Kent, WA: Call to Defend Planned Parenthood from ‘Patriot Prayer’ June 9th

Call for a Pacific Northwest regional convergence against Patriot Prayer and Joey Gibson, who plans on rallying against Planned Parenthood on June 9th.

Joey Gibson and his cohorts in Patriot Prayer have yet again called for another rally at a Planned Parenthood in Kent, WA. The facebook event calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, linking the rally to Joey Gibson’s bid for a seat in the US Senate. They also cite a news article that claimed that Washington State politicians were involved in harvesting aborted fetuses and selling them, which has been widely debunked and proved to be a doctored recording. Regardless of the rhetoric, what is most important is that Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer organize their politics around patriarchal violence, misogyny and attacks on freedom of choice. At previous rallies at a Planned Parenthood in Olympia, WA, members of Patriot Prayer along with local Proud Boys initiated violent scuffles with anarchists who had showed up to distract these bigots. Their presence outside Planned Parenthood is part of their larger intention to create a climate of fear around gender, the subservience of women and their own chauvinism.

Planned Parenthood has a policy in place for supporters to ignore protesters at their sites. As anarchists, we know this is impossible and “avoidance politics” is a particular brand of leftist cowardice. This is a call to crew up, roll tight and organize to obstruct yet another targeted attack by Joey Gibson and his rabble of misogynist frat-boys. If we are to continue to call ourselves anti-fascists, these kinds of gendered attacks must be met with the same force as a nazi rally or a white power gathering.

Anarchists and anti-fascists in the Pacific Northwest have learned over the last year that the broader coalition of liberals and socialists who tend to show up to oppose public gathering of the Right are not friendly to tactics of direct action that stray out of the confines of “non-violence.” They will provide no safe space or harbor for those of us willing to carry out direct action against this mob of pond scum, so it is imperative that anarchists and anti-fascists alike organize to keep ourselves safe and protected.

This is a call for anti-fascists region-wide to converge at Planned Parenthood in Kent, WA on Saturday, June 9th to once again oppose Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, and the nazis and fascists alike who flock to his events.