5/3 Protest Report

I. HATE. NAZIS.

I hope if you protested today you also went home safe. Please ignore the reversed video and timestamps. I’m still working out issues with this cheap ass camera. Trigger warning: Several slurs in here uttered by a Nazi today. Also, do I need to cuss in my writing? No. But it is cathartic, it makes a point, and it provides nuance.

Pictured above is the beautiful downtown square where my wife and I got re-married last year. It was a beautiful day today. With a pack full of radios and other gear, my son and I went to help protest fascism. If you haven’t read my other posts on the subject, I’m in an antifa collective, and we provide security and support for these things so people can do it safely. We keep agitators away as much as possible, and we bring in supplies like bottled water, a medic, and other things. While there we also sign up folks for anti-racism classes and such, since are trying to build a better community.

In that vein, we collected $107 and some food for our local domestic violence shelter, Casa Marion. Here is the video of us counting the cash near the end of the protest, although the body camera didn’t catch a lot. It did get the total, and I’ve also linked the report with screenshot showing the donation made today. Thanks so much to everyone who donated. We also got money for water for the next protest. A link to a post about the food we collected as well.

We had between 450-500 people show up today at the peak attendance. Good stuff again, especially for a smaller town in a county that is overwhelmingly red. We even had some folks drive down from Citrus County to join us. We had a woman from a state-wide organization join us - she travels all over doing this. I again saw other veterans besides me there. It was a pretty good turnout, especially on the heels of the May Day protests that happened. (Sadly, I was with Dad at his chemotherapy apointment that day, so I didn’t make that one.)

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Just like the last few reports, we had a TON of support from the passerby. I saw a few middle fingers and quite a few thumbs down from folks, but almost everyone who engaged with us by honking the horn or by gesture was for us. Thumbs up, raised fist, etc. I found it funny, one silly lady drove by filming us, which was fine, but she was yelling at us from inside her car. With the windows rolled up, so we couldn’t hear anything she was saying. Whatever.

Our first agitators were two women Trump supporters. Several people yelled at them that he was a rapist. One woman kept saying “Give me a name! Give me a name of one woman he raped!” Does she not watch the news? Doesn’t he owe E. Jean Carroll tens of millions of dollars for raping her? Even if we gave her the name of every woman and girl he ever assaulted and raped, she would still deny it. She wasn’t there to engage in good faith. Here she is filming some of the protestors. She is being friendly, even though she is taking pictures to put on social media to make fun of us later. Ok, fine. First Amendment and all that - I don’t interfere.

So we did what we always do. Followed them around, kept them from engaging with the protestors as much as possible, and they eventually left. She was not there to have a debate, at all. She filmed a few people and made fun of them, but ultimately the two of them left because once again, they have no real conviction in the GOP. All they have is hate and delusion. She left after I finally spoke up to her as shown here. She threw up her hands and it was over.

Then we got one who was wanting a debate. Someone grabbed me and told me a discussion was getting heated, so I went over. I found a gentlmen having a conversation with a guy who described himself as a Libertarian. It stayed friendly, we had a discussion. Then Eric (an antifa I met here) came over and yelled Trump was a rapist and that ended that - he left. At least he was engaging in good faith. I tried to tell Eric at least he was engaging in good faith, but he wasn’t having it. I don’t even care if a Trumper wants to come have a calm, rational discussion, but they never do. The occasional “Trump voter” will, but the hardcore MAGA don’t want that.

We had a couple of false alarms with folks who looked like agitators but were just passing by. I had to yell at people for not getting out of the damn road for traffic. Believe me - I WANT to shut shit down, but we need 2,000 or 3,000 at that location to shut down the roads and provoke a response from the state. But the other thing is this - fucking Ron “Puddin” Desantis signed a law that lets people in Florida run us over if we block the road. I don’t want to invite that. We would need 100 or more black bloc antifa to carry out a mass disruption like that, and we don’t have that either. Maybe one day. But an action like that is almost certainly going to provoke some Rambo asshole to shoot at us or run us over. So for now, we disrupt but only to a point.

Then we had our first Nazi. (Sadly, the camera saw none of it, even though I did. I can’t find it in the tons of video I have.) He was a passenger at the red light, looking at some old lady protestors and holding up his right fist. It was covered in some of the Norse rune tattoos the Nazis have stolen for their vile beliefs. But he wasn’t saying shit, because again, Nazis are cowards. They left without a problem, and then for me as security, it was pretty damn boring for a while. Then it wasn’t.

Here’s me talking to protestors, telling one of our team about the tattoo guy, and yelling at people in the road.

