The “indefinite” occupation of the city hall in Kansas City, Missouri, is well into it’s third day on Monday with no end in sight. A group of around 100 radical left-wing anarchists, some of them professionals, laid siege to the City Hall and Police headquarters Friday night. According to their leader, attorney Stacy Shaw, they won’t leave until their demands are met, unless they’re dragged away by force.
A well-organized occupation
According to local news outlets, the “occupation appears well-organized, with a registration table, equipment, food and a structured leadership.” Avid anarchist Steveland Young, a veteran protester notes setting these up require a lot of effort. “It takes a lot of effort to come out and continue to do this because every time I come out I have to get emotionally ready for this.”
The situation started Friday with a protest outside the police department and a march. Eventually, about two hours after the occupation started, the order was given to snag some barriers from a road construction project to block off the intersection at 12th Street and Locust so they could take and hold the territory in front of City Hall and the Kansas City Police Department. The missing barricades confused motorists. One driver “barreled through the road closed signs.” Police decided to exercise enough authority to put the barriers safely back where they belonged.
One occupation protester declared “I don’t care if you are inconvenienced, Kathryn. I don’t care if you are inconvenienced, Bob, because people are dying,” She didn’t want to take responsibility for her quote, telling reporters to put her down as K.J.-X. The police will be able to trace her down from her initials.
Here’s a look at the disruption protesters in Kansas City are causing as drivers have no idea about road construction as protesters have taken warning signs to occupy space in front of @kcpolice and @KCMO City Hall. pic.twitter.com/wY7O5AnNJZ
— Dave D'Marko (@DaveDMarko) October 3, 2020
Police arrested a pregnant woman
The George Soros aligned forces of darkness using the Black Lives Matter movement as a cover for the mayhem caused by the rabble army are using the recent arrest of a pregnant woman to declare war on the Kansas City police. The woman thought she could get away with “interfering with another arrest” simply because she was pregnant. She soon found herself face down on the ground with a knee in her back. The officer swears up and down he didn’t put any pressure on that knee at all and If she had listened to warnings and stayed out of it, she would have been ignored. It was enough to justify the mercenary occupation of downtown Kansas City.
The liberals quickly produced enough tents to cover the south lawn by Sunday night. They call the area of their occupation “the People’s City.” Obviously socialist in political philosophy. Last night, they “used projectors to light up the side of the building with the words Fire Rick Smith.” Chief Rick Smith is the top dog at KCPD. He has no plans of going anywhere and neither does the occupying army.
KSHB: Kansas City protesters begin '"indefinite occupation" of City Hall Plaza, say won’t leave until police chief resigns
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) October 5, 2020
Ms. Shaw declared flatly that the occupation will continue until each and every one of their demands are met. The terrorists are trying to extort the city into agreeing to “Fire KCPD Chief Rick Smith and the officer involved in the incident with the pregnant woman.” Also they must “Fire all officers who have killed Black victims in Kansas City.” No matter who or why.
They must also disarm and weaken the police force by divesting “50% of KCPD’s budget.” They must take the savings and hand it over to the Black community. The way Shaw puts it, “reinvest KCPD’s budget into resources that support the Black community.” Kind of like reparations. Didn’t Kansas City used to have some heavy duty Marshals around to keep the peace? The Earp brothers wouldn’t put up with this for half an hour before they would be hosting an occupation of the county jail.
I hope KC doesn’t put up with this black supremacist blackmail attempt. Arrest the demonstrators and charge them.
Erin Smith was at a GOP election watch party at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on November 8, 2016. For the one-time deputy vice chair of communications for the city Republication Party, it should have been a time of jubilation.
“As soon as they announced Trump the presumptive winner, we’re told, ‘Hey, there’s a mob of protestors out front,'” says Smith, who stepped outside to find the San Francisco cops being pushed back by a crowd, some in head-to-toe black: clothes, helmets, face masks.
A trans woman, conservative, and former tugboat captain who says she’s “a weird activist/analyst-type person right now,” Smith soon became galvanized to find out more about a group that dressed as revolutionaries and took their fight to the streets. What was animating them? Trump animus? The romance of revolution? The boredom and frustration of COVID sequestration? An unfocused desire to fuck shit up?
