.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
A man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at a Washington state immigration jail early Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.
The Tacoma Police Department said the officers responded at about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, in Tacoma, Washington, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.
The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.
Roads leading to Washington’s Tacoma Northwest Detention Center were closed Saturday after police shot at a man carrying a rifle, who also threw incendiary devices at the center
The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention center, police spokesman Loretta Cool said. She said another rally was planned for later Saturday, but it would have to be held in a different area because of the investigation into the police shooting.
Police said officers called out to the man, and shots were fired.
Cool said all four officers fired their weapons, but she didn’t have specific details of what took place. She said the officers weren’t wearing body cameras, but the area is covered by surveillance cameras from the detention center. She said she didn’t know if the man fired at the officers.
The incident occurred six hours after a peaceful demonstration outside the detention center. A protest sign is pictured here posted at the detention in 2017
The center said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities (pictured in 2017) ‘have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees’
After the gunfire, officers took cover, contained the area and set up medical aid a short distance away, police said.
Officers then located the man and determined he had been shot and was dead at the scene. His name hasn’t been released.
Authorities say investigators are processing the scene and police are continuing to investigate. No law enforcement officers were injured.
The four Tacoma police officers who fired their weapons have been placed on paid administrative leave as is standard in officer-involved shootings.
A motive for the man’s actions hasn’t been determined, Cool said.
The incident occurred just one day prior to ICE’s planned national raids in 10 cities, targeting hundreds of immigrants who were given deportation orders. Nearby Seattle, however, is not one of those cities on the list.
Activist group La Resistencia — also known as NWDC Resistance, after Northwest Detention Center — has postponed its planned Saturday afternoon protest of the facility after reporting road closures and the facility’s 24-hour lock down following the incident.
A scene from the peaceful protest outside the detention center on Friday, just hours before the shooting incident occurred
Protesters are seen here at Friday’s Lights for Liberty protest outside the detention center
La Resistancia activist Maru Mora-Villalpando told the Seattle Times that they were notified about what occurred, but that the detainees inside the facility had no idea about the incident.
‘They were not told that visits would not happen, were not told that the accident happened in the early morning. People in detention always are the last ones to know what’s happening outside,’ Mora-Villalpando told the newspaper.
She added that the organization handled three cases of medical neglect recently, including one that resulted in deportation and then death.
GEO Group, which runs the 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Center, in an email to The Associated Press said baseless accusations about how detainees are treated at its facilities ‘have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority. Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma Police Department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.’
GEO Group said the detention center in Tacoma has modern amenities with air conditioning, recreational activities, a bed for every individual and medical care available at all hours.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that Washington state could pursue its lawsuit seeking to force GEO Group to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees at the detention center.
In November, a Russian asylum-seeker who conducted a hunger strike to protest the conditions at the detention center died by suicide, the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled.
Mergensana Amar, 40, was taken off life support after attempting to kill himself while in voluntary protective custody at the detention center on November 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Antifa (United States)
Jump to navigationJump to search
An antifa sticker
The antifa (/ænˈtiːfə, ˈæntiˌfɑː/)[1] movement is a conglomeration of left-wing autonomous, militant anti-fascist[7] groups in the United States.[11] The principal feature of antifa groups is their use of direct action,[12] with conflicts occurring both online and in real life.[13] They engage in varied protest tactics, which include digital activism, property damage, physical violence, and harassment against those whom they identify as fascist, racist, or on the far-right.[18]
Activists involved in the movement tend to be anti-capitalists[19] and subscribe to a range of ideologies, typically on the left. They include anarchists, socialists and communists along with some liberals and social democrats.[25] Their stated focus is on fighting far-right and white supremacist ideologies directly, rather than through electoral means.[12]
Contents
History
When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini consolidated power under his National Fascist Party in the mid-1920s, an oppositional anti-fascist movement surfaced both in Italy and countries such as the United States. Many anti-fascist leaders in the United States were syndicalist, anarchist, and socialist émigrés from Italy with experience in labor organizing and militancy.[26]
Although there is no organizational connection, the lineage of antifa in America can be traced to Weimar Germany,[27] where the first group described as “antifa” was Antifaschistische Aktion, formed in 1932 with the involvement of the Communist Party of Germany.[28]
After World War II, but prior to the development of the modern antifa movement, violent confrontations with fascist elements continued sporadically.[29]
