San Luis Obispo Anti-Racist Action Introduction and Milo Reportback

This is as much a report-back as it is an introduction. Our Anti-Racist Action chapter has only been operational for a few months, but we are proud of the work that we have done and the connections we have made so far. The central coast is a sea of conservatism and rising far-Right activity, but because most students living in San Luis Obispo are white and do not ever leave the area, they aren’t exposed to the discrepancies between life outside of the university and within it.

Lead Up To Milo

When we got word Milo Yinnafuck was coming to campus, we immediately mobilized. After our call to shut him down was made public, many individuals reached out to us in solidarity and support and offered ways to get involved. SLO, and Cal Poly in particular, has never dealt much with activism, our call for bloc in addition to the other shutdowns of Milo nationwide scared Cal Poly administration and city officials