It takes a special moral blindness to see setting fires, breaking windows, and threatening journalists as the road to justice. I’ve seen this moral blindness rise along with the violence in Portland. Young activists have told me frankly that they don’t give a shit if someone working in the basement of the police station burns to death because, hey, she chose to work there. I’ve seen activists cheer the murder of a member of the conservative group Patriot Prayer. You cannot employ the violence of your perceived enemies and expect your revolution to end in peace.
What Smith has experienced has not been peaceful. She’s had friends beaten up by antifa. She’s been threatened herself. It made her curious. This summer, she decided to find out more by going undercover with the black bloc anarchists in Portland.
I went out with Smith several nights, and while I could not follow her directly—black bloc avoids having those outside its ranks interview or photograph them—I was able to watch her, wearing all black and carrying a shield bearing an anarchist “A,” slip into the group. I saw that she was present at the same locations where black bloc attacked buildings and set fires.
After one such night, Smith and I sat over a couple of hard seltzers and discussed why she decided to infiltrate the black bloc and what she found.
What did you know about antifa when you first encountered them in San Francisco?
I had a vague idea of what antifa was, but it wasn’t nearly as big a deal as it is now, outside of maybe Berkeley or Seattle. I’d had friends that got attacked at the Trump rally they tried to hold in San Jose [in April 2016]. I’d had a year of watching that happen, and basically, I don’t like bullies, so I started showing up at these things, at rallies and protests and places where my friends were getting beaten up. It felt like in 2016, everything really changed in the Bay Area. It stopped being so carefree, in a sense Everything started kind of feeling like it was for keeps.
April 27, 2017, was the first rally I went to, in Berkeley. This was a Trump MAGA rally. I started livestreaming in June and I got to be pretty good at talking to people from the other side. The first time I ever actually dressed in black and put on a mask on and tried to slip into the bloc was last weekend. It is a little scary, because I’ve faced them down so much. I’m like, “I’m going to dress in black and slip in?”
I’ve studied them for a bit, watching videos and stuff. I wrote a piece on antifa tactics for a monograph that’s coming out next month, for the Center for Security Policy. And I have an advantage, having gone to the rallies. But they know who I am. When antifa hates you and know who you are, the best way to hide is right in the middle of their black bloc. That’s the last place they think to look. It’s one of the advantages of dressing in black and wearing your mask.
You had a shield tonight. Did you make it?
Actually, I acquired it at the riot. Someone set it down, and I’m like, “That’s cool. It’s communism, no property. This is mine.”
How organized are things on the inside?
There are different types of bloc organization styles. The building block of antifa is what’s called an affinity group, people you live and work with and trust and know in real life. All the planning is done within that closed bloc, and they don’t let everyone know [what they’re going to do]. I didn’t know that they were going to burn the Portland Police Association when I joined. What they did was put a call out that said, “Anyone show up in black that night at this place, and you can join the action.”
That’s called a semi-open bloc. The planning is done within the closed group, but anyone who’s dressed in black can come join the action. If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot affinity groups that are working together. One thing they’ll do sometimes is have written agreements with other protest organizations that aren’t in black bloc. I know of one from Berkeley that illustrates this: “We agree that to not take pictures of anyone in antifa.” It will say that literally in writing, so everyone’s working together. It’s like a combined arms type thing, almost like the military. They work together and are mutually reinforcing.
So your first night with them, you burned the Portland Police Association…
We get to the Portland Police Association and immediately, they blockade both ends of the street. They built the shield wall and they’re hammering the door open. I went over and I’m standing in the bloc as they’re breaking the door down. It took them a little while longer than what I thought. They could have found better ways to breach the building, but they had hammers and pry bars and they pry it open and pry the plywood back and they pour fuel and light it on fire and start burning stuff.
Strategically what they’re doing is, they’re forcing a dilemma action. A dilemma action is when you put your opponent in a no-win situation. Your enemy has to react. If they don’t react, they look weak; if they do react, they have to react in a certain way where it looks like it’s an overreaction.
When the feds were in Portland, they were presented as overreacting, a presentation helped by innumerable people with PRESS written across their clothing flooding the internet with images that presented protesters wholly as victims of an authoritarian regime.
