Antifascists arrived to the scene at 1:30pm, and SWS had already staged a large speaker system and had a handful of people in their crowd right outside the Lynnwood Event Center. Lynnwood PD had about 6 officers forming a line designated the area between the two protesting groups. All officers were facing antifascists at first, as if protecting their white supremacist brethren. They would later be directed to rotate every other officer to be facing the other side.

An umbrella wall, speaker playing the gayest copyrighted music, and a bunch of local queers of all ages held our side with us. TERFs and III% spent most of their time and energy trying to capture photos of our mostly covered faces. SWS tried to have people give speeches, but our chanting and music drowned them out and prevented them from finishing.

They played copyrighted music of their own, effectively preventing themselves from being able to livestream or use longer clips of their event. All [neo]fascist “reporters” tried their best to cut up their footage to make themselves look good, but they were not super successful. The copyrighted music made it hard to post to social media and with our umbrella wall and the police line they had trouble getting meme-able reactions from us that could go viral.

At one point, the antifascists played the national anthem, and the song “Proud to be an American,” at which point the TERFs actually turned off their own music to sing along while the antifascists laughed at them. They could not reconcile being upset with us for playing it and their need to stand with their hand over their heart and cry that we were anti-American terrorists.

It was estimated that the fash had around 70 people on their side at peak of the protest, with antifascists having more. Due to the inequitable space provided for the counter-protest, the fash were able to spread out more and make themselves appear bigger. But cameras don’t lie, and their own drone footage showed how much we outnumbered them.