Posted on July 1, 2016

Behind the “Battle of Sacramento”

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, July 1, 2016

We live under an occupation, a system that isolates, impoverishes, and shames whites who speak the truth about race. Even the Catholic Church and supposedly “conservative” political organizations crack under pressure from those who openly declare their contempt for our people.

Sometimes intimidation fails; that is when the “anti-fascists” step in. “Anti-fascism” is based in the hard Left and many of its members are supposedly pledged to anarchism. In reality, they are defenders of the status quo, the pawns of the powerful, as is clear in the case of one Yvette Felarca.

Miss Felarca has identified herself as a “national organizer” for BAMN, which stands for By Any Means Necessary. The organization is a supposed “civil rights” group which has been notorious in recent years for organizing violent protests. Miss Felarca’s most recent “protest,” or what really should be called an “attack,” was against the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), which tried to hold a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento. The 30 members of the TWP had a permit but the 300 “antifa” did not. Instead, they stopped the demonstration by assaulting the demonstrators, just as they had promised.

Miss Felarca, interviewed immediately afterwards with a bandage over a cut on her face, made no secret of BAMN’s intentions:

The goal today was to shut down the Nazis’ recruitment rally and I congratulate everyone who came out today because we succeeded in doing that. We defeated them in their efforts. They have to run hiding, hiding behind the police and then just running away altogether. They were not able to hold any kind of demonstration on the steps of the capitol and that’s absolutely because of the militant, integrated, direct action [what “antifas” call violence] of the people that came out. BAMN mobilized people out here to shut them down and we’re really, really glad that there’s been such an integrated direct action struggle to succeed in doing that.

To us, there’s no free speech for fascists. You do not have the right to organize for genocide. We were organizing to let the fascists know: Anyone who is thinking of joining them, don’t, because it’s not going to be a good day for you. And I think on balance our side won, they lost.

There is no doubt that it was the leftists who started the violence, but by most accounts, it was the TWP that finished it. One TWP member was seriously injured but has already recovered. At least six “antifa” were sent to the hospital, with one reportedly still there.

But casualty counts are not the point. Miss Felarca has admitted that her organization deliberately used violence to stop American citizens from taking part in a legally sanctioned demonstration. This is a crime, and a crime caught on video.

Another video from the event shows Miss Felarca committing another crime, attacking a TWP member while police silently stand by. First, she blocks the TWP demonstrator with her body while repeatedly yelling “Get the fuck off our streets.” She begins punching him, and he raises his arms, clearly showing the police, who are only are few feet away, that the attack is unprovoked. The police do nothing. Other “antifa” join the assault, knock him to the ground, and start kicking him. Only then do the police intervene.

In the video interview, Miss Felarca called her actions “self-defense.” “They are organizing to attack and kill us,” she said, “so we have a right to self-defense, we have an obligation to do that.”

Like the astonishing claim that the TWP was “organizing for genocide,” there is no evidence for this accusation. I cannot think of a single recent occasion when a left-wing demonstration or conference in this country has been disrupted, let alone attacked by “racists.” It is invariably violent or potentially violent leftists who attack white advocates who are demonstrating or meeting peacefully. One can’t help but admire Miss Felarca’s chutzpah in promoting violence and then claiming later that its purpose was to oppose “lynch mobs.”

Miss Felarca is a teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkley, California. According to its website, “The staff of King is guided by the ideals of Dr. King: equality, academic excellence, community action, nonviolence, respect for self and others, and leadership based on democratic principles.” Many people have contacted the school, demanding she be fired.

The school district says it will do nothing. As a spokesman explained: “We’re no different from any other employer. We can’t discipline anyone for what they do in their private life.” I suspect the district would somehow find a way to discipline any teacher who attended an American Renaissance conference. Nor is there any sign that Miss Felarca will be charged with any crime.

But parents are right to be concerned, since BAMN has long used students as cannon fodder for violent disruption.

