The conservative group abruptly cancelled plans for their free speech march and rally despite having received a legal permit from the National Park Service to hold in Crissy Field near the Golden Gate Bridge.
“What you’re seeing here is a perfect example of the systemic oppression people of right wing thought and ideology have faced within these liberal enclaves,” said Kyle Chapman, organiser. “The left has always been violent and oppressive and since Charlottesville that violence and oppression has been emboldened,” Chapman told USA Today.
Joey Gibson, co-organiser said during the same interview that liberals won’t disavow the violent hard-left groups that have come to be called Antifa, for anti-fascist. Politicians won’t speak out against them, he said. “They’re using them as tools and they’re afraid to speak out against them because they don’t want the blowback,” he said. “You cannot allow these extremists run around unopposed. It’s ridiculous.”
Gibson said the rally was cancelled due to concerns over possible violence. They complained that their conservative group had been unfairly pegged as “white supremicists”.
Democratic House minority leader and San Francisco congressional representative Nancy Pelosi and mayor Ed Lee, unsuccessfully pressured the National Park Service to deny the group a permit for the rally. Pelosi had called the group “white supremacist”.
Gibson has denounced white supremacy and neo-Nazis, while the counter-protesters have not denounced violent Antifa members. Characterisations of all conservatives as neo-Nazis and white supremacists amounted to a “smear campaign”, the organisers said.
“In our opinion,” said Gibson, mixing the two adversaries “it seems like it would have been a huge riot” because of the smear campaign led by elected Democratic officials.
“Intermingling of protesters and rally-goers would be a horrible horrible idea,” Patriot Prayer member Gabriel Silva concurred. “It would lead to nothing but casualties.”
Black Patriot Prayer supporter Will Johnson, who had earlier said that the group was not racist, said Antifa posed a real threat. “We’ve been told that Antifa ISIS members are on their way here. So you might want to clear out unless you want to be here for that violence,” he said.
The city had called in all police officers remain on duty for Saturday in anticipation of possible violence. On Friday, city and National Park Department staff blocked off much of Chrissy Field and planned a massive security effort to keep protesters and counter protesters from clashing.
“I just had this image of alt-right people stomping around in the poop,” Tuffy Tuffington said about his Antifa poo plan to carpet Chrissy Field with excrement. “It seemed like a little bit of civil disobedience where we didn’t have to engage with them face to face.”
Leftist dog owners of San Francisco responded in declaring their intention to stockpile their poo piles for days in advance, then deliver them in bags for the site. The poo group wanted to reconvene on Sunday to “hug each other” at the poo site. But many Antifa supporters were not feeling friendly.
“You have a significant number of people who would like to go and punch Nazis, and then you have people who think they should be entirely ignored,” said veteran labor and LGBTQ rights activist Cleve Jones. “In between you have all sorts of creative and crazy ideas. I kind of like that.”
He is raising money for ten local organisations that reflect the diversity of San Francisco, including the Transgender Law Center, Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund, and Muslim Advocates. A fundraising effort has been launched by Jewish Bar Association of San Francisco, which has raised more than $100 000 for the the Southern Poverty Law Center under the banner “Adopt-a-Nazi”.
I hope no one reports on this video of San Fran Antifa mobbing a journalist, stealing his phone, & laughing at him. pic.twitter.com/Xx3VxkFhu3
— Beverly Hills Antifa (@BevHillsAntifa) August 26, 2017
On 19 August leftist protesters rallied to stop a small handful of conservative activists who held a “Free Speech Rally” in Boston.