I shared this the other day, but someone posted this article on Twitter about how they broke up the organizing of one of those fire checkpoints before it even got set up. I really like it, it's an interesting read and if you want to help it talks about the strategy behind it, it's not just a "look I did this thing" thing: https://twitter.com/AntifaCowRustlr/status/1305682684723834881?s=20

And here's Robert Evans, a big advocate of an armed left, and who has shown more prescience about the way things have unfolded then pretty much anyone else, stating why he similarly believes us bringing guns into the situation (as it currently stands) is not a good idea. For context in case you don't know, Robert is not an internet observer but is regularly out there in the streets, and you should listen to 'It could Happen Here' if you haven't already.

https://twitter.com/IwriteOK/status/1294758318217392128?s=20

You're ignoring pretty much all of material conditions at play here, which I guess is kinda understandable if you aren't actually there taking part, but if that's the case then please at least consider what the people who are there have to say about it.

You don't seem to understand that public opinion and media spin is a big part of this whole thing. Without some measure of public support behind the protests, they would not be able to continue in their present form. Consider how the public and the media would view an armed left presence to begin with, and now consider how they would view a chud shooting someone in two different situations: one where we were unarmed, and one where we are. In the former scenario, there is no spin you can put on that to make it look like our fault. In the latter, there is no way they would do anything but that. We are not the aggressors, we are the subjects of disproportionate use of force, and we have to play to the fact that the media wants to portray us as the aggressors and will do so at every opportunity. And if someone ever gets shot at an unarmed protest, we now have a very compelling reason to begin carrying in self defense, not as the aggressors/escalators.

1. Never let these subhuman pieces of shit intimidate you. It’s frankly fucking pathetic that you’re more afraid of them than the cops.

Fuck off with that. I'm not afraid of them and never said that, it's hard to see how this statement was made in good faith but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here anyway. I said the cops have more restraint than the chuds, which based on personal experience I know to be objectively true in this case. There have been multiple instances of chuds firing shots off in PDX since this started, but the cops have thus far kept all of the real bullets in their magazines. If you wanna talk about something being fucking pathetic, I'd offer that it may be the person telling other folks who are out winning street brawls with chuds and nazis, and wearing down the cops, that they are cowards. Get out in the fucking street yourself if you wanna talk shit.

2. Most of them are fucking cowards. The dude in this picture would have kept his hand far as fuck away as possible from his gun if we had a line of us with rifles.

It is very clear that you have never met or interacted with Allen Swinney. As someone who has, I feel that the exact opposite is true. What exactly is your opinion here based on?

This attitude, that I’m encouraging escalation and violence and shit by saying we should be armed, organized, and ready to defend ourselves is what’s gonna get us killed, be it at a protest downtown or against a fucking wall a couple years from now.

If you're not actually out there with us (and based on everything you've said so far I feel like I can safely assume you aren't), I can see why you'd think this. However, I can tell you without equivocation that our side showing up armed is an escalation. It is 110% an escalation. I agree that a chud will shoot someone at some point, but an armed left presence at this moment would greatly heighten the risk of one of the chuds actually shooting us, which has not happened yet and I would prefer to keep it that way.

All it would take is one person accidentally flagging the crowd with their barrel to give them reasonable cause to shoot. As it currently stands, they have no excuse to use deadly force and they don't want to go to jail and lose the right to legally own firearms any more than you or I do. The fact that Skylor Jernigan is arrested and charged after discharging downtown last week provides proof that the police, for now at least, are still willing to punish them for crossing this line.

Yesterday's events aside, we are fighting a war of attrition with the cops and it is going well. An armed left presence at even one protest will result in a bunch of cops carrying rifles at all of the nightly protests going forward. So us doing this even one time basically means we would need to commit to doing this every night, and no one (you included) is signing up for that. It is blatant escalation. If you don't think so, show up to the protest tonight and get on the mic, tell everyone we need to start carrying guns with us and in doing so escalate the situation to the point where it will only ever end violently, and see how that goes.

Also, just throwing this in there in case you aren't aware, CC is outright illegal in PDX and to open carry you have to have a CCL. This requirement means that the majority of the protesters are unable to legally carry in city limits anyway.

Being armed at a protest where violent, mentally unstable people are waving guns around as a threat is not only an absolutely correct response, it’s basic like, How to Not Die 101.