Modern antifa politics can be traced to opposition to the infiltration of Britain’s punk scene by white power skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of neo-Nazism in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.[24] In Germany, young leftists, including anarchists and punk fans, renewed the practice of street-level anti-fascism.[24] Columnist Peter Beinart writes that “in the late ’80s, left-wing punk fans in the United States began following suit, though they initially called their groups Anti-Racist Action (ARA) on the theory that Americans would be more familiar with fighting racism than they would be with fighting fascism.”[24]
Dartmouth College historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa:The Anti-Fascist Handbook, credits ARA as the precursor of the modern US antifa groups in the United States and Canada.[30] In the late 1980s and 1990s, ARA activists toured with popular punk rock and skinhead bands in order to prevent Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other assorted white supremacists from recruiting.[24][31][32] Their motto was “We go where they go” by which they meant that they would confront far-right activists in concerts and actively remove their materials from public places.[33] In 2002, the ARA disrupted a speech in Pennsylvania by Matthew F. Hale, the head of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator, resulting in a fight and twenty-five arrests.[24] One of the earliest Antifa groups in the U.S. was Rose City Antifa, which was formed in Portland, Oregon in 2007.[34]
Other antifa groups in the U.S. have other genealogies, for example in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a group called the Baldies was formed in 1987 with the intent to fight neo-Nazi groups directly.[19]
Terminology
Although various antifascist movements have existed in the United States since the beginning of fascism, the word antifa, adopted from German usage,[27][35][36] only came into prominence as an umbrella term in English in 2017.[37][38]The ADL makes a point that the label “antifa” should be limited to “those who proactively seek physical confrontations with their perceived fascist adversaries,” and not be misapplied to include all counter-protesters.[13]
Ideology and activities
Antifa is not an interconnected or unified organization, but rather a movement without a leadership structure, comprising multiple autonomous groups and individuals.[13][21][33] Since it is composed of autonomous groups, and thus has no formal organization or membership,[24][39] it is impossible to know how many groups are active. Activists typically organize protests via social media and through websites and email lists.[24][39] Some activists have built peer-to-peer networks, or use encrypted-texting services like Signal.[40] According to Salon, it is an organizing strategy, not a group of people.[41] While its numbers cannot be estimated accurately, the movement has grown since the 2016 presidential election and approximately 200 groups currently exist in the US, of varying sizes and levels of engagement.[27] The activists involved subscribe to a range of ideologies, typically on the left and they include anarchists, socialists and communists along with some liberals and social democrats.[20][22]
According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, antifa activists participate in violent actions because “they believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist”.[8] According to Mark Bray, the adherents “reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular opposition to fascism as we witnessed in Charlottesville”.[21]
The idea of direct action is central to the antifa movement. Antifa organizer Scott Crow told an interviewer:
“The idea in Antifa is that we go where they [right-wingers] go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece.”[8]
A manual posted on It’s Going Down, an anarchist website, warns against accepting “people who just want to fight”. It furthermore notes that “physically confronting and defending against fascists is a necessary part of anti-fascist work, but is not the only or even necessarily the most important part”.[42]
.jpg)
Rose City Antifa activists with modified anarchist red and black flagand transgender pride flag in a protest against Patriot Prayer in 2017
According to Beinart, antifa activists “try to publicly identify white supremacists and get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments”, in addition to “disrupt(ing) [sic] white-supremacist rallies, including by force”.[43]According to a Washington Post book review, antifa tactics include “no platforming“, i.e. denying their targets platforms from which to speak; obstructing their events and defacing their propaganda; and when antifa activists deem it necessary, deploying violence to deter them.[22] According to National Public Radio, “people who speak for the Antifa movement acknowledge they sometimes carry clubs and sticks” and their “approach is confrontational”.[44] CNNdescribes antifa as “known for causing damage to property during protests”.[8] Scott Crow, described by CNN as “a longtime Antifa organizer”, argues that destroying property is not a form of violence.[8] The groups have been associated with physical violence in public against police[45] and against people whose political views its activists deem repugnant.[46] Antifa activists used clubs and dyed liquids against the white supremacists in Charlottesville[47]and caused property damage.[8] In one incident, an apparent antifa supporter punched white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face as he was giving an impromptu street interview,[48][49] and on another occasion, some threw Molotov cocktails in Berkeley, California.[8]
Apart from the other activities, antifa activists engage in mutual aid, such as disaster response in the case of Hurricane Harvey.[50][51][52] According to Natasha Lennard in The Nation, as of January 2017 antifa groups were working with interfaith groups and churches “to create a New Sanctuary Movement, continuing and expanding a 40-year-old practice of providing spaces for refugees and immigrants”.[53] Antifa activists also do research to monitor and track the “methods and movements of far-right leaders”, hold conferences and workshops on anti-fascist activism, and advocate ways of “fostering sustainable, peaceful communities”, such as “tending neighborhood gardens and setting up booths at book fairs and film festivals” where they provide printed materials.[54]
