ACT! For America doesn’t do anything that doesn’t involve demonizing and undercutting the rights of Muslims in this society, so naturally they are going to big up those they think are their shock troops in this endeavor. The event in Philly is being organized by one of their members, Scott Ryan Presler, who is also putting one together in St. Cloud, MN for the same day. His Facebook and Twitter account is basically nothing but fanboy adulation for Donald Trump, and that pretty much seems to be his life. But he hates Muslims and sometime finds to hate Hispanics from time to time, so yeah, he wants to hold rallies where he will find a lot of both and not too many Trump supporters.
OPPOSE HATE IN THE OCEAN STATE!
SHOW UP BEFORE 11AM AUG 4TH
Not kid friendly, not a speaking rally.
CALL TO ACTION:
Ocean State Against Hate, a coalition of anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-LGBTQ, anti-fascist, socialist, labor, and community organizers will host a counter-demonstration to oppose a rally by a far-right umbrella group known as “Resist Marxism”. One might wonder what they could possibly do to resist Marxism that has been overlooked by the police, the FBI, the corporations and media, and the various intelligence and military agencies, but here we are.
Beyond the group’s moderately-right-wing veneer are various racist and fascist dog-whistles, and a nationwide history of organizing with violent hate groups and individuals. While the umbrella group “Resist Marxism” may assiduously avoid racist language in its promotional materials, it uses several dog-whistles (“cultural Marxism,” “globalism,” “nationalism,” etc) that have fascist, anti-semitic origins. The founder of the organization, Kyle Chapman (alias “Based Stick-man”) is a repeat violent felon with ties to fascist groups and individuals. At events held by the group’s Boston chapter, security was provided by American Guard, a neo-nazi paramilitary group from Indianapolis with possible chapters in New Hampshire. They are an extreme anti-immigrant and anti-refugee group with many members in designated hate groups. A posting about the August 4th rally on the /pol/ section of 4chan, a notorious neo-nazi internet hangout, promised that the August 4th event in Providence would be the debut of a local chapter of the Proud Boys, a “western chauvinist” fascist gang. Kyle Chapman, the “Resist Marxism” founder also founded a more extreme, violent group within the Proud Boys – the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, who have committed multiple assaults with sticks and other weapons at protests. Another Boston “Resist Marxism” member, Chris Hood, is also a member of Patriot Front, an openly fascist hate group. This group split off from Vanguard America (which has a presence in Providence), a member of which is charged with the murder of Heather Heyer by a car that plowed into protesters (injuring 20 others) in Charlottesville, VA last year. There are more connections with other heinous groups and individuals, too many to list. These groups, along with other fascist, nationalist, and white supremacist formations, have a clear history of racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, and transphobic violence. We as a community ignore them at our peril.
These groups and other far-right and white supremacist organizations have no place here in Providence. The community will not sit by idly while they organize to oppress and murder us. We will oppose them at every turn.
Coalition Points of Unity:
-Fascism is an existential threat to already oppressed and targeted communities.
-To oppose this threat, we must oppose all its facets
-White supremacy in all its forms
-Misogyny and violence against women (including trans-women) in all its forms
-Violence against immigrants and workers in all its forms
-Capitalist imperialism in all its forms
-Settler colonialism in all its forms
-Directly affected communities must always be at the forefront of all aspects of our political work, including anti-fascism
-Fascism cannot be debated, it cannot be coddled, it must be smashed aggressively and efficiently.
-A community’s ability to defend itself by any means necessary is crucial to combat fascism.
Their rally is reported to start at noon on August 4th. Join us by 11AM to oppose them.
ACT! For America doesn’t do anything that doesn’t involve demonizing and undercutting the rights of Muslims in this society, so naturally they are going to big up those they think are their shock troops in this endeavor. The event in St. Cloud is being organized by one of their members, Scott Ryan Presler, who is also putting one together in Philadelphia, PA for the same day. His Facebook and Twitter account is basically nothing but fanboy adulation for Donald Trump, and that pretty much seems to be his life. But he hates Muslims and sometime finds to hate Hispanics from time to time, so yeah, he wants to hold rallies where he will find a lot of both and not too many Trump supporters.
Patriot Prayer is a violent Neo-Fascist organization based in Washington State and the Proud Boys is a violent Neo-Fascist organization with chapters all over the country. They have made no bones about the fact that when they hold their regular rallies in Portland, OR, they intend to, as Proud Boy Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, put it, engage in a “physical fight, whatever kind of fight — we’re coming… and we’re gonna raise hell.” Those fights, by the way go beyond rallies. Toese and another Proud Boy Donovan L. Flippo were picked up by police for assaulting a Black man in the street who simply yelled back at them while they were driving down the street in a pickup championing Trump’s wall.
