Patriots of Washington's event to support Mass Resistance's protest of a Drag Queen Story Time event in Renton, WA.
A "Teen Pride" event tomorrow at a public library in Renton,
WA is
being targeted by anti-LGBTQ+ activists. More demonstrations against a library in the same system are planned for next week.
Elizabeth Johnston, a far-right Christian media personality who
brands herself as “The Activist Mommy,” went
on a transphobic rant about the event Thursday on her Facebook, calling on
her 600,000 plus followers to bombard the Renton’s library with phone calls
demanding they cancel the event. At around 2pm PST on Thursday, Johnston said the phone lines were “jammed” and told
her followers to start emailing the library’s board of trustees instead.
Antifascists at Emerald City Antifa shared a
message from a Renton library employee who’d received calls yesterday.
“I can tell you that we’re experiencing a barrage of hateful
phone calls,” the library employee said, adding “It’s been very stressful for
me as a queer person.”
In response to possible demonstrations against the Teen
Pride event, Plateupians for Peace, a local activist group, is organizing a support demonstration
to shield young attendees of the LGBTQ+ youth event from bigoted protestors.
“We need your help showing support against these protestors
and creating a safe environment for our LGBTQ+ teens to attend this event. We
need people there from 12:30-1:30 and from 6:30-7:30, when kiddos [are] arriving
and leaving,” the description for the event reads.
At around 2PM today, Johnston reposted the call to action, telling people
to keep bombarding the Library’s phones.
But this isn’t the last Renton’s library system will hear
from anti-LGBTQ+ activists this month. Next week on the 27th, Mass
Resistance and Patriots of Washington, a group that includes Zachary Staggs and
other members of the Proud Boys, will protest
a Drag Queen Story Time event there.
Emerald City Antifa activists are organizing counter-efforts
to the demonstration, including
offering support and resources to the Drag Queens performing that day.
The library employee who messaged Emerald City Antifa said
that “[p]eaceful counterprotestors would be welcome.”
The Puget Sound Anarchists collective also put out a call
to action to defend the Seattle Trans Pride Parade on the weekend of the 28th
this month. The Proud Boys and an affiliated far-right livestreaming group
called Operation Cold Front are expected to show up.
These protests come amidst escalating demonstrations and
violence against LGBTQ+ people during this year’s Pride Month.
Locally, an art display by Renton’s United Christian Church
was vandalized and then bombed. The display was a series of rainbow-painted doors
bearing the message “God’s doors are open to all.” The
FBI is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. The church is
planning a prayer vigil in response tonight at 6:30pm.
On Monday, there
was a demonstration against a Drag Queen Story Time event on Des Moines, Washington.
As LCRW previously
reported, a trans activist was cited with a hate crime by California
Highway Patrol after he confronted a hate preacher at the Capitol Building
during Sacramento Pride weekend. During that confrontation, he was threatened
by an attendee with a knife.
Other high-profile anti-LGBTQ+ incidents dominated the news
cycle this month across the country. The National Socialist Movement, a direct descendant of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, disrupted
Detriot’s Motor City Pride Parade earlier this month, flying flags with
swastikas. They had full protection from police officers, who were wearing rainbow flag
badges.
Additionally, Right-wing provocateur Steven Crowder intensified his years-long
homophobic harassment campaign against journalist Carlos Maza, emboldened by Youtube’s
failure to address the situation.
One of the most viral stories has to do with
Resist Marxism’s plans for a “Straight
Pride Parade.” Resist Marxism is a Boston-based neo-Nazi-adjacent protest
group founded by Kyle Chapman, the far-right e-celebrity famously nicknamed
“Based Stickman” after he broke a closet pole over an antifascist brawler’s
head during a riot in Berkeley. The “Straight Pride” event is set to go forward
August 31st.
This is an updated
version of a story
that ran yesterday. It includes an interview with the activist at the
center of the incident and information from police documents.
