By Jack Stroud
NOV. 28th*
Notice: This article contains profanity.
It’s Small Business Saturday and I’m sitting on a bench in Sylvester Park wondering what makes Olympia how it is. A red Kia drives by and the driver, through a bullhorn, warns the citizens that there is a group of white supremacists up at the Capitol spreading COVID, and that they are losers and unwelcome in this town. Then I’m walking up the hill towards the Capitol and two middle-aged white men are walking behind me, each with a large American flag slung over their shoulder.
I overhear one of them say something about being a bad Christian, laughing. I pace my steps so we can all fall in step together, as I assume we’re headed to the same place. The older of the two explains to me the details of corruption that he says took place in the presidential election. Below his Trump hat, below his rounded square glasses, behind his bushy mustache, a grin of childish pride forms: “It’s not over yet.”
•••
I’m sitting on another bench, in the big grassy lawn before the Capitol, by the fountain, on the outskirts of a crowd of 200 + Trumpers, who stand facing a podium and a PA system. There are many gun toters amongst the crowd, there are young people, old people, black, brown, and white people, families. The woman behind the podium, Simone Pitska Barron, elaborates on the “barrel of financial ruin” that she and so many other restaurant workers/owners are looking down because of Inslee’s lockdowns. She wants him to call a Special Session and she wants the lockdown to end.
Little kids play by the fountain. It is a beautiful sunny Saturday. Almost everyone wears some article of clothing with something Trump or patriotic-themed. Nobody wears a mask. I learn that this event was organized by Illene Greenhalgh with #RiseUPwa and it is called “Stand up before you kneel stop the lockdown” [sic].
•••
A football field away from the main crowd, at the top of a long set of concrete stairs, there are three Antifa supporters and 20 + Trump supporters. Everyone is yelling or waiting for their opportunity to yell, especially to yell something clever. Everyone is filming each other also, hoping the “other side” will do something wrong. A few Department of Enterprise Service employees are there to remind everyone that they are there. It ends with the Antifa people exiting down the stairs while the Trumpers chant “Walk away. Walk away.”
A man wearing a MAGA beanie with braids emerging from it, and MAGA shoes to complete the fit, tells me I can put this on record: “This is a warning to these motherfuckers. We are not playing nice no more. This is a big ass family right here that ain’t puttin up with no shit no more. They want to come at us, they can come. We are ready.”
•••
Now the couple hundred Trumpers march past the Capitol building, spill around towards the back entrance of Inslee’s place and glob up there, signs overhead, chanting in unison: “End the Lockdown Now” or, “USA” or, “Freedom not Tyranny” or, “In-Person Polling” or, “United we Stand Divided we Fall.” A few people go right up the steps to the backdoor of Inslee’s and bang on the gate. No response.
In between chants, attention is focused on people with a few inspiring words to say. A couple of immigrants from former communists countries speak out against the peril that they say this country is facing. One man says we can’t turn to leaders right now but need to be our own leaders. Old friends talk, new friends are made. Inslee never shows.
•••
I am walking back towards the bus stop while the crowd sings “Proud to be an American” in the background. But then I notice the German immigrant who spoke earlier limping up behind me with his hiking pole and Indiana Jones hat and I go up to talk to him. This is some of what he told me:
“When we were doing our peace demonstrations in East Germany against communists, we started with 80 people. The police were against us, it was very dangerous. But in the end, the truth prevailed, the Iron Curtain came down. Cause it was an unsustainable thing to divide people.”
The crowd of protestors had decided to leave and almost caught up to us while we were talking. As I peeled off left across the big lawn, I could hear a man announcing through a bullhorn, “Thanks for coming out, we’ll see you next weekend. We’re stronger together. We need you here every weekend. Fuck Antifa!”
DEC. 5th
It’s noon and I’m standing at the Capitol steps, another 200+ Trumpers on another Saturday. This week was organized by Vicki Kraft, Republican 17th Legislative District State Representative, and she is calling it the “Reopen WA Rally.” I also know that Antifa people organized a counter protest for this day, but don’t see any sign of them.
Pastor Sung Han stands before the podium and asks the crowd to bless the Governor along with him. “You should bless those who persecute you,” he says.
There are two Willie Nelson type country guys with long hair in the crowd. One has a sign that says positiverippleart and they pass a wax pen between them.
An Instagram post announcing the counter protest read: “Be ready to show these fascist chumps that they are losers who deserve to be cast out of our city.” I don’t know what to expect. I think of what the man with the braids and the MAGA shoes told me. I see all of the guns.
•••
I am hustling past the Washington State Auditor’s office, the Capitol Building in the hedges behind me. Cops accelerate on their mountain bikes in front of me. There is a mass of black-clad Antifa counter-protesters followed by a mass of Trumpers, about 20 people per group. They go North down Capitol Way. I catch up to the crowd. One Trumper tells me they’re escorting Antifa out. But then we reach 11th Ave. and Antifa crosses over and double their numbers by meeting up with a crowd waiting there for them. Consistently more Trumpers come from behind. Before long there are about 50 Antifa people and 50 Trump people on either side of Capitol Way, facing each other down, shouting insults.
