“I’m going to start printing shirts,” he tells Rolling Stone. “If they want to come after me for intellectual property, go ahead. I owe the federal government restitution about $6.5 million. I’m broke as shit. I don’t have a fucking car right now, I had to sell my car to pay my attorneys. I don’t own anything. The cell phone I’m talking to you on can’t even be under my name because my credit’s fucked up. So if they want to go after the poor, I’m the perfect candidate.”
Metropolitan AME maintains they are not going after the poor; they just want accountability and retribution. “They recorded video and sound and the whole time they were shouting vitriolic, racist, and other profane chants,” Lamar says. “They were exalted. Legally, we own their trademark and we should receive any economic benefit from it. People have asked will we negotiate with them and let them use [their name] and no, we will not. Not under any circumstance.”
Even if the Proud Boys try to change their name in an effort to dodge the trademark ruling, certain members of the group, like Tarrio, still personally owe the church. For Tarrio — who says he is looking to get a license as a general contractor and restart his security business, while also teasing a run for office — any money he makes will go to the church until the $2.8 million judgement is satisfied.
Meanwhile, in D.C., congregants of Metropolitan AME feel the judgement is a statement that could prevent other acts of violent protest, and give hope to those who feel helpless in this political time. “Our victory says we can fight and we can win,” Lamar says. “The current world order was imagined by people who wanted to exploit and oppress and extract. We can imagine and build a new order. There are thousands of AME churches blooming — not only Christians, but Jewish congregations, Muslim congregations, Buddhist congregations, people of no faith at all, who are fighting and winning every day. Human beings together can rise.”
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