The violence they are bringing has increased with each rally, and that also meant a decrease in attendance for the neo-Fascist crowd until June 30, when fellow fash from around the country went to Portland to fight those countering the rally that day. Well, Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson announced another rally on Aug. 4, and this time antifa has said enough of this shit. Now THEY – including One People’s Project – are making it a point to be there for this latest outing. The hope is this will be the nail in the coffin, and if not it will be made clear that Portland, which has been seeing battles like this with Nazis in their town for decades, will not keep giving this crowd quarter.
For more information go to:
Rose City Antifa. Includes information about their local fascists.
Legal Fund Against Fascist Violence.
From the Facebook event page:
Last August (2017), groups of white supremacists, aided by police and politicians, attempted to take over Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park in order to build a base in the Bay. A crowd of thousands—including students, unionists, faith-based activists, teachers, and other everyday people—was there to confront them. We worked together to shut down the fascists and send them packing. Nationally, we sent a message that hate will not be welcome in the Bay. (Photo essay of 8/27 here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/kellyjohnsonrevelationaryphotography/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1371548832961154)
Once again, a group of white supremacists, Trump supporters, and fascists has announced a rally in downtown Berkeley for August 5, 2018. This event is part of a week-long nationwide “commemoration” of the hateful acts that took place nearly a year ago in Charlottesville, in which DeAndre Harris was beaten and Heather Heyer murdered. It is our duty to loudly and publicly reject their hate and to redouble our efforts in building a truly just and liberatory world.
We are calling on all members of our community to assemble together to stop white supremacist and state violence from growing. As history demonstrates, regular maintenance is required by people of heart and conscience to shut down white supremacy and fascism, which are foundational violences of this settler-colonial state. We’ve got to tend to the relationships and values that fuel, nourish, and inspire us to build a vision of collective liberation.
Share widely!
EXPOSED: Far-right #Berkeley organizers linked to Unite the Right 2, funded by Alex Jones https://t.co/Q1vNe96n1h #ProudBoys #PatriotPrayer #August5 #August5th #BayArea #AltRight #Oakland #SanFrancisco #SF #UniteTheRight #AbolishICE #OccupyICE #AllOutBayArea
— Occupy Oakland (@OccupyOakland) July 23, 2018
On August 5, we will gather to maintain a Bay Area free of fascism and white supremacy, sweeping out those that seek to deport, cage, harm, or extinguish members of our communities. Attacks on immigrants, Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, Muslims, the un-housed, queer and trans folks, disabled people, and/or women are becoming more prevalent as fascism reasserts itself in governments, state agencies, and increasingly organized groups across the globe. In the US, law enforcement, ICE and other deportation agents, and the jails and prisons work to remind people that this country was built on Indigenous land, on the backs of enslaved people, and that the prison industrial complex currently functions to maintain racial capitalism. We are reminded of this every time police kill another Black, Brown, and/or trans person in the streets. This country was founded on white supremacy and we must rise up with others around the world in an international movement to resist the fascism of both government and vigilantes. It’s time to take out the trash.
This is a community-wide call for each of us to perform critical community maintenance by removing fascists and white supremacists from our community. This will be a festival of resilience starting in Ohlone Park at 2pm going to MLK park for August 5, 2018. Featuring local artists, activists, musicians, comedians and everyday people. Our rally will send a clear message: “No hate in the Bay.”
#TrashtheFash #FashFreeBayArea
From shutitdowndc.org:
Mass Mobilization Against The Alt-Right in Washington DC, August 10-12 from Matt Brown on Vimeo.
We are calling all anti-fascists and people of good conscience to participate in international days of action August 10 through August 12 and a mass mobilization in Washington DC.
This is for Heather Heyer, ICE abolition, open borders, dismantling the prison industrial complex, and ending the settler colonial system. We will confront fascism, antisemitism, islamaphobia, white supremacy, and state violence on August 10-12.
Our lives were forever changed on August 12, 2017, when neo-Nazis, KKK and militia members, and Alt-Right trolls from across the US and North America converged on the town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
White supremacists lit torches and attacked students as young as 17 last year while the police looked on and did nothing. The next day, people bravely confronted hundreds of armed racists. In the ensuing confrontation, one person gave her life, and many more were scarred forever. Tens of thousands immediately took to the streets. Suddenly the world would never be the same.
Now the white supremacists want to come back. On August 12, 2018, the Alt-Right will hold “Unite the Right 2” in Washington DC in front of the White House at Lafayette Square. Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, and the Trump Adminstration are all implicated in the murder of Heather Heyer. The Alt-Right relentlessly harass and threaten people of color, women, sex workers, trans and non-binary people, and the undocumented.