BAMN, whose full name is “Coalition to Defend Affirmative Acton, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary,” was founded to defend anti-white racial preferences in California. The group is also well established in Michigan, where it led violent demonstrations against the successful effort to abolish affirmative action in the state.

BAMN repeatedly disrupted meetings of the University of Michigan’s regents, and it shut down a session of the Michigan Board of Canvassers in Lansing in 2005. Groups such as Young Americans of Freedom saw their events disrupted by BAMN during the fight over affirmative action.

The usual BAMN tactic was to bus in high school students from Detroit. Well meaning Republicans who expected genteel debate found themselves mobbed by black students running wild, destroying property, and screaming the slogans taught to them by their handlers.

This kind of brawling is supported by a lefty non-profit called United for Equality & Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund (UEAA),which reports that it is “affiliated” with BAMN.  Indeed, according to BAMN’s website, Yvette Felarca’s contact email is Yvette.felarca@ueaa.net. The organization reports that it gets money from such foundations as Ford and Kellogg. The AFLCIO, the International Longshoreman’s Association, the United Food and the Commercial Workers International Union also give money, as do a few judges and state representatives. Even our friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center do, so at last indirectly, these violent protesters were supported by the SPLC. According to the group’s tax filings, it takes in relatively modest sums, except in 2003 when it reported over $200,000 in income.

BAMN is not really a “student” protest movement, but a top-down “teacher” protest movement. Its leaders–mostly white–use mostly black and Hispanic students as shock troopers. At the same time, BAMN members try to run for office and build influence within unions. Local media have reported BAMN’s attempt to use the Detroit teachers union for their own political goals, focusing on disruptive protests and student brainwashing rather than actually trying to educate students. According to testimony from someone who claims to have been a member of BAMN, it operates like a cult.

BAMN was founded by a lawyer, Shanta Driver who, like Tim Wise, is now a subsidized guest speaker on “race relations” for corporations, activist organizations, and government bureaucracies. BAMN also files lawsuits to protect the racial spoils system even after voters reject it. This combined approach of violence, lawsuits, “militant” posturing, and campus activism is what they mean by an “integrated” approach.

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition, which has received a great deal of funding from “social justice” foundations, was also present at the Sacramento attack, but mainstream media have written virtually nothing about the backgrounds of either of these groups.

Far from blaming Miss Felarca and her friends for the violence, journalists now claim she is being “threatened” after “clashes” with “neo-Nazis.” This is exactly what we see when left-wing extremists start violence at Donald Trump rallies. The chaos is invariably reported in the passive voice: Violence “erupted.” Miss Felarca is now making the breathtaking claim that Donald Trump is responsible for the phone calls to her employer, and even for the violence in Sacramento!

Charles Pulliam-Moore of the lefty site Fusion writes that Miss Felarca’s open avowal of violence is “pro-immigrant, anti-nationalist activism” that is opposed only by “trolls.” Another writer, Ian Goodrum, condemned local media for reporting that the lefties were the aggressors, and embraced the “antifa” slogan of “no platform” for “fascists.” He tied the TWP to Golden Dawn, the government of Ukraine, and even David Cameron who permitted the referendum on the European Union. “Sometimes it’s OK not to ask for comment,” he wrote. “Sometimes, there’s a moral imperative to refuse it.”

And, of course, it is organizations like BAMN that get to decide who can comment and who cannot, who is and is not a “fascist” or a “racist” and can therefore be silenced by violence. Their movement is built on violence, yet it relies of subsidies and support from foundations and the spoon-fed media.

It’s a lie to say the TWP started the violence in Sacramento. It’s a lie to say Miss Felarca is some kind of a victim. It’s a lie to say the “antifa” are “activists” rather than violent thugs. But the greatest lie is the one the “antifa” tell themselves: that they are some kind of opposition to the status quo. Instead, they are its peons, its pawns. They are the ultimate consequence of cheap labor, cultural degradation, and anti-white brainwashing. They are the purest expression of the poisonous ideology that is strangling our country, and of the network of support that keeps them going.