SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: City leaders must act before Antifa turns Seattle into Portland

Dec 3, 2018, 3:21 PM

A man with Conservative group Patriot Prayer was injured -- cut on his face -- by Antifa protesters...

A man with Conservative group Patriot Prayer was injured -- cut on his face -- by Antifa protesters at an August 2018 rally in Seattle. (Jason Rantz, KTTH Radio)

(Jason Rantz, KTTH Radio)

This story has been largely ignored by the mainstream media in town, but it could very well be one of the more shocking stories of the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, Antifa had a protest, not in Portland as usual, but here at home, downtown Seattle. A mob of about 150 people were blocking sidewalks downtown in protest of Trump and his immigration policies.

We’ve seen what has happened in Portland, where things have gotten violent, and sometimes dangerous. Antifa has taken over the streets of Portland because the police and mayor have shown incredible weakness in protecting the citizens. You may recall the audio we played a few weeks ago where Antifa blocked the streets; one driver drove down a blocked streets anyway, an Antifa member jumped on his car, and then Antifa mobsters chased the driver down the street, smashing the car with their weapons.

They have taken over Portland. And we are dangerously close to them attempting to do the same thing here in Seattle.

RELATED: Media treatment of Antifa is proof the left has gone nuts

The group that was behind the march is a Seattle socialist group that is also hosting an upcoming open borders rally. They want all illegal immigrants to be able to come into this country unimpeded.

Here are some of the things that Antifa was yelling on Saturday:

  • “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”
  • “All day, all night, shut down the alt-right.”
  • “Racist, sexist, anti-gay; far-right bigots go away.”
  • “Nazis go home, Nazis go home.”

There is one guy named Andy Ngo who is based in Portland and has chronicled the rise of Antifa there. Andy Ngo has a YouTube channel and will go downtown and record the Antifa mobs, to capture the violent rhetoric that they use.

At one point in Seattle on Saturday, Antifa had blocked off a sidewalk. Several of the Antifa people were armed with semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s. They were standing there like a militia. Is that illegal? No. But impeding other people’s ability to walk down the sidewalk is illegal.

Andy asked these masked Antifa guys if he could walk down the sidewalk, and they told him no. One Antifa guy came up to him and observed that Andy is of Asian descent. He told Andy that he should not be helping out the “enemy” that has oppressed his own ancestors, and warned him that he could die if he keeps recording Antifa at rallies.

Some of us didn’t really come to talk, some of us really come [sic] to die, dude. Are you willing to die for your YouTube [expletive]? Because that’s what’s gonna come, that’s what’s coming to you, dude … And you spying and doing this punk [expletive] is gonna get you … hurt.

All of the violence, all of the words that were so hateful, were coming from the Antifa people. One woman came up to Andy and screamed with a bullhorn into his ear, which he said caused him physical pain. And yet, here is what a Seattle police officer told Andy.

You are inciting conflict and we’re going to take some action to remove you from the area … If you want to protest, you have the absolute right to exercise your First Amendment rights. You have a right to be where you want to be, to a certain extent.

Again, every member of Antifa has a phone that they are using to record Andy. But a cop is telling Andy that he is inciting conflict, just by his presence. The cop tells him that if he wants to protest, he has a right. So if he wants to scream and protest and block sidewalks, he has a right, but if he wants to chronicle what Antifa is saying, he has no rights. He only has the right to be where he wants to be to “a certain extent.” I didn’t realize that we only had the right to be in public areas to “a certain extent.”

Andy wasn’t being violent. He was being a citizen journalist. He is protected by the First Amendment. And I didn’t see any local TV stations covering what happened Saturday afternoon downtown Seattle. So the only person covering this and providing the information to the public was this citizen journalist.

RELATED: When will Antifa notice they are the real fascists? 

We talked off-air with the Seattle police, who said that they didn’t want to give Antifa more attention than they deserve, and were happy with how the police handled it. I respect that that is their position. But, I want to make sure that we know that the cops are telling the person who is just chronicling what the mob is doing that he doesn’t have a right to be there.

I support the right of Antifa or anybody else to protest in public spaces. But they can’t block public sidewalks, and they can’t tell citizens that they, Antifa, have taken control of the streets. And the cops were essentially protecting Antifa and telling a First Amendment-protected citizen journalist that he only had the right to be where he wanted to “a certain extent,” and was inciting violence by virtue of his presence.

We’re getting to scary times here. When you allow a mob to think they own the streets, it becomes a problem that is only going to escalate. And all of this was on a Saturday in December, when a lot of families are downtown Christmas shopping and doing festive activities.

I cannot understand how we have allowed things to descend to the depth that they are at right now. But once again, it is a lack of leadership from the city council and the mayor. We are in danger of losing control of this city. The drug addicts have escalated crime to a shocking level. Antifa sees that this area is ripe for the picking, just as Portland has been. And at some point, sometime, when they’re blocking a street, somebody is going to get so upset that there could be some real mayhem.

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Dori: City leaders must act before Antifa turns Seattle into Portland