In June 2017, the antifa movement was linked to “anarchist extremism” by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.[55] In September 2017 Politico obtained confidential documents and interviews indicating that in April 2016, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed that “anarchist extremists” were the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets. Politicointerviewed law enforcement officials who noted a rise in activity since the beginning of the Trump administration, particularly a rise in recruitment (and on the part of the far right as well) since the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. One internal assessment acknowledged an inability to penetrate the groups’ “diffuse and decentralized organizational structure”. By 2017, the FBI and DHS reported that they were monitoring suspicious Antifa activity in relation to terrorism.[56] In August 2017 a petition was lodged with the White House petitioning system “We the People” calling upon the government to formally classify “AntiFa” as terrorist. The White House responded in 2018 that federal law does not have a mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations.[57][58][59] The writer of the petition later said he had created it to “bring our broken right side together,” and to “prop up antifa as a punching bag.”[60]
In June 2018, a Nebraska antifa group published a list of names and photographs of 1,595 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, drawn from LinkedIn profiles.[61]
Antifa activists often use the black bloc tactic, in which people dress all in black and cover their faces, in order to thwart surveillance, and create a sense of equality and solidarity among participants.[62] Antifa activists wear masks to hide their “…identity from protestors on the other side (who might dox people they disagree with) or from police and cameras” and for philosophical reasons, such as the beliefs that “hierarchies are bad and that remaining anonymous helps keep one’s ego in check.”[63]
Notable activism
Antifa groups, along with black bloc activists, were among those who protested the 2016 election of Donald Trump.[24][53] They also participated in the February 2017 Berkeley protests against alt-right[64][65][66] speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, where they gained mainstream attention,[39] with media reporting them “throwing Molotov cocktails and smashing windows”[8] and causing $100,000 worth of damage.[67]
In April 2017, two groups described as “anti-fascist/anarchist”, including the socialist/environmentalist Direct Action Alliance, threatened to disrupt the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade after hearing the Multnomah County Republican Party would participate. The parade organizers also received an anonymous email, saying: “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely”. The two groups denied having anything to do with the email. The parade was ultimately canceled by the organizers due to safety concerns.[68][69]
On June 15, 2017, some antifa groups joined protestors at Evergreen State College to oppose the far-right group Patriot Prayer‘s event. Patriot Prayer was supporting biology professor Bret Weinstein who became the central figure in a controversy after he criticized changes to one of the college’s events. In addition to peaceful antifa activists who held up a “community love” sign, USA Today reported that one slashed the tires of far-right activist Joey Gibson and another was wrestled to the ground by Patriot Prayer activists after being seen with a knife.[70]
Antifa counter-protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 “certainly used clubs and dyed liquids against the white supremacists”.[47] Journalist Adele Stan interviewed an antifa protester at the rally who said the sticks carried by the protesters are a justifiable countermeasure to the fact that “the right has a goon squad”.[71] Some antifa participants at the Charlottesville rally chanted that counter-protesters should “punch a Nazi in the mouth”.[44] Antifa participants also protected Cornel West and various clergy from attack by white supremacists, with West stating he felt that antifa had “saved his life”.[72][73] Antifa activists also defended the First United Methodist Church, where the Charlottesville Clergy Collective provided refreshments, music and training to the counter-protesters and, according to a local rabbi, “chased [the white supremacists] off with sticks”.[72][74]
Antifa protesters during a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, August 22, 2017
Groups that had been preparing to protest the Boston Free Speech Rally saw their plans become viral following the violence in Charlottesville. The event drew a largely peaceful crowd of 40,000 counter-protestors. In The Atlantic, McKay Coppins stated that the 33 people arrested for violent incidents were “mostly egged on by the minority of ‘Antifa’ agitators in the crowd”.[75] President Trump described the protestors outside his August 2017 rally in Phoenix, Arizona as “Antifa”.[76]
During a Berkeley protest on August 27, 2017, an estimated one hundred antifa protesters joined a crowd of 2,000–4,000 counter-protesters to confront alt-right demonstrators and Trump supporters who showed up for a “Say No to Marxism” rally that had been cancelled by organizers due to security concerns.[67][77] Protestors threatened to smash the cameras of anyone who filmed them.[78] Jesse Arreguin, the mayor of Berkeley, suggested classifying the city’s antifa as a gang.[79] The far-right group Patriot Prayer cancelled an event in San Francisco the same day following counter protests. Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, blamed antifa, along with By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), for breaking up the event.[80]
In November 2018, police investigated the antifa group Smash Racism D.C. following a protest outside the home of The Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson.[81] Activists of the group said through a bullhorn that Carlson was promoting hate and chanted, “We will fight, we know where you sleep at night!” and defaced the driveway of Carlsons’ property by spray-painting an anarchist symbol onto it[82] Twitter suspended the group’s account for violation of Twitter rules by posting Carlson’s home addresses. The group also posted addresses of Carlson’s brother and a friend who co-founded The Daily Caller.[83][84][85][86][87][88]