Their rallies are all public displays of violence and calls for genocide. They are Brian Trainer and every killer cop. They are the ICE agents. They are the prison system that breaks up families. In Portland, DC, and Philly, the movement grows. We occupy ICE offices, confront racism, antisemitism, islamaphobia, xenophobia, and white nationalism.
Other Calls to Action
For the CrimethInc. international call to action
In Charlottesville: Community members are mobilizing to show that anti-racist, anti-fascist resistance continues regardless of whether Nazis actually show up. Join and support them on August 11-12.
Inside D.C.
Jason Kessler will find no rest, no refuge, no respite. Communities in DC will unite against hate, borders, prison, and the vision of Unite the Right.
Outside D.C.
If you can’t make it to Washington DC on August 10-12, take to the streets wherever you are. We call on our comrades to organize demonstrations and other actions for the night of August 12. Occupy an ICE office, shut down a police station, or demonstrate at the home of a local racist, ICE agent, or prison profiteer.
Outside the United States
If you are living outside the US, you can take action at US embassies, borders, or other symbols of colonial power. Our allegiance is not to “making America great again,” but to all of humanity and the planet.
Signed,
“Att röra sig i nazistiska kretsar har helt enkelt konsekvenser.” That’s Swedish for “Moving in Nazi circles simply as consequences.” It comes from the announcement from Anti Fascist Action (AFA) Research that the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) plans to have a rally in Stockholm on Aug. 25, which just so happenes to be the same day that the Strike Back Network – Defending Strike Rights will be in the streets as well protesting the government’s restrictions on striking workers. According to AFA, NMR will bring out Nazis and the like from Sweden and all over the Nordic Region to march on Kungsholmen, and the permit is for 30 to 30,000 persons. AFA will be out to document every last one of them that come out and plan to put them on blast in the future. So yeah, in Sweden, being a Nazi will have consequences.
During the Civil War, Tennessee was the last state in the Confederacy to vote for secession, Union soldiers from the south came from Tennessee more than any other state, and Johnson City, Tennessee in particular was a Union stronghold. One would not think that given its history of White supremacy since the war, up to and including now, and it definitely strikes funny how despite the fact that the latest Confederate monument came down at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, the White Supremacist League of the South decided to protest that and other monuments to their lost cause going on the trash heap 200 miles away in Johnson City!
In a statement on their website, LOSer President Michael Hill called for a rally in Johnson City, condemning Chapel Hill’s “radical leftist students, including elements of Antifa and Black Lives Matter” as well as “law enforcement standing around watching as these terrorists demolished public property with impunity.” Johnson City Manager Pete Peterson confirmed through a spokesperson that the group has expressed an intent to hold something there, and do not need a permit, although city staff has “had conversations with them about doing so in a location that will help us best ensure public safety.”
But when people come out to counter this group, dialogue might not be the order of the day. After all, the LOSers made a deal with Charlottesville, VA to essentially not come back after their participation in the violence of last year’s “Unite the Right” rally. And they also were good for attacking people in Shelbyville, TN when they held a rally there in November. Needless to say, Antifa is already sounding the alarm for this little event.
League of the South planning a rally in Johnson City, TN on September 29! Archived source: https://t.co/baC6lgw5pi LOSers don’t know the South stopped fucking around since October 1859 (at least). #FWS pic.twitter.com/zRUPw41LrU
— Stop the Next ‘Unite the Right’ (@stopthenextutr) August 21, 2018
More info as it develops.
When you want to defend the right to keep and bear arms but you keep working with neo-Fascists and people connected to White supremacists to do it, everything you do becomes about the fascism, not gun rights. That’s what Kent State Alum Kaitlin Bennett is about, attempting to sneak fascism into some light of respectability by hiding it behind the 2nd Amendment. And that is what she is going to do in September when she brings her Open Carry rally to her old campus. Now it’s a little hard to support this particular rally when she is bringing people to campus that actually run afoul of everyone else’s rights and have been about the will to take them away through their own violence. Among the speakers Bennett has announced have been Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer, who has spent the past year holding rallies in the Northwest that devolve into his group attacking people, often unprovoked (one of his rally participants, Jeremy Christian, later allegedly killed two men and injure a third when they tried to stop him from racially harassing two teenage girls on a train and is currently awaiting trial), Millie Weaver, a correspondent for Infowars, who founder is Alex Jones, a guy who keeps “predicting” a second civil war if we are successful in taking Donald Trump down, and Ryan Fournier, who counts White supremacist James Allsup among his friends and routinely rails against Hispanics and Muslims. So IF this rally goes down, that is what folks will be dealing with, not the open carry thing, since a lot of leftists despite what has been the case in the past actually don’t have a problem with that.
