Posted on August 25, 2017

Protest Poop: San Francisco Activists Plan to Confront Rightwing Rally with Dog Feces

RT, August 25, 2017

San Francisco dog owners plan to create a carpet of excrement at the location where the Patriot Prayer group will be holding a rally. The activists say they’re confronting white supremacists, while the rally’s organizer vehemently denies being one.

Thousands of people responded to an event posted on Facebook, which calls for dog owners to come to the Crissy Field park in San Francisco and prompt their pets to lay many piles of poop at the location where a right-wing group Patriot Prayer will be holding a rally on Saturday.

The activists say it is their way of confronting rightwing extremists following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I just had this image of alt-right people stomping around in the poop,” the organizer of the event, Tuffy Tuffington, said he came up with the idea while walking his dogs. “It seemed like a little bit of civil disobedience where we didn’t have to engage with them face to face.”

Another event on Facebook calls to protest the Patriot Prayer rally with flowers.

Meanwhile, the founder and organizer of Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson, says his group and its rallies have been misrepresented.

“F*** white supremacists! F*** neo-Nazis!” Gibson shouted from the stage of his most recent rally, in Seattle on August 13, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

For the upcoming event in San Francisco, Gibson’s Facebook page proclaims: “No extremists will be allowed in. No Nazis, Communist, KKK, Antifa, white supremacist, I.E., or white nationalists. … This is an opportunity for moderate (A)mericans to come in with opposing views.”

It’s a rally to promote love and free speech, Gibson said.

Heavy restrictions were placed upon participants: no guns or weapons of any kind, no flagpoles, helmets, shields, pepper spray, or even selfie sticks will be permitted, SPLC reported.

Some white supremacists have attended Patriot Prayer’s previous rallies, SPLC noted. Gibson said they came uninvited. He also claimed that most of the speakers at his rally are non-white, including himself.

“I’m a person of color. I don’t believe in white supremacy. Otherwise, I would have to punch myself,” Gibson said in a recent YouTube video.

A number of Democrats, including House Minority Leader and Congresswoman from California, Nancy Pelosi, called Patriot Prayer a white supremacist group and objected to San Francisco authorities’ decision to allow it at the Crissy Park.

“And now they’re going to give it as a venue to Nazis and white nationalists,” Pelosi said Tuesday.

Gibson said Pelosi made the gathering “more dangerous.”

“Nancy Pelosi said it was a white supremacist rally so she could bring out extremists on the right and the left,” Gibson said. “She’s telling white supremacists to come into town.”

Violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, when white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters. One woman was killed and 19 people were injured when a car driven by an alleged white supremacist slammed into a group of counter-protesters later in the day.

Original Article