In February 2019, anti-fascist activists marched in celebration through Stone Mountain, Georgia as a white supremacist, neo-confederate rally planned to be held at the adjacent Stone Mountain Park was cancelled due to infighting and fear of personal safety. White supremacist groups originally sought to attract attention by marching at the Stone Mountain, a Confederate landmark carving, during the Super Bowl weekend. The groups ignored the park’s denial of permit due to “clear and present danger to the public health or safety”, but was thwarted when Facebook and Twitter terminated their organizing accounts and pages, and one group leader’s retreat due to “fears of violence from counter-protesters”. In their absence, more than 100 antifa activists marched peacefully through the adjacent village, burned a Klansman effigy and chanted slogans such as “Good night, alt right” and “Death to the Klan”, before joining another civil rights rally at Piedmont Park held by the NAACP and the SPLC.[89][90][91]
Response
Antifa actions have been subject to criticism from Republicans, Democrats and political commentators in the U.S. media.[92][93][94] House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi condemned the violence of antifa activists in Berkeley on August 29, 2017.[95] Conservative talk show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham suggested labeling antifa as a terrorist organization.[96] Noam Chomsky described them as “a major gift to the right”.[97] Other “anti-anti-fascists” on the left have argued that antifa attack a symptom of liberal democracyrather than combating structural racism itself, and in doing so distance themselves from revolutionary politics.[98] Dissent editor Michael Kazin stated “Non-leftists often see the left as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.”[99] The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in July 2019 that “Throwing a milkshake is not equivalent to killing someone, but because the people in power are allied with the right, any provocation, any dissent against right-wing violence, backfires”, with the effect that “[m]ilitancy on the left” can “become a justification for those in power and allies on the right to crack down” on the left.[34]
On the other hand, historian and political organizer Mark Bray has said “Given the historical and current threat that white supremacist and fascist groups pose, it’s clear to me that organized, collective self-defense is not only a legitimate response, but lamentably an all-too-necessary response to this threat on too many occasions.”[100] Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer in geography and an author on the contemporary right, has said that antifa groups represented “one of the best models for channeling the popular reflexes and spontaneous movements towards confronting fascism in organized and focused ways.”[101] Eleanor Penny, an author on fascism and the far-right, argues against Chomsky that “physical resistance has time and again protected local populations from racist violence, and prevented a gathering caucus of fascists from making further inroads into mainstream politics.”[97] Cornel West, who attended a counter-protest to the Unite the Right rally, said in an interview, “we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists,” describing a situation where a group of 20 counter-protesters were surrounded by marchers who he described as, “neofascists.”[102]
The Anti-Defamation League stated that “All forms of antifa violence are problematic. Images of these ‘free speech’ protesters being beaten by black-clad and bandana-masked antifa provide right wing extremists with a powerful propaganda tool” but goes on to state “that said, it is important to reject attempts to claim equivalence between the antifa and the white supremacist groups they oppose.” They also mention that “most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.”[13]
Hoaxes
There have been multiple efforts to discredit antifa groups via hoaxes on social media, many of them false flag attacks originating from members of the alt-right and 4chan posing as members of antifa groups on Twitter. Some of these hoaxes have been picked up and reported as fact by right-leaning media.[103]
These include an August 2017 “#PunchWhiteWomen” photo hoax campaign spread by fake antifa twitter accounts.[104] In one such instance, Bellingcat researcher Eliot Higgins discovered an image of British actress Anna Friel portraying a battered woman in a 2007 Women’s Aid anti-domestic violence campaign that had been re-purposed using fake antifa Twitter accounts organized by way of 4chan. The image is captioned “53% of white women voted for Trump, 53% of white women should look like this” and includes an antifa flag. Another image featuring an injured woman is captioned “She chose to be a Nazi. Choices have consequences” and includes the hashtag #PunchANazi. Higgins remarked to the BBC that “[t]his was a transparent and quite pathetic attempt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if white nationalist groups try to mount more sophisticated attacks in the future”.[105] A similar fake image circulated on social media after the Unite the Right rally; the doctored image, actually from a 2009 riot in Athens, was altered to make it look like someone wearing an antifa symbol attacking a member of the police with a flag.[106] After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, similar hoaxes falsely claimed that the shooter was an antifa “member”; another such hoax involved a fake antifa twitter account praising the shooting.[107][108] Another high-profile fake antifa account was banned from Twitter after it posted with a geotag originating in Russia.[109] Such fake antifa accounts have been repeatedly reported on as real by right-leaning media outlets.[103]
Some of the opposition to antifa activism has also been artificial in nature; Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg reported that “[t]he most-tweeted link in the Russian-linked network followed by the researchers was a petition to declare Antifa a terrorist group”.[110]
See also
- Redneck Revolt, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-racist group
- Refuse Fascism, an organization opposed to the presidency of Donald Trump
- Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice
- Diversity of tactics
Leave a Reply