That’s their [antifa’s] objective. It’s not a tactical thing. That’s why all the “press” is there, the sympathetic press. They’re trying to create propaganda. They know how the police are going to react, so they carefully calibrate what they do to try to provoke the police into reacting and then filming it. They want to try to push public opinion in favor of removing the police. The police aren’t perfect, but what a police force is, it’s putting force under an objective third party, under government control. Antifa wants to separate the police from the populace.
This is basically guerilla warfare. They’re trying to undermine legitimacy of the state. The police right now, I think some of them are catching up. There’s a playbook for how police respond to riots and they’re not actually doing it; it’s not an actual riot. I mean, it is a riot, but at the same time, it’s a specific type of riot that’s trying to make the police respond in a certain way.
Meaning, they’re able to provoke the police into taking the bait.
Yeah. Basically they’re baiting the police into overreacting.
So how did you feel when the police station was on fire?
It was pretty wild, actually. Right when the fire was lit, the police announced, “This is a riot” and they [the black bloc] started marching. For me it was really kind of amazing, because they were incredibly proficient. This was 600, 700 people. They moved a group of people through the city in close order, quickly and efficiently, and attacked a target and caught it on fire and then escaped from the police.
I describe it as an open-source networked insurgency. They were incredibly efficient. They hit a target and vanished into the city and got away. Basically, they’re like skirmishers: They come in, they attack the cops, they get out.
Antifa goes for a certain type of violence, a mid-level violence. Most people aren’t practiced in violence, and what they’ll do is, they’ll either back down or they’ll overreact. Antifa basically as a group does the equivalent of just pushing someone on the shoulder, and again, and again.
They keep it at a simmer.
Yes. It’s very tricky to react to because people get angry. If you just go in public and pick someone and start pushing them, if you keep pushing them, they’re going to slug you; it’s just how it’s going to work, at the individual level but also at the group level too. I’m also speaking metaphorically, in a sense. Of course if you hit them, they’re going to fall down and go, “Oh, God, you’re violent. You’re a Nazi!”
What they’re intending to do is use that level of violence that will scare people enough to back down. [The radical left] learned in the ’70s that killing people is bad PR. A body count is horrible.
So we’re not going to see another Weather Underground?
Not at this point. They’ve learned and adapted. What they want to do is make it difficult for people [they don’t like] to organize.
So that’s really the two responses. Most people don’t know how to handle that mid-level force. So they either back down or they slug people; either way is a win.
When you don’t know what you’re looking at, you see a lot of random, rage-filled kids. You sometimes wonder: Do they even know how to formulate a plan? But you go out with them a few nights and understand, people are actually working together.
It’s really interesting. I did a breakdown of the Grant Park video, the tech they had. And that was freaking incredibly sophisticated. This is Grant Park in Chicago, when they attacked the statue and put like 49 police officers in the hospital. [Tonight] was so much like this, in terms of operational sophistication, how coordinated everything was.
But not centralized.
Let me explain that a little more. People keep looking for a chain of command, and you don’t necessarily need that, as long as everyone understands a basic level of instruction it works.
What are the basics?
Basically, don’t talk about it. Don’t photograph people’s faces. “What did you see?” “I didn’t see shit!” is a chant you’ll hear. You can go to websites like CrimethInc. and they’ll have a lot of breakdowns of tactics. It’s an anarchist website. It’s an open-source network insurgency, not so much a chain of command.
People think antifa and they picture people in black. Antifa is bigger than that. Black bloc is a tactic. Dressing in black, it’s a tactic. You don’t have to dress in black to be antifa. You don’t even have to hit the streets. There are people who work in tech, hackers who never hit the streets, and they’re still antifa. [The media] play these little word games, “Oh, antifa doesn’t exist.” Yes and no. It’s not an organization where you have to sign up for a membership. It’s one of those things where it’s just a loose-knit network of people.
Whose message can be a sweet song, not just young people looking for identity, or those for whom COVID-19 has cooped up, but anyone wanting to be part of what they see as a fighting force for justice.
People want to fight through things. I first heard of CrimethInc in 2000. I’ve got their seminal work, Days of War, Nights of Love. I’ve got it inscribed, “Love and insurrection”; it’s anarchist stuff. I’m not an anarchist or a communist or anything like that. But it is a siren song. Young people, they sense there’s something wrong, and they want to fight. That’s a human instinct. Francis Fukuyama talks about it: People want to struggle. And if everything is fine, they’ll struggle against democracy.