About halfway through the protest, another Nazi showed up. We dealt with him for the next two hours. Dude is covered in prison ink, was yelling “White Power” and showing off his racist tats. Eric, the antifa from earlier, wasn’t having it. He was in his face, trying to get it going. I don’t blame him. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, and Eric wanted a reason to make a good one. I get it. I fucking hate them too. But we can’t start it. We chased him off once, just by following him around as a group and not engaging. Except for Eric, who kept going at him. I was pretty keyed up, but didn’t say a lot to him.

He came through our lines over and over. He got up on the gazebo and twerked, while filming himself talking to Trump, talking about how he was “Out here fighting for you!” He showed off his many Nazi prison tattoos. He yelled “White Power” and called us all “faggots” “trannies” “commies” and some other shit. It was pretty henious. He threatened to call the cops on a guy and flipped out when some water “accidentally” got tossed on him by a protester as he was walking through our line. That made me laugh.

Here are some videos, including us chasing him off for the final time. Eric is the guy in the hat and kilt with the flag, and he is fucking hysterical. He does make it hard to do my job though, but again, I get the hate for them. Chris is amazing. He leads the charge 90% of the time, and I let him. He has a lot more experience than I do dealing with these people and protesting and all that, but I definitely have his fucking back.

All this talk about color and disrespect is both white supremacist talk and prison talk. My son said one of the first things he noticed about this guy was the way he strutted - like he was King Shit of Turd Mountain. A lot of convicts and gang members walk around like that. Projecting false bravado. He chastised us for have six to his one, but I promise you, if he and his homies caught a Black person or a gay person 6-1 they wouldn’t hesitate to fuck them up. So yeah, we will be 6-1 to keep everyone safe. We didn’t jump you. We could have. And the six of us would have defended each other and the protestors if we had to. But like I keep saying, ODA is a non-violent anti-fascist movement. That also doesn’t mean we are pacifist monks or something.

As we are escorting him out of the park, he saw my son recording him. (I guess he didn’t see several of us had body cameras. Lol.) He tried to get in my son’s face and I thought I was going to have to fight this guy. I jumped between my son and this asshole while my antifa bros had my back. You can see he tried to “juke” me into throwing a punch like a bitch. Like I’ve said before, these people have no real convictions. Just hate.

Since he is worried about being recorded, PLEASE HELP ME MAKE HIM FAMOUS! Make this cocksucker famous so he can get all of the attention he wants. Fuck him. (And Mr. Nazi, if you are reading this, from the bottom of my heart - deeply and sincerely - FUCK YOU.)

He left for the second time and we figured it was over. The protest was also winding up, and a few women were headed that general direction that he walked off in, so we offered to walk them to their cars since he had been harassing protestors as well as engaging with us. As the three of us walked them to their car, we spot the Nazi a block up. He is circling back around the block to come through the ranks of the last 20 or so protestors left. As soon as he sees us, he throws his arms up and starts to yell. Then two Ocala Police Department units rolled up fast. Turns out one of the other organizers called the cops. I had a brief glimmer of hope this would end with him in jail for something.

I should mention at this point that every time this guy was on the square, the cops weren’t nearby. The patrol unit would leave, and he would show up. Likely just a conincidence, but as Rage Against the Machine says, “Some of those who work forces are the same who burn crosses.” Also, there were no uniformed cops on the square itself today, and no undercovers either, and those clowns stick out like a sore thumb. So who knows.

What I know is this - those cops talked to him for about 15 minutes while Chris and I stood by and watched. We thought maybe the cops would come talk to us - it was obvious we had been engaged with this Nazi when they rolled up, but they never did. They had a friendly chat with this asshole, laughing and such, then SHOOK HIS FUCKING HAND (both cops did) and let him leave.

They probably recognized him from the last Klan meeting. And they are cops - they know what his ink was. That know what HE was. They had to know he wasn’t the good guy here, especially since we called them, not him, even though he said he would at least six times.

Marion County fucking sucks. We have the KKK here. We have J6’ers here. We have Oathkeepers and Proud Boys here. Three percenter’s. We have your generic Nazi asshole like the guys described here. But you know what else we have? People of color. Immigrants. Queer people. Socialists. Communists. Pacificsts. Lefty veterans like me. Conservatives who didn’t want Trump, and some who regret their vote. And we are not putting up with this shit.

Fuck Trump. Fuck the GOP. Fuck the local pigs, ACAB. 161.

I’ll see y’all on 5/17.

#22ADay #Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

If you enjoy my writing, please help me support the cause and make a donation - Buy Me a Coffee! I bought radios and SD cards for the body camera with earlier donations. Thank you!