[Peace-discuss] Montana Wobblies, Antifa Out-Organize Nazis

Tue Oct 10 16:09:26 UTC 2017

Montana Wobblies, Antifa Out-Organize Nazis 

Submitted on Mon, 01/30/2017 - 3:20pm

Description:
https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Whitefishgroupphoto-1.jp
g

Re-posted from
<https://itsgoingdown.org/knocking-richard-spencers-door-montana-antifa-orga
nizes-nazis/> Its Going Down

>From When Andrew Anglin issued his call for an armed rally against the
Jewish residents of Whitefish a month ago the working-class militants,
radical leftists and antifascists of western Montana didn't waste any time
in organizing a response. We have fought against multiple fascist attempts
to make inroads into our state, some of which completely flopped (such as
the National Alliance's move on Bozeman in 2004-5) and others of which have
had some success before floundering, such as April Gaede's Pioneer Little
Europe (which keeps its head down as far as openly organizing these days,
but still moves the occasional Nazi into the Kalispell area to build a white
supremacist "intentional community"). Determined to not let another group of
goose stepping boneheads terrorize our neighbors and try to define our area,
leftists and veterans of past antifascist struggles soon started meeting to
discuss what to do. Before the new year, members of the Missoula IWW General
Membership Branch, the Queer Insurrection Unit (QIU) and the Alliance for
Intersectional Power (AIP) had already agreed to form an action-based
coalition and set to hashing out the details.

About a week before the proposed date for the rally Anglin canceled,
claiming the city was putting "unreasonable demands" on the march. We
decided to not let our guard down. While a permit would be legally required
to take the street, the Nazis could still legally march - armed or not- down
the sidewalk; we were not confident the cancellation wasn't a diversion.
Figuring that it's best not to trust the word of fascists and that heading
up to pre-empt them would be good practice for a later rally, we kept
planning. There were respectful debates about how to best present a militant
response to an open fascist threat without further endangering ourselves or
the residents of Whitefish. Some initial plans were tabled and others were
greatly modified, all with a view towards being able to decisively defend
ourselves and others from fascist violence. We decided to group up for
travel in case any vehicles broke down or any Nazis tried to waylay us on
the road back to Missoula (a tactic which an AIP organizer had seen deployed
against them in an unrelated campaign). We finalized our tactics and
strategy at a meeting the night of the fifteenth, when we chose a rally spot
outside of town and people decided which rides to take and who to ride with.

The vehicles turned out to the agreed upon meetup point early the next
morning, resolved some last-minute confusion and headed north over Evaro
Hill around sunrise. Among other precautionary measures we drove in a tight
convoy and kept in radio contact, managing to make it to Whitefish in less
than three hours - in spite of the icy roads and constant fog we came into
around Saint Ig. Once in town we had a quick planning session and decided to
split up to comb for any Nazi presence on the streets of Whitefish and then
meet back up after 1 PM. One group saw a couple of suspicious characters
glaring from a blue pickup who were spotted again downtown shortly before we
left later that day. Another team scoped out the 22 Lupfer Avenue building,
owned by Richard Spencer's mother, which seemed fairly unoccupied and closed
for business, and found a pretty entertaining anti-Spencer flier posted by
an unknown Whitefisher nearby. There was one unconfirmed Spencer sighting,
likely a case of mistaken identity as Richie Rich was probably in DC
preparing for his now famous punching bag impersonation.

At 1:30, we met back up at the parking lot and were approached by a
plainclothes cop asking about the nature of our gathering and where we were
from. Our appointed police liaison kept the chat short, affirming only that
most of us were from Missoula and we were antifascists and not Nazis - a
fact which the officer seemed fairly aware of before even asking. After the
cop left, we grabbed some signs and made our way to Depot Park on the north
end of downtown. Many townsfolk on the street stared reservedly until they
could make out our signs and banners and then thew thumbs up, cracked wide
grins and thanked us for turning out. "Oh man, here we were hearing about
some group showing up, glad to see it's the good guys!" Said one person
outside of a cafe on Central. A motorist in a black pickup yelled "love
trumps hate!" at us as he drove past, still under the impression we were the
Nazis. This same person later approached us, embarrassed about his mistake
and said he hoped we would come back if Anglin made good on his threat (and
as we told him, yes, without hesitation, we will).

By the time we made it to Depot Park, the news that we were an assembly
against a Nazi run on Whitefish had spread through the town and we received
honks of approval, thumbs up and raised fists from drivers and pedestrians
alike as we set up on the corner in front of the Parks and Recreation
office. There were several residents who approached IWW/GDC members
expressing their appreciation that our union, which is a prominent fixture
in the history of Montana, was standing with them against the fascist
outsiders. One older gentleman even mentioned that his father had been a
Wobbly and now he was considering joining up. Another approached us slowly
in his truck, mean-mugging out the window and yelled out to us "yeah,
they're all a bunch of cowards, didn't even show! Good to see you out here.
My old special forces buddies and I have been out all morning looking for
them!"

It soon became apparent that if any Nazis were around they didn't think it
was a good day to poke their heads up and we decided to unload some cooking
implements and a PA system from one of our vehicles. We set to making a few
pots of strong coffee and talking with some of the locals, all of whom
expressed their approval of our visit. A group of volunteers from the
National Lawyers' Guild showed up to observe and a few members of the
various groups traded contact information with them. It's worth mentioning
that the whole time we were on the street, Whitefish Police Department
vehicles circuited through the area and monitored our presence.

Around 4 PM we took a group photo and decided to head to the corner of 2nd
and Central, a few blocks down from the park. We set up the PA as some folks
from the town prepared a table from which to distribute matzo ball soup.
Both people from the community and our own groups both spoke, one speech
went long and the cops tellingly decided to unplug the PA sometime after the
speaker brought up issues of police brutality. The tension between parties
in our group and the police peaked at this moment but luckily didn't
escalate any further as cups of piping hot matzo ball soup were passed
around, a welcome treat on a five degree day. Finally an indigenous
organizer, activist and artist who brought some folks out from Washington
with him sang unamplified and gave our rally's last speech. The sun set as
we made our way back to our vehicles and reassembled our convoy back to
Missoula. Although there was some concern we'd landed on the local cops'
shit list (which wasn't alleviated by the officer in an unmarked truck who
pacing us in the left lane for about five miles as we departed) we did not
meet with any considerable police harassment. After another icy three hour
trek we found ourselves back home in Missoula.

Our experience in Whitefish was hugely positive, but upon later reflection
there were a few things some of us feel we could have done better. Mainly,
some of us feel that staying masked up after it was clear the Nazis were a
no-show may have left a bad impression on some of the locals, while many
still feel it was a good idea given the skill many fascists have shown with
face search and doxxing technology, not to mention the high probability that
members of April Gaede's Pioneer Little Europe group may have been skulking
around trying to gather intel on area antifascists. There were multiple
shady figures casing us at various points in the day and this is fine; they
saw our numbers, our power and whose home this is. It was necessary to show
the world that western Montana is not fertile ground for fascist growth,
even in spite of a few weeds we occasionally have to pull up. There remains
a good deal of skepticism that the con-man Anglin will ever make good on his
threat, but given the success of our trial run we will be more than ready
for him if he does, and undoubtedly in even greater numbers.

Description:
https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/0116171605-1024x768.jpg

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20171010/044767b3/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 45153 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20171010/044767b3/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 34480 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20171010/044767b3/attachment-0003.jpg>