Tim Gionet and Jake Ott displaying a hand-sign that is ‘totally not white supremacist’… except that white supremacists keep making it, to try to prove they aren’t white supremacist.
White supremacists often try to hide their racism, because their aborrent ideologies cause the communities in which they live to rise up against them. While it will surprise few people that racists are also often liars, it is important to not let the misdirections distract us from their true aims.
UPDATE: Joey Gibson has been fired! Summa has confirmed to us that Joey Gibson has been terminated. We sincerely applaud their quick response to the situation, and their commitment to keeping white supremacists out of our community.
Joey Gibson (aka Patriot Prayer) and his group of street brawlers (recently renamed as American Freedom Warriors) are known throughout the Portland metro area for organizing rallies attended by white supremacists, Nazis, and bigots.
On June 4th in Terry Schrunk Park in downtown Portland, Joey Gibson, his newly-minted Warriors for Freedom group, and a couple hundred “Trump Free Speech Rally” attendees found themselves surrounded by thousands of local antifascists and their supporters. After white supremacist Jeremy Christian, who had attended one of Gibson’s recent rallies, allegedly murdered two people and critically injured a third aboard a MAX train on May 26th, a widespread movement against Gibson’s activities grew, opposing these opportunties for racists to gather and condeming the disingenuous veneer of defending “free speech.
The last year has seen a lot of strange political occurrences, but perhaps none more bizarre than the rise of Joey Gibson. Gibson runs a conservative Christian video podcast, which itself is unnotable. However, Gibson himself has become a central figure in a new organization of violent street fighters, who go by the hard-to-take-serious name “Warriors for Freedom” (WFF).
This group has come together from a number of sources. Some members are part of the Trump supporter milieu, others are part of a patriotic motorcycle gang.
On Friday May 26th, a man on Portland public transit was reported to have yelled Islamophobic hate speech at two women, one in a hijab. He was confronted by other passengers, and now two of these people are dead, and another is in the hospital. White supremacist Jeremy Christian was arrested for the attack. Christian is well-known to anti-fascist activists in Portland, because he was recently seen at one of Joey Gibson’s free speech rallies.
The event organizers would like to make a clear statement on the strategy and tactics of the June 4th event.
We believe that a broad coalition response is necessary to combat this particular extreme right alliance. The composition of this grouping, with explicit white nationalists embedded in a larger sphere of various crypto-fascist and far-right parties, makes this trickier to address than a simple “white power” march. We would like to focus on highlighting the overt white supremacists in attendance.
Stand United Against Fascism Rally, June 4, 12pm, Chapman Square.
On Sunday, June 4th, Warriors for Freedom LLC, a for-profit, far-right group centered in Vancouver, WA, is holding a rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza. The rally is being billed as a “Free Speech Rally,” but prior incarnations of these rallies have included acts of harassment, white supremacist proselytization, and created a climate of fear among our most vulnerable communities, while providing opportunities for racists to network and normalize their genocidal world view.
While we hate saying “we told you so” when it comes to White Supremacist organizing, Rose City Antifa and other community groups warned that White Supremacists were using the 4⁄29 “Free Speech” rally organized by Joey Gibson as a cover to organize in public, and they did.
Before April 29th, activists warned that the Hell Shaking Street Preachers, a group of local violent bigots that travel the country attempting to kick in the heads of protesters, including members Pucket Allen, Arcadio Pena, Blake Sheely, and Quincy Anatello would be there.
Earlier this week, a Facebook page called the Portland Maoist Group published a flyer purporting to be about Pacific Northwest White Supremacist groups, and listed Rose City Antifa’s email as a contact. While we appreciate the widespread enthusiasm for organizing against White Supremacy in our community, this flyer contained inaccurate information about “White Supremacist Hangouts.” Rose City Antifa was not involved with making this flyer, nor were we consulted about our name and contact info being used on the flyer.
Social and traditional media has been foaming at the mouth since the announcement that the 82nd Avenue of the Roses Parade was canceled, at the behest of its organizing group, The 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association. But in the midst of the controversy, Rose City Antifa would like to make some facts clear:
One anonymous and absurd email making unclear threats of disruption, disavowed by the primary activist group planning to protest a group participating the parade, was the only source of the “threat of violence” cited as reason for cancelling the entire parade.
