OPP on Richmond

Virginia

H/T Spelunker

Update: We’ve found the Facebook event page for the “Richmond Rally for Racial Justice and LGBTQ Rights.”

Unfortunately, we missed out on the “energizing music by queer artists of color”:

Here’s confirmation of what reportedly happened at the “rap battle” at the VA Flaggers event:

47 Going, 52 Maybe, 712 Invited … Confirmed Turnout, 12! Victory!

One People’s Project has a new article about our Richmond demonstration. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the things that OPP missed:

1.)  Liberty Lamp predicted that the League of the South would probably have 5 or 6 people, 10 to 15 tops in Richmond. My guess was 20 to 30 based on previous experience. The actual number turned out to be 30 to 35.

Richmond was supposed to be just a local event along the lines of Ocala or Atlanta. It turned out that there were more people there than in Greenville in December. There were people in Richmond on our side from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and even New York.

2.) “Anti-Fascist Action” claimed that “both sides had a little over a dozen protesters, but the anti-fascists outnumbered the secessionists.” That’s bullshit. They were outnumbered about 3 to 1 in Richmond.

3.) Obviously, there was no fighting in Richmond because a dozen lesbians and queers weren’t dumb enough to storm across the street and find out how many Southern “gun nuts” there were in our entourage, and we had no interest in fighting with them anyway, as we have our own reasons to prefer having them there.

Just look:

Contrast with us:

4.) The boy holding the “Anti-Fascist Action” banner was obviously embarrassed to be seen in public with his associates. We noticed that he wouldn’t look us in the eye when we stood across the street and laughed at their bizarre public display. If their goal was to shame us and make us look like “extremists,” it backfired.

5.) As we previously noted, we heard that the promised “rap battle” ended in failure when a biker stopped by and smashed their little radio. We were eating lunch at the time and that was a source of great amusement.

6.) Spelunkstein’s article about the KKK is baseless. Going into the Richmond demonstration, we wondered if the Klan would show up like they did in Florence, KY, but we didn’t see, meet, or recognize anyone from the Klan there. Surely, if there was a Klansman at our demonstration, Spelunkstein would have told us by now.

7.) There was never any “march” from the Museum of the Confederacy. It was just a convenient gathering point to GPS. Also, there was never any plan to use the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol because of the one hour time limit and the limitations on using our flags and signs.

8.) According to OPP, no less than SIX organizations and leftwing newspapers turned out a whopping 12 lesbians and queers in a large metro area. Is this not a huge source of embarrassment for the “anti-fa”? What kind of message does that send to us?

It tells us that “anti-fa” are pretty weak on the ground in the South, even in their own urban strongholds, and probably non-existent in our turf. You’re supposed to be the “mainstream.” We are supposed to be the “extremists.” Well, it looks like Richmond and Tallahassee are not exactly Chicago and Portland.

9.) Where was OPP?

Daryl Lamont Jenkins was supposed to show up in Murfreesboro. It says on the Active-RVA event page that DLJ was supposed to be in Richmond. We didn’t see him in Murfreesboro or Richmond or anywhere else. This is surprising because Richmond is fairly close to DC and we believe Daryl was at the NPI conference.

10.) We’re told that there were about 50 people at the Equality Virginia conference. What a disappointing turnout in the wake of such a major legal victory.

11.) Finally, we learn something new from experience every time we do this, and we learned some things in Tallahassee and Richmond that will be applied later down the road. In Richmond, we were underestimated. Keep it up.