Rap group Insane Clown Posse plots march on Washington


Joseph Bruce aka Violent J, left, a member of the Insane Clown Posse addresses the media in Detroit, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) more >

By Andrew Blake - The Washington Times - Tuesday, July 26, 2016

The National Mall in Washington, D.C. will host a rally next year being put together by Insane Clown Posse, a Detroit-based rap group whose die-hard fans, “juggalos,” have been described by the FBI as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.”


Joe Bruce, better known as ICP frontman “Violent J,” announced plans for the march on Washington while speaking over the weekend at the Gathering of the Juggalos, an annual music festival organized by the group for the last 16 years.


“In 2017, the weekend of September 17th, we need you,” he told attendees. “We’re gonna do a [expletive] march on Washington. They call the Juggalo World a movement, right? Well, let’s move!”


“We are going to explain to the world who the [expletive] we really are,” he said.
Exactly what in fact constitutes a “juggalo” has been a question that took on new significant when the FBI included the band’s fanbase in the 2011 report assembled by the bureau’s National Gang Intelligence Center.

“Although recognized as a gang in only four states, many Juggalos subsets exhibit gang-like behavior and engage in criminal activity and violence” ranging from petty theft and vandalism to felony assaults and drug dealing, according to the report.


Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ICP sued the Justice Dept. in 2014 determined to have its fans purged from the FBI’s gang list. That suit was subsequently dismissed by a District Court judge before ultimately being reversed in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals the following year.

“The Juggalos are fighting for the basic American right to freely express who they are, to gather and share their appreciation of music, and to discuss issues that are important to them without fear of being unfairly targeted and harassed by police,” ACLU attorney Michael J. Steinberg said previously of the suit.


Next fall, ICP hopes to take that fight to the heart of the nation’s capital. The weekend festivities will include a march on Sept. 16 slated to take juggalos from the Lincoln Memorial to Washington Monument, as well as a picnic for fans and a free concert at Jiffy Lube Live in nearby Bristow, Virginia.


Billboard reported previously that the annual Gathering of the Juggalos attracted a total of roughly 107,500 fans during its first 11 iterations.


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