On the 26th of February, the American Indian Movement planned to protest at the Columbus statue in Tampa, FL to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee. The concert was near but not AT the statue, more likely the settler government of Tampa is simply determined to keep Indigenous people as far away from their precious Columbus statue as possible.
Two of the folks who made it out to the redirected protest at Lykes Gaslight Park in downtown Tampa are facing “criminal” charges for daring to add red paint to the Columbus statue at a previous protest. The red paint symbolizing the blood of all those murdered by Columbus and those who came after him should have been left on the statue until it can be removed. It is likely Tampa’s rulers fear this statue will be pulled down like the Albert Pike statue in DC was, then rolled back into the water from which Columbus came like the Columbus statue in Baltimore was during the 2020 Uprising.
On the 25th of February Washington DC MPD ofc Riley whined “I feel threatened” at a DC Homos videographer. He melted down like a snowcone in the FL sun while escorting a solo Proud Boy out of the area of a heavily defended drag show in SE DC. Only ONE Proud Boys showed up, sparking this incident.
The Proud Boy in question is known white supremacist Betancur, known to support mass shootings and a supporter of Charlottesville car rammer James Fields, now in prison for the murder of Heather Heyer with that Daesh/ISIS-style car ramming attack.
This zoomed in and cropped image from the DC Homos video shows Ofc Riley pointing at the videographer while escorting Proud Boy Betancur out of the area If more Proud Boys had shown up like they did in Silver Spring a week earlier they would have faced this stout defense (slightlyb redacted photo originally posted to Twitter by DC Homos)
On the 24th of February, Trapt played at the brass Mug in Tampa. Trapt’s lead singer is a Proud Boy, and his public pro-Fascist statements have cost the band a drummer (who quit over this shit) and many cancelled shows. While one of the opening acts played, anti-Fascist activists entered the venue parking lot and posted fliers directly on the walls of the brass mug. One by the door called out Trapt as a Nazi band, while other targetted Christopher Rufo, DeSantis’s handpicked New College administrator who job is to turn that college into an extreme-right institution. Once postering the venue and venue parking lot were complete, activists fanned out to distribute the posters elsewhere in Tampa.
Rufo got his start as one of the originators of the far-right hysteria over critical race theory. He is also publicly opposing any and all teaching related to LGBTQ issues. If DeSantis has his way, even teaching evolution in colleges might be banned in FL. If the King James Bible ever becomes the only legal textbook in FL schools and universities Christopher Rufo will be one of the reasons for it. By using posters targetting Christopher Rufo as the main payload of the mission, activists chose to focus not on the little fish (Trapt’s Proud Boy frontman) but rather on a much bigger fish.
On the 21st of February, activists fighting to halt the destruction of Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest returned to Coral Gables, Miami. This time around was a family-friendly protest to educate the neighbors of a Brasfield & Gorrie office there.
On Sunday, the 19th of February, Supreme Court “Justice” Alito get yet another protest at his northern VA home. Protesters emphasized that he stands for theocracy and is a threat to the lives of trans folks as well as his infamous authorship of the antiabortion Dobbs ruling
On the 18th of February, Proud Boys failed in an apparent attempt to physically bull their way into Silver Spring, MD Drag Queen Story Hour. For all the fighting outside the show went on inside with zero disruption!
The fighting was tough, the police did almost nothing about their fashy friends the Proud Boys (as expected) and at least one defender was injured. For all of that, this was a defeat for the Proud Boys due to their failure to disrupt the show or drive off patrons. The video the Proud Boys put out showed almost none of the fighting, focussing mostly on their banner drop as the rest was a humiliating defeat for them.
On the 18th of February, outraged activists descended on the DC homes of both of Georgia’s Senators demanding action to stop the infamous “Cop City” police training range in Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest. This is in memory of Turtuguita (“Little Turtle”) who gave their life defending the woods. Since then the National Guard has descended on Atlanta and a firestorm of retribution has been meted out by activists from coast to coast. Even in the DC home demos the chant changed from “shut it down” to “burn it down” and warnings were issued Cop City would never be built and never be defended if it ever is.
The “Every City is Cop City” chant was used again at the marches to and between the targets. At Senator Warnock’s house, a speaker warned that this was indeed the case, and that if not stopped, a great many of the urban warfare/counterinsurgency police training ranges would be built. She also warned “they want war,” and that they would get the war they want but perhaps not the intended outcome.
On the 16th of February, Texas and West Louisiana residents threatened by LNG projects and pipelines showed up at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is infamous as the oil and gas industry’s rubber stamp, and is now planning to allow Freeport LNG to restart their Texas LNG export facility that exploded less than a year ago in June 2022.
Freeport residents found out about the proposed LNG plant restart when FERC gave them one week’s notice of a hearing to “consider” Freeport LNG’s application for “phase 1” restart. This sort of hearing is almost always a circus and a scam. Residents are allowed to vent for a minute or two after hearing usually an hour or two of propaganda for the project, and these hearings are almost always after a decision to approve the project has been made. This fake hearing model is used throughout the US, at the Federal, state, and local level for almost all major projects
Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) has been hosting these “Frontlines to FERC” events cooinciding with FERC’s monthly board meetings. With three new US LNG export plants now in the pipeline so to speak plus the Freeport situation, FERC is likely to soon get more of the sort of attention they got from pro-Earth and community defense advocates they got from about 2012 though 2016. The three new proposed LNG export plants are Sempra Energy’s Port Arthur plant in Texas, Energy Transfer LP’s Lake Charles in Louisiana and NextDecade Corp’s Rio Grande in Texas.
(longer video is one of the holdouts who was later arrested temporarily backing the cops down with constitutional arguments)
In recent months, McPherson Square had hosted a tent city set up by those evicted by Mayor Bowser’s sweeps of so many other camps. On Feb 15, US Park Police and biohazard-suited trash collectors Stormed McPherson and destroyed the tent city, evicting everyone and arresting two people who stood their ground.
This date was moved up from April 15 at the request of the usual anti-unhoused, racist and classist real estate and upscale business interests who control the Mayor and the city government. The date was moved no doubt because wealthy and middle class office workers etc were afraid to eat their lunch in McPherson Square. That would be the “imminent hazard” city officials were yakking about. A real imminent hazard now exists: many former residents of the McPherson Sq tent city lost their tents and everything they owned, and cold, heavy rain is due to arrive in DC on Thursday night.
This is also the second time a tent city in McPherson Square has been violently assaulted by police. On Feb 4, 2012 US Park Police stormed Occupy DC’s camp at the same site, sparking a tough all day battle as Occupy residents fought back.
On the 11th of February, the neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League (GDL), threw trash propaganda onto people’s lawns and driveways in Lakeland, FL. The fliers were in bags weighted with corn and with rat food pellets, similar to incidents of KKK flyering where sand was sued to weigh the flyers down.The fascists live-streamed themselves bagging and distributing the fliers, giving antifascist activists in nearby Tampa and Orlando all the information they needed to clean up the trash. A cleanup crew arrived and quickly removed fliers from one polluted area, but due to highly fash-friendly police, a complete sweep wasn’t possible.
Afterwards there was the problem of what to do with GDL’s trash. The bags of damp corn and rat food were dropped into a trash can, and the flyers were fed to the hungry and cleansing flames of a propane torch.Nazi litterbugs are not welcome in Lakeland or anywhere else!
