Both Sides Gear Up for a Weekend of Protests in San Francisco
Updated: Aug 25, 2017 8:26 PM ET | Originally published: Aug 24, 2017
Update: The "free speech" rally planned for Saturday has been cancelled. Read more here.
Residents
of San Francisco are bracing for thousands to descend on the city's
streets this weekend — and hoping that there will not be violence. Weeks
after a deadly confrontation between white nationalists and
counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va., right-wing organizers are hosting a "free speech" event near the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, and left-wing organizers have planned more than a dozen events around the city in response.
Though
the organizers of the "free speech" event have disavowed white
nationalism and say their intention is to gather peacefully, many fear
that neo-Nazis will show up, a specter that has sent San Francisco's
progressive activists into overdrive. "People are very alarmed by what's
going on in the country," says longtime activist Cleve Jones, a
well-known figure in the gay rights movement. "I have never seen the
level of activity that I’ve seen over the last year.”
On
Wednesday, the National Park Service issued a finalized permit for the
"free speech" rally to a right wing group known as Patriot Prayer,
allowing the event planned for Crissy Field
to go forward. The expanse that runs along the city's northern shore is
federal land, and the park service said that after consulting with
their law enforcement arm, as well as the San Francisco Police
Department, the decision was made to issue a permit "to promote the
peaceful, non-violent expression of views."
The
permit also came with conditions: not only will firearms be banned
(normally concealed carry laws allow them in the area) but ralliers will
not be allowed to bring anything that might be used as a weapon —
pepper spray, drones, shields, bats, selfie sticks, as well as other items.
City
officials do not have estimates for how many people might show up. But
grassroots organizers believe there could be as many as 50,000 people in
attendance this weekend, the vast majority taking part in
counter-demonstrations that range from a musical celebration in Civic
Center to a "mobile dance party" to the formation of a 100-foot "human
heart" on Ocean Beach. Another right-wing rally planned for Sunday in
Berkeley is expected to draw additional crowds from both sides.
Joey
Gibson is the man behind Patriot Prayer (which he says is an "ideology"
more than a group). His guess is also that the people at his rally will
be vastly outnumbered by counter-protestors, and it's an educated one:
The 33-year-old from Portland, Ore., has organized about a dozen similar
events in the last several months.
Though
they began as pro-Trump rallies, Gibson says he's left issues of "who
you vote for" behind and is now focused on the belief that the First
Amendment is being threatened by people who are intolerant of any
viewpoints that don't match their own, on the left and the right.
"People have a right to say whatever they want," says Gibson. "Hate
speech is free speech ... Everyone has a right to be hateful.
Unfortunately it’s not good for our society. But there is no debate, the
law is the law.”
While he has publicly disavowed white supremacy and racism, Gibson also casts anti-fascist organizers known as antifa
as one of the enemies of free speech — a belief that many white
nationalists share. He acknowledges that individuals with extreme views
have been attracted to his events in the past and that part of the
intention of hosting an event in San Francisco is to show how "extremely
intolerant" such liberal cities can be.
"There’s
a lot people who disagree with the culture but they’re too afraid to
stand up to it because they get called names, they get called Nazis,
racists,” he says. There are people in cities like San Francisco who
have "a meltdown when I’m sending a good message ... they’re going to
get triggered and they freak out. That stuff gets on film and we send
that film out so the country can see, they can see the insanity.” Such
statements give credence to the notion that these rallies are being held
to provoke the left, even if Gibson has spoken often about love and
peace.
While
officials are working to keep opposing groups far apart from each
other, hoping the weekend ends without serious injuries as recent gatherings in Boston did, many expect extremists on the right and left to clash. Local lawmaker Mark Farrell, a driving force behind a "Peace, Love and Understanding" rally
being hosted in the city's Civic Center, says his intention is to draw
counter-protestors far from Crissy Field so that people can "celebrate
our spirit in San Francisco in a way that does not give them any
oxygen."
Like other city officials,
Farrell has cast the Patriot Prayer event as a "Nazi rally" that will
be catnip for white supremacists. When asked what he thinks of Gibson's
statements about opposing such groups and promising to turn them away,
he says, "I don't buy what they are selling for a minute."
His
office oversees the area of the city that abuts Crissy Field and has
been dealing with an influx of phone calls and emails from residents who
are "angry and frightened," he says. “We want to do everything possible
to encourage people not to show up at the event.”
Local
organizers have been grappling with how to balance safety and the
desire that residents in San Francisco have to make a statement about
their beliefs. On a recent conference call, organizers from several
groups swapped tips about how to maintain non-violence and traded ideas
about what form protest should take.
Some of those ideas were high-minded, like setting up a website
where people can, from the comfort of their homes, donate to groups
that have missions antithetical to neo-Nazis. Others were lower brow,
like taking dogs to poop en masse in Crissy Field before the rally was
supposed to start. A suggestion to throw glitter on the rally's speakers
was scrapped when someone pointed out that the glitter might hurt the
"sensitive environmental habitat" in the area.
One
of the people on that call was Megan Rohrer, a Lutheran pastor and
volunteer chaplain for the SFPD. Rohrer, who uses the pronoun they,
says some people also imagined unfurling a giant rainbow flag from the
Golden Gate Bridge, which will be the backdrop for the "free speech"
event.
Rohrer
acknowledges that "there might be people who want to go there to have a
violent encounter.” Many expect anti-fascist groups to meet the
ralliers head on. But Rohrer also hopes people will attend a march from
the city's Castro district to Civic Center instead. “The more we can
feed people sandwiches rather than an adrenaline," they say, "the better
our chances for keeping peace.”