“The pride festival was over, and initially we were just
trying to walk from it to other local festivities. We hear the religious
protesters,” Marcello recounts, “So Angie asks me if I'm uncomfortable hearing
them and if we should leave or do something.”
“I stand up and I'm thinking I'm not really bothered,” he continues, “but they shouldn't be allowed to be doing that.”
In his friend Angie’s video, Marcello, a queer activist in a
tie-dye shirt, holds a trans pride flag and dances around in front of a bearded
street preacher with a red tie and a suit vest.
“It all seemed very innocent to me. I wasn’t thinking it'd
escalate. At one point there were other queer people joining me and dancing
onstage even,” Marcello says.
“Repent! God will judge you if you do not repent and you
will end up in hell! We love you but God is just!” the preacher booms through a
PA system.
“It wasn't until the guy took my flag when things started to
be more confrontational,” Marcello says.
Anti-LGBTQ+ protesters push Marcello. A man with a mustache,
white shirt and blue baseball cap shouts in Marcello’s face. He grabs
Marcello’s flag and balls it up in his hands.
“May God have mercy on America! May God have mercy on this
land! May God have mercy on Sacramento,” the preacher continues behind them.
“Give him his flag back,” Angie shouts at the man in the
blue hat as she continues to film. The man shoves Marcello, who tries to snatch
the flag back. The man pitches the balled-up flag on the ground about fifteen
feet away. Marcello goes to pick it up.
“Fuck you! Old ugly-ass toothless-ass man!” Angie shouts at
him before the video cuts out.
The video, posted to Twitter on Saturday at 8:22PM, has over
10,000 views as of this writing.
“After that I admit my memory is a bit hazy,” Marcello says.
He was in shock after the event. For more on how memory of traumatic events
works, see
this NPR article. “
I had so many things going on at once, and people screaming
at me, and Angie was telling me the guy pulled a switchblade on me,” he
recounts.
“Right after the video cuts he pulled out a knife on us,”
Angie said in the description of the video on Twitter. “He only backs away when
I start yelling out “He has a knife!” repeatedly,” she told LCRW.
Angie said none of the others with the anti-LGBTQ+ group did
anything about him.
“I was shocked and after I picked my flag up, I felt it even
more so my duty to be there and wave it around proudly than before,” Marcello
says.
“Then the man with the blue shirt comes up and his friend a
little after,” she recounted. Angie provided a second video to LCRW showing a
confrontation between several men and Marcello and herself.
Angie’s second video starts with a man with a buzzcut and
blue t-shirt yelling at Marcello. Marcello says this man was “in my face
screaming at me to get out of his.”
“This whole time I never approached these people, they would
come up to me. All I was doing was waving my flag and defending myself,”
Marcello told LCRW.
Someone tries to grab Angie’s phone. Video is shaky. There
seems to be a scuffle.
“I can have my phone out!” she says. Two other men push the
man with the buzzcut and Marcello away from each other and get in between them.
“After the guy pushed me away from his friend with the buzz
cut was the only time I put my hands on someone, I was obviously angry that I was
the one being gained up on,” Marcello said.
“This guy tried to take my phone!” Angie shouts. The video
ends with the camera flipped around on her face.
“Next thing I know the guy in the video with the buzz cut
was threatening me,” Marcello says.
“I remember him saying "this is America so I have a
right to say whatever it is I want, I have a right to be here (as in the
capital grounds) and I was saying back to him "Well, don't come here to
our event, (pointing at the Pride Festival) and say disrespectful things to my
community,” Marcello recounts. “And he then started saying "that's not
okay, what you're doing is not okay. If this was Russia things would be
different"”
“He was also saying things like "come to Russia then. Come
to Russia and see what happens," Marcello recounts. He says he took the
man’s statements, as well as “his gestures and tone as a threat.”