That IF is put out there for a reason though. Kent State has issued a statement saying that unless Bennett’s rally isn’t sponsored by University student group, they will not sanction it. “Kent State University has notified a recent graduate that she must cease and desist from advertising a planned rally on campus because she has not registered the event and obtained the approvals required by university policy,” the statement reads, also noting that counterdemonstrators also received the same communication. Kent State is not really big on boneheads coming to their campus to play games with it. Earlier this year, they shitcanned White supremacist Richard Spencer when he proposed a May 4 event, that date coinciding with the anniversary of Ohio National Guard shootings that killed four students during anti-war protests in 1970. But Bennett still plans to hold the event so it remains to be see if this Open Carry rally actually does happen on campus.
In the meantime, we strongly urge Kaitlin Bennett to start pulling away from the Nazis and Fascists if she truly believes in the freedoms she says she cherishes, otherwise, as said before, her advocacy for guns will be seen as nothing more than a smokescreen – that people who really believe in freedom will see right through.
From Ocean State Against Hate:
“Resist Marxism,” the fascist front group started by Kyle Chapman, has announced another rally for October 6th, despite being roundly rejected by the community at their last attempted event. We, a coalition of anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-LGBT, anti-fascist, socialist, labor, and community organizers, again urge our allies in the communities of Providence and the surrounding area to come and support our effort to frustrate these fascist hate groups’ attempts to organize.
Though “Resist Marxism’s” public materials avoid overtly racist language, they are full of fascist dog-whistles and chauvinism. Beneath this legitimizing veneer, fascists from various violent hate groups have been organizing and attempting to bring fascism to the mainstream. Groups joining together using “Resist Marxism” as a front include violent “western chauvinist” Proud Boys, American Guard, and “Boston Free Speech”. These groups are closely linked, both in their origins and memberships, with more openly racist, misogynist, anti-LGBT, and anti-immigrant hate groups. Members of their group have been photographed with Nazi and fascist tattoos, and some have long histories in the white nationalist or anti-immigrant movements.
In the lead-up to the rally being held by fascist front group “Resist Marxism”, OSAH has become aware of a crowdfunding effort by Proud Boys affiliates Tusitala “Tiny” Toese and Rufio Panman to fly to Rhode Island in order to join “Resist Marxism” in terrorizing Providence and our surrounding communities. These two fascists have histories of violence and we can only imagine that they are being brought in as “muscle”. Since their first Providence rally was disrupted, we can only look at this as a provocation and an attempt to escalate the violence that fascist groups always cause. Two more fascists, no matter how big and prone to violence, will not change the result for the fascists: the united working class of Providence and our allies will not brook further fascist incursions into our communities, and we will not allow violent fascists to victimize us or organize among us.
Tusitala “Tiny Toese is a Proud Boy who has been active in the Patriot Prayer movement, mostly on the west coast. He has a record of extreme misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and assault, and associates with white nationalists. He is ethnically Samoan, and has used this to provide cover for the extreme racist beliefs of hate groups that organize alongside and within Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer.
Ethan Nordean, aka “Rufio Panman”, of Salem, OR, is likewise an active Proud Boy with a violent record. He has been videotaped assaulting people at demonstrations, and has been interviewed, publicizing these crimes, by far-right media personalities like Alex Jones.
Both of these fascists have documented histories of violence. They have no reason to be in Rhode Island other than to commit more acts of violence against our communities. It bears repeating: these obvious provocations and indications that the fascists want to escalate violence in Rhode Island are a clear and present danger to our communities, especially people of color, women, LGTB people, Jewish and Muslim people, immigrants, and the poor and working class. Given the state’s complicity in upholding systemic white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, imperialism, and patriarchy, we know that we cannot count on its agents to protect us (and in fact they often work with the fascists, either complementarily or directly), so we reserve the right to defend ourselves and our communities, by any means necessary.
Fascist organizing is violent. White nationalist attacks have been on the increase for years, as have other hate crimes by fascists. We do not intend to be victimized by fascists, whether they wear swastikas, blue masks, or black and yellow polo shirts, or whether they hide in plain sight. We encourage anyone opposed to fascists and the dangerous rise in fascist organizations locally and across the world, to join us in shutting down this fascist rally.
We urge all community members who join us on October 6th to refrain from collaborating with law enforcement either before or on the day of the counter-protest. Police are not our friend, they are not here to protect us, and they will attempt to prevent the community from defending itself.
Fascism is an existential threat to already oppressed and targeted communities. To oppose this threat, we must reject and oppose all its facets:
- White supremacy in all its forms
- Misogyny and violence against women (including trans women) in all its forms
- Violence against immigrants and workers in all its forms
- Capitalist imperialism in all its forms
- Settler-colonialism in all its forms
- Directly affected communities must always be at the forefront of all aspects of our political work, including anti-fascism.
- Fascism cannot be debated, it cannot be coddled; it must be smashed aggressively and efficiently. A community’s ability to defend itself, by any means necessary, is crucial to combat fascism.