Are you kidding me on this one? If you have a mentally unstable person acting violently, you think the answer is to simply bring more guns into the equation? This is wildly irresponsible, and is exactly what we are protesting against. Bringing guns in to solve the problem, threatening disproportionate force before any significant violence has occurred, is exactly what the fucking pigs do and is why they end up murdering so many folks.

As an aside, I'd recommend not making the blanket statement that these people are mentally unstable, as it's derogatory to folks who actually are, and most of the chuds are not. Just because they have a (very shitty) worldview that differs from ours doesn't mean they are mentally unstable, and claiming such is a very slippery slope that ultimately ends in dehumanization.

So yeah, get out in the streets yourself for a week and see if you still think what you're suggesting is the right move. Otherwise, I'd suggest you stop egging on other folks to put themselves in mortal danger because you think it's a good idea because you read some things on the internet and now know what's going on.

I'm done debating this with you online. If you want to talk more, let's see you come out to the protests at night and advocate for your position, put forward a plan to accomplish your goal safely without increasing the danger to other's lives, get agreement from the group, and be willing to stand on the front line with a rifle every night yourself. I'll wait.

Oh I was wrong about that, folks are out. I am certainly not going anywhere tonight. I don't know what people are streaming but here is a guillotine: for you https://twitter.com/DannyShhhmurda/status/1297405595943919616?s=20

If you're gonna criticize your fellow leftists for not beating the nazis by enough, while sitting on home on your phone, then yeah you're a wrecker and you can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.

No, night off after today. Tomorrow!

I'm pretty sure you already know what the likely implications of an openly-armed left presence there would be, but that absolutely would have resulted in live ammo being fired. I have no doubt about that. I can see the possibility of pulling that off at one of the nightly protests against the police and it having a positive outcome (while also carrying an immense risk), but doing that against the people out today would have resulted in folks being shot. As much as the cops suck, they have far more restraint than the militant chuds.

I am a big proponent of an armed left, and am well armed myself, but I don't think open-carrying would have been the proper response to this situation. It's easy to make a statement like yours when you are telling other folks to take up arms and escalate the situation, but it rings hollow when you're not stepping forward and doing it yourself while asking your comrades to follow you in your bravery. It's like handing a rock you found at a protest to someone else to throw, instead of doing it yourself.

Ultimately, no one got shot today and the confrontation ended in a victory for our side when they were forced to retreat, scatter and disperse. Genuine question, what better outcome would you have hoped for by bringing rifles into it?

Oh cool, have you done this effectively?

Someone did pull out gun. For the most part it was just brawling though. A couple of the chuds actually had nails or screws sticking out of their shields, closest thing we saw to a knife.

Please tell us about your own experience fighting fascism more effectively, and let us know how in this particular situation you would have acted differently.

Antifascists: Fend off a bunch of armed and aggressive chuds, cause them to disperse and end their gathering. Wreckers on the internet: Meh, I could've done better.

What have you done to fight fascism lately, and based on your own experience with it, would you have differently in this situation?

Glad someone else from here was out there too! Solidarity comrade.

It may have looked like that to you, but it's not the case. I was there. They were significantly outnumbered by the time they left, and they have literally no experience doing this while the BLM protests and subsequent clashes with cops have been going on nightly for nearly three months now. What they do have is the ability to use weapons in ways we cannot, because the state allows them a measure of leniency when it comes to the monopoly on use of (disproportionate) force, but it still wasn't enough. They tried running to the IRS building hoping the feds would come out and back them up and they split up and left when that never happened.

No, entirely unrelated. And the people in the group that beat him up are not part of the core protest group.

This is Allen Swinney, he is already very well known in the PNW. Last Saturday he was out shooting bear mace and paintballs at folks, and he was riding shotgun in the blue car driven by Skylor Jernigan, when Skylor shot two 9mm rounds of out the window as he left the parking garage. Very surprisingly, Skylor has actually been arrested and charged for that incident, which gives me a very small amount of hope that Allen will also be charged for the brandishing documented here.

It's something, and now we're about to get gassed while the feds escort the lingering chuds out of the area.

It's beyond parody, the cops were completely absent and let them shoot paintballs and bear mace at us for over an hour, and then when we finally ran them off they declared it an unlawful assembly and sent FPS to clear the park where we were picking up garbage. The feds have retreated for the moment but will be back with tear gas any minute. You can't even make this stuff up.

Yeah, chuds on the right.

If you wanna watch more footage, press & comms live on twitter include @iwriteok, @1misanthrophile, @mrolmos, @GriffinMalone6, @garedicus

I'm there on many nights, I am not reading about it on the internet comrade.