Angie says the man with the buzz cut told Marcello “if we
were in Russia, he would kill him.” She said that “this man and two others got
in my friend’s face and even shoved him at one point.”
“Since things were getting violent, we tried to leave the area.
And that’s when we were stopped by Sac PD,” Angie recounted.
“I was very shocked because I didn't understand what I had
done wrong, I was already flustered and feeling defensive,” Marcello says.
Angie said an officer stopped Marcello and herself and
demanded identification. They asked to leave and the officer said no. They
asked if they were being detained. The officer said yes. He wouldn’t tell them
what crime they were being stopped for.
“I keep repeating that there is a man still at the steps of
the Capitol who has a knife but he doesn’t seem to care. He ignored me and
keeps asking my friend why he was pushing people,” Angie recounted.
“The cop that approached me was being unempathetic towards
my side of the story the entire time,” Marcello recounts. “He was asking me why
I was pushing people, was asking me why I approached them.”
“I felt really attacked, I felt like I was being framed. I
felt like he was trying to guilt me into admitting I did something wrong,”
Marcello says.
Eventually, Marcello says, “the officer told me that I was
under suspicion of assault, and told me they were reviewing tapes.”
Marcello and Angie both say he only pushed one person in
self-defense. Angie’s video shows one instance of a man wearing glasses being
shoved. This man stepped in between Marcello and the man with the buzzcut. It
isn’t clear if Angie, Marcello or someone else was shoving him. While video
shows Marcello made gestures with his hands while shouting, it’s clear in the
video LCRW reviewed that, for the most part, he wasn’t trying to touch the
anti-LGBTQ+ activists. The only other time he makes a motion towards one of
them on camera is when he’s trying to get his flag back.
They were separated for questioning after fifteen minutes of
being detained, Angie recounts.
“At one point [the officer] was even answering my questions
and statements with "oh really? Okay cool" sarcastically, being
overall very unprofessional and disrespectful. I decided it was best to just stop
speaking all together to him,” Marcello says. “I felt like the police were not
there for me, they didn't take my allegation against these homophobic and actually
violent people seriously.”
Marcello also said he was misgendered and repeatedly
deadnamed by the police, despite changing the gender marker on his ID at the
start of the year. Deadnaming is refusing to use a person’s chosen name and
instead using the name assigned to them at birth. ProPublica
found in 2018 that in 74 of 85 cases they studied of trans people being
murdered, police used the victim’s deadname. Activists ProPublica interviewed said
it was incredibly difficult to get government agencies to acknowledge trans
peoples’ chosen names.
“Five or so cops were surrounding me at one point,” Marcello
recounts, continuing, “they could've been trying to find the actual
perpetrators instead of standing there chatting it up with each other, waiting
for some footage, only to find out I never actually put my hands on anyone.”
Marcello eventually gave his statement to a female officer
who he says treated him with more empathy.
“They gave me a ticket with my possible charges and said
that for future reference, I shouldn't be the one going and instigating things
by waving my flag in peoples faces,” Marcello says.
Officers cite Marcello for three misdemeanors: demonstrating
without a permit, battery, and a hate crime. He’s set to appear in court in August.
Meanwhile, Angie also had little success getting the
officers to take her side of the story seriously. An officer asks her to point
out the man who threatened them, but she says by that point he'd left. “I tell
[the officer] I have a picture but he just asks for a description which he
repeats back to me wrong, so I show him a photo,” Angie recounts.
An hour and 40 minutes pass while they’re detained, Angie says.
Then, four other officers speak to them separately and dismiss them. Angie
sends her footage to one of the officers.
“They told us it was the church that called the police on us
for being aggressive and that we aren’t allowed to be that close to counter
protests,” Angie said, adding that police told her “that we should have been on
the sidewalk and that we were in the wrong.”
LCRW is filing a PRA for information about the incident and
will update the story when we receive new information.
Neither the man who drew a knife nor the has not yet been
identified. LCRW has not yet identified the anti-LGBTQ+ group at the Capitol
Building.