I understand where some of that comes from. People want community and want to feel like they’re fighting. That’s why we love Star Wars. We love the underdog fighting. And I think young people that don’t have a network, it’s just something very intoxicating.
And totally honestly, when I was out there with black bloc [and] busted open a door to a police station, set it on fire and ran from the cops? It was fun. I know that sounds weird. I don’t support that as a policy, but when you’re there in the street, it’s fun.
Violence is fun. This is one of the things we don’t talk about as a society. It’s like, wow, this is pretty fun, especially when you feel like you have grounds for any type of legitimate complaint. It’s easy to knock on these people. And I still do. I don’t agree with what they’re doing, but I respect them. I’ve been facing these people down for four years. I take them seriously and I respect their skill at what they’re doing and their dedication.
What are the ages of the people you were hanging out with?
Anywhere from twenties to thirties.
Do you have any idea what they do for work?
In the Bay Area, we’ve had people arrested that were physicists. Look up Freddy Martinez. He was arrested for punching some guy in Berkeley. And Freddy Martinez is the director of Lucy Parsons Labs. I know there’s another guy who was a Johns Hopkins grad. You can dismiss them as a bunch of losers, but I’ve seen some incredibly smart people.
I’ve told some demonstrators mouthing off to me to read Utopia or Auschwitz, about the 1968 generation in Germany who were livid with their Nazi-collaborating parents and were going to build a better society. The movement became progressively less peaceful and eventually took to bombing and murdering people. Antifa right now is able to keep things at a simmer and provoke others into behaving badly, but history tells us things usually don’t stay at a simmer. Do we get to skip the part where people are building bombs in basements in Portland?
Well, they are making those primitive small IEDs made out of commercial grade fireworks. They’re roughly about the power of police flash-bangs. I’ve had them go off right next to me and you feel it; you feel the heat wave hit you. But a big thing for them [antifa] is they have convinced themselves that they’re doing something good. They’re very big about trying to maintain, at least in their eyes, the moral high ground. Part of that is not killing people. They want that moral high ground and they construct it. And that’s kind of what they do by using that mid-level of violence. They want you to overreact because not being extremely violent is how they convince themselves they’re better. And it’s also great propaganda.
Do you see antifa as getting more than a toehold in city government here?
Quite possibly, yes, I think by weakening the police, or defunding the police. They have the organization that if the police went away tomorrow, you would basically have an antifa police force. They wouldn’t call themselves antifa, but they have the organization that, if there’s no objective third-party security force, then who’s going to stop it?
I think the worst case is if they weaken the police; they don’t go away because then the police are still there and they’ll be able to target the normal law-abiding people. It’s what we have in San Francisco. It’s anarcho-tyranny. It’s like the law really only applies to people that are trying to follow the law.
I wouldn’t say the majority of people in Portland are sympathetic to antifa, but you’ve got a lot of people that either are apathetic or don’t think it matters or they’re scared. You put all of those people together, maybe you have a majority. There’s a woman running for mayor that is openly pro-antifa, a woman who was photographed wearing a skirt with Chairman Mao’s face on it. It could be that Portland is the place where antifa goes Main Street.
I think that in many areas they are already there. I don’t think antifa will get out there and start dressing in police uniforms and be the official police. I think they’ll always stay kind of a paramilitary. But the police are weakened to the point where they can barely oppose [antifa] now as it is. So the police go away, it’s operant conditioning. If every time I grabbed this [hard seltzer] I got shocked, after a while I would stop grabbing it. And that’s basically how they operate. It’s not so much a matter of ruling the whole city, it’s the sense that antifa [moves] the Overton window. “If this person is advocating for something we don’t agree with, we can go punish them and we can punish their friends and family.” It’s a self-censorship. If the cops are a token force now, and they can’t stop anyone, and antifa can destroy your life, then people are going to know that.
And they’re going to shut up and just try to go about their lives.
That’s what they’re going to do.
Perhaps you should be hired as an article writer. You’re wasting your talents on posting comments.
What we have is called domestic terrorism. Their demands should be met…with total eviction notices delivered by Federal law enforcement officers. The Terrorist should then be promptly deliver for an indefinite stay at Gitmo. This kind of anarchy will continue until it is immediately put down with arrests and detention. Gitmo has a very nice warm climate, very restful and conducive to rethinking a persons political beliefs. Like Barney Fife said, “Nip it in the bud”!
