Students burn Confederate flag to protest KKK ties to racist Florida cops and prison guards

A militia group failed to show up to protest a Florida rally against the Ku Klux Klan, but one white supremacist sympathizer drove past blaring “Dixie” from a car.

About 100 activists gathered outside the Old Capitol in Tallahassee, where they burned a Confederate flag, to protest recent KKK activity in the area and draw attention to the links between the hate group and law enforcement, reported the Tallahassee Democrat.

Two employees of the Department of Corrections and one former employee linked to the KKK were arrested last week in a plot to kill an inmate.

Four police officers, including one who made a pro-KKK video, resigned or were fired this year over their racist texts expressing their fantasies of executing black suspects.

A deputy police chief in Fruitland Park resigned in July and another officer was fired after the FBI reported the pair had KKK ties, and another officer stepped down five years earlier over photos showing him in a KKK robe and hood.

"We have to tell the Klan that we want them out of our communities, out of our town, out of our public offices,” said Nicky Nora, president of the Students for a Democratic Society – which organized the protest.

Police did not investigate fliers promoting the KKK that were distributed last month near Tallahassee because authorities said the group had not broken any laws – but some of the activists said that was a lame excuse.

"I know some people say the KKK has, whatever, free speech rights – f*ck that,” said SDS leader Zachary Schultz. "They should not be allowed to spread their hate and racist propaganda in our communities, in our cities, and we will stop them."

The Republic of Florida Militia had threatened to protest the rally, but none of their members showed up.

"The Klan has the right to stand up for White people," the group said on its Facebook page. "Regardless of how we feel about the KKK — They are, in their own way, standing up for the European people. We will not stand for violence against them. In the name of the Republic — we declare war against the SDS and will not [sic] systemetically destroy them in their present form. No longer can we let communist [sic] walk the streets.”

The group claimed that police had threatened to shoot them, but Capitol Police denied barring the militia group.

“They’re cowards, that’s why they’re not here,” said Naomi Bradley, of Trans Liberation Front.