“Literally all the people who were threatening and even
shoving my friend got away because they [the police] were too busy trying to
prove/get my friend to confess he was the aggressor,” Angie wrote on
Twitter.
“I just feel wronged. Like I was the wrong person to call
the cops on. The homophobic protesters should've called the police on their own
supporters instead of me. They were the ones being aggressive and violent,”
Marcello says.
“This was supposed to be a day where I can be authentically
me, and I was harassed and wrongfully detained for celebrating myself,”
Marcello said. “And to end all that with being charged for possible hate crime,
and assault charges? It just seem extremely unfair and unjust. I feel failed by
the law.”
Pride Month was marked this year by high-profile
provocations against LGBTQ+ people by right-wing extremists. The National
Socialist Movement, a direct descendent of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American
Nazi Party, disrupted
Detriot’s Motor City Pride Parade last weekend, flying flags with
swastikas. They had full protection from police officers wearing rainbow flag
badges. Right-wing provocateur Steven Crowder is currently intensifying his
years-long homophobic harassment campaign against journalist Carlos Maza,
emboldened by Youtube’s
failure to address the situation. One of the most viral stories has to do
with Resist Marxism’s plans for a “Straight
Pride Parade.” Resist Marxism is a Boston-based neo-Nazi-adjacent protest
group founded by Kyle Chapman, the far-right e-celebrity famously nicknamed
“Based Stickman” after he broke a closet pole over an antifascist brawler’s
head during a riot in Berkeley. The “Straight Pride” event is set to go forward
August 31st.
The incident over the weekend hearkens back to the rally held
by neo-Nazis from the Traditionalist Workers’ Party and the Golden State
Skinheads in 2016. Neo-Nazis stabbed several antifascists counter-protesting
that ensuing brawl. Police
then chose to go after the antifascists instead of the neo-Nazis.
LCRW is seeking other witnesses’ accounts and any additional
information about this case and will update this story with new information as
it comes in. Please email leftcoastrightwatch@protonmail.com
if you have any tips.
In Angie’s video, her friend Marcello, a queer activist in a tie-dye
shirt, holds a trans pride flag and dances around in front of a bearded street
preacher with a red tie and a suit vest. Angie said that she and Marcello and went to confront them outside of the Capitol Building and that other activists joined in to counter-protest.
“Repent! God will judge you if you do not repent and you
will end up in hell! We love you but God is just!” the preacher booms through a
PA system.
Anti-LGBTQ+ protesters push Marcello. A man with a mustache, white shirt and blue baseball cap shouts in Marcello’s face. He
grabs Marcello’s flag and balls it up in his hands.
“May God have mercy on America! May God have mercy on this
land! May God have mercy on Sacramento,” the preacher continues behind them.
“Give him his flag back,” Angie shouts at the man in the
blue hat as she continues to film. The man shoves
Marcello, who tries to snatch the flag back. The man pitches the balled-up flag
on the ground about fifteen feet away. Marcello goes to pick it up.
“Fuck you! Old ugly-ass toothless-ass man!” Angie shouts at
him before the video cuts out.
The video, posted to Twitter on Saturday at 8:22PM, has over
10,000 views as of this writing.
“Right after the video cuts he pulled out a knife on us,” Angie
said in the description of the video on Twitter.
“He only backs away when I start yelling out “he has a
knife!” repeatedly,” Angie told LCRW. She said none of the others with the anti-LGBTQ+
group did anything about him.
Angie says one of the men told Marcello “if we were in
Russia, he would kill him.” She said that “this man and two others got in my
friends face and even shoved him at one point.” LGBTQ+ people face
widespread persecution in Russia, often with state permission.
“Then the man with the blue shirt comes up and his friend a
little after,” she recounted, providing a second video to LCRW.
Angie’s second video starts with a man with a buzzcut and
blue t-shirt yelling at Marcello. Someone tries to grab Angie’s phone. Video is
shaky. There seems to be a scuffle.
“I can have my phone out!” she says. Two other men push the
man with the buzzcut and Marcello away from each other and get in between them.
“This guy tried to take my phone!” Angie shouts. The video
ends with the camera flipped around on her face.
“Since things were getting violent, we tried to leave the
area. And that’s when we were stopped by Sac PD,” Angie recounted.
She said an officer stopped Marcello and herself and
demanded identification. They asked to leave and the officer said no. They
asked if they were being detained. The officer said yes. He wouldn’t tell them
what crime they were being stopped for.
“I keep repeating that there is a man still at the steps of
the Capitol who has a knife but he doesn’t seem to care. He ignored me and
keeps asking my friend why he was pushing people,” Angie recounted.
She said Marcello only pushed one person in self-defense.
Video shows one instance of a man wearing glasses being shoved. This man
stepped in between Marcello and the man with the buzz cut. It isn’t clear if
Angie, Marcello or someone else was shoving him. While video shows Marcello made
gestures with his hands while shouting, it’s clear for the most part he wasn’t trying to touch
the anti-LGBTQ+ activists. The only other time he makes a motion towards one of
them on camera is when he’s trying to get his flag back.
“I keep trying to bring to his attention that there was a
man with a knife and a man that gave Marcello death threats and that I had both
their faces on video,” Angie recounts, “but he seems more preoccupied in trying
to get Marcello to say he was pushing people.”
They were separated for questioning after fifteen minutes of
being detained, Angie recounts. An officer asks her to point out the man who
threatened them, but she says by that point he'd left.
“I tell [the officer] I have a picture but he just asks for
a description which he repeats back to me wrong, so I show him a photo,” Angie
recounts.
An hour and 40 minutes pass while they’re detained, Angie
says. Then, four other officers speak to them separately and dismiss them.
Angie sends her footage to one of the officers.
“They told us it was the church that called the police on us
for being aggressive and that we aren’t allowed to be that close to counter
protests,” Angie said, adding that police told her “that we should have been on
the sidewalk and that we were in the wrong.”
Marcello was apparently cited.
LCRW is filing for a copy of the police report for the incident.
The man who drew a knife has not yet been identified. LCRW
has not yet identified the anti-LGBTQ+ group at the Capitol Building.
“Literally all the people who were threatening and even
shoving my friend got away because they were too busy trying to prove/get my
friend to confess he was the aggressor,” Angie wrote on
Twitter.
Pride Month was marked this year by high-profile
provocations against LGBTQ+ people by right-wing extremists. The National Socialist
Movement, a direct descendent of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party,
disrupted
Detriot’s Motor City Pride Parade last weekend, flying flags with swastikas.
They had full protection from police officers wearing rainbow flag badges. Right-wing
provocateur Steven Crowder is currently intensifying his years-long homophobic
harassment campaign against journalist Carlos Maza, emboldened by Youtube’s
failure to address the situation. One of the most viral stories has to do
with Resist Marxism’s plans for a “Straight
Pride Parade.” Resist Marxism is a Boston-based neo-Nazi-adjacent protest
group founded by Kyle Chapman, the far-right e-celebrity famously nicknamed “Based
Stickman” after he broke a closet pole over an antifascist brawler’s head
during a riot in Berkeley. The event is set to go forward August 31st.
The incident over the weekend hearkens back to the rally
held by neo-Nazis from the Traditionalist Workers’ Party and the Golden State
Skinheads in 2016. Neo-Nazis stabbed several antifascists counter-protesting
that ensuing brawl. Police
then chose to go after the antifascists instead of the neo-Nazis.
LCRW is seeking other witnesses’ accounts and any additional
information about this case and will update this story with new information as it comes in.
Please email leftcoastrightwatch@protonmail.com
if you have any tips.