I know that there are bad apples in every barrel, no matter what the group, even a few cops. But when the black lives matter terrorist occupy and cause turmoil, to include endangering the safety and lives of the public by removing traffic barriers, the whole group needs to be held accountable. Just like black lives are holding every police department accountable for the few bad apples. The democratic slush fund that are funding these terrorists needs to pay for the billions of dollars damage caused by their, anti American, anti any skin color but black, haters. Let them stay in the little tents, winter will come very early and the temperatures are going to be Antarctic on them, just watch and see. Romans 12:19
Earth to President Trump, start treating these “Domestic Terrorists” like the traitors they really are. Have black bag snatch and grab teams pick them off the streets, one at a time. Remove them to black sites and treat them like terrorists. That means enhanced interrogation to pull any and all information about their organized activity. Then, hold them incommunicado in one of the already built FEMA sites. It is time to fight fire with fire and that means taking on George Soros head on.
We need Wyatt Earp now! End this Anarchist Occupation BS by force. Call in the National Guard and haul them off in chains to Gitmo. They’re not wanted in America!
Go in, knock heads and kick butt. Then arrest them all.
Simple solution, shut off the power, water and all means of food delivery and see how long they stay in the dark with no water or food. Have several prison buses waiting to haul their behinds to jail where they stay until such time as all damages are paid for and they serve time for trying to overthrow our government.
this is BS…why can’t the police act on this? the blm is out of control and they need to be dispersed even if by “force” per her words
Surround their entire compound, not permitting anything to enter. They will ultimately realize their choice is either starve or depart peacefully. Never cave to individuals who threaten and remain a danger to civilized society.
This is what happens when you let terrorists roam free, and democrats protect them, bail them out, and defend them. Exterminate these traitors like cockroaches.
Burn down their tents and arrest them if they don’t leave.
They all need a swift kick in the A**. If the problem still exists after the ‘kick’, 10 years in solitary with no chance of parole should be used. If, after ten, the problem recurs, ship them all off to Iran and let the ‘moo-ha-has’ end it.
You know , a well placed sniper could take care of this BS real fast , Or even a drone . So why is this BS aloud to go on . The pets of the delusional democrats already showed they won’t back down . And we in America don’t deal with terrorists … right ??? So why not use force with force . the delusional democrats governors and mayors won’t step in cause their part of the power grab for the delusional democrats . The government took me from my home and trained me to kill . Then sent me to a war I didn’t know anything about . And I went cause I was told Iam saving lifes of the people of our country . But now the same government left side saids the people can kill , burn and loot at will . So what did I serve for ? Explain that to me again ? It was the delusional democrats that drafted me and now it’s the same delusional democrats that try to kill me and our people in the same country they said I was defending in the first place . What happened to the delusional democrats ???? When did they go bat shit crazy ??? Was it when they put women in high places with in our government . Like turkey neck Nancy or mad dog face max don’t for get the poster child hillary , and now this new one that wants to be our VP to pervert old joe and his corrupt son hunter . Oh and now turkey neck Nancys son . He’s in involved in the same crap hunters invloved in . funny how all these delusional democrats familys are under investigation for their corruption and still no one cares . Y’all still vote for them knowing their corrupt as all hell . Shows where the heads of the delusional democrats snowflakes are at … up their ass’s … that’s where .
There is only one way to stop this madness. And that is fight fire with fire.
When these thugs gather and start their rioting and destruction, they should be told once to disband immediately. If they keep up their crap for 15 seconds more, open up on them with automatic rifle and sniper fire. Don’t worry about how many get killed. Look at it as if you were killing cockroaches and it takes awhile to get all of them.
The ones who survive should be rounded up by any means necessary (head knocking and ass kicking) and shipped to GITMO.
By leaving even a few of these cockroaches alive and free in America will only allow the colony to reproduce and continue their destruction.
The “clean out” needs to reach into the colleges and universities by cleaning out the socialist / communist professors and shipping them to GITMO too.
This is out of control and US Marshals should be dispatched if the city politicians can’t handle their jobs and allow their own police to arrest these usurpers who seem to think they can get away with unlawful assembly. It’s time before the election to get control of the mobs who are well funded by the left and Soros.