There is a pickup truck with Culp flags sticking out of it in the church parking lot on the Antifa side of the street. A few of the Antifa counter-protestors smash its window and tear the flags down. Trumpers charge. Pepper spray, punches, flag whipping, yelling, pulling at clothes. After a quick scuffle, the Trumpers retreat back across the street.
The yelling never stops. Cars keep driving past. People set off the sirens on their bullhorns but there are no sirens to be heard from the police who were there only moments ago.
Then someone on the Antifa side of the street lights an American flag on fire. As one Trumper said later, “That was it.”
•••
It’s been an hour and it is still going on. Antifa, all in black, occupies the east end of the block, and the Trumpers, all in their Trump merch, occupy the west end. I am on the opposite side of the street from the action. It all happens beneath 5 large stained glass windows, that the sun glorifies on this beautiful mid 50s day, on the south wall of the United Churches of Olympia.
Both groups hold a steady frontline so that others amongst them can remain further back, get tended to for swollen tear gas faces, or get a bandage on a socked nose. Occasionally a Trumper will dive into the mass of the “opposing side” and steal a flag, or one of the Antifa people will say something too close to home for one of the prideful patriots, and inevitably, a skirmish results, and someone new will cycle back to be tended to.
In so many variations, the Antifers continually call the Trumpers fascists and racists and Nazis and the Trumpers continually say that they aren’t. There is likewise the confusion, from the Trump side, that all of the Antifa people are Biden supporters. Most of them, if any, are not. But nobody seems to care when they learn otherwise. And everyone just keeps filming each other, looking for that one piece of evidence. (Footage of a Trump supporter shooting a handgun was captured at some point in the afternoon. The bullet is said to have grazed one of the Antifa counter-protestors. Update: At the clash a week after this one, someone was directly shot.)
Toxic green bear mace plumes and mixes in with burning flags and black umbrellas, blowing down the street towards the black-clad front. They scatter back and cover their faces. The one Antifa guy who is openly carrying picks up one of the fuming capsules of bear mace and throws it back at the Trumpers. The cops sit in their squad cars a block away and watch. DES is there filming. I go ask one of the cops why they aren’t doing anything and he tells me, “Go away.”
One of the Trumpers tells me that the cops not intervening shows that they’ve had enough of Antifa. Another man, from the “other side,” agreed: “They’re giving their blessing to eradicate the ‘threat’ of Antifa.”
Some of the Trumpers seem enlivened, like this is how they would like to be spending their Saturday afternoon, in a street war. Others are distraught: “You hurt my friend. Why aren’t you doing anything?! They hurt my friend.”
But mostly it’s just people shouting petulant insults. “Are you a man or a woman? I can’t tell.” “At least I can make your wife cum.” “You should fight for your own education. You look like an idiot.” “Facist losers.” “Move to China, you fucking pussy.” “Fuck you commies.” “Fuck you pussies.” “Fuck you f******.” “Fuck you cracker.” “You fucking candy-ass.” “Fuck anquifa.” “Learn up on your history dumbass.” “Go to China.” “Shut up you d*** bitch.” “I shit on Joe Biden.” “Your white culture is dying.” “You’re white, asshole.” Small dick jokes of course, and homophobic ones too.
The Trumpers push forward and the Antifa crowd starts to back around the corner onto Washington St. SE, to the backlot of the United Churches of Olympia. Things forestall here a little longer. Occasional scuffles continue to arise. The yelling never stops. The cops move to a parking lot nearby but still do nothing.
One of the Trumpers, with his own personal mic and amp, tells the counter-protestors that they, the Trumpers, never go to stir things up at Antifa events. A young black kid with a face swollen from tear gas (and a look on his face like this is the last place he wants to be but he feels that he has to be) bursts. He steps forward, “BULLSHIT—-to 18, 18 of MY events. You showed up to our vigil armed. We were mourning man.” The Trumper doesn’t respond.
The cops eventually issue a dispersal order and many of the Trumpers eventually turn back the other way. The counter-protestors stay compact and head back out towards Capitol Way to march through town. A crowd of 20-30 Trumpers follows them.
I see someone standing up on a grassy hill, dressed in black, and think to go get some summative comments from him:
“It’s really just mayhem on all sides you know. Every time they [the Trumpers] come out here with their guns they get bigger and bigger and bigger. But all it takes is small gestures to bust their bubble you know. Once you strip away these little ideas and ideologies, it’s the same exact shit. They [the Trump supporters & the Antifa supporters] are literally probably part of the same fucking family…If we didn’t really give a shit about this place [Olympia], this whole place would get swallowed up. But everybody lives here, you’re gonna have to see each other eventually. You’re gonna go into a sub shop or something.”
The marchers go all the way down to Fourth Ave, swing a right, go down past King Soloman’s, and keep going. The Trumpers follow the whole way saying things like “Get the fuck out of our city” as they go. Later they will congratulate themselves for “kicking Antifa out of town.” No more violent exchanges are had. The cops are in tow but do not act on the dispersal order, out of precaution for the holiday shoppers.
I go to buy a pizza. I know that everyone is just going to end up going home, somewhere in Olympia.
*Names and details have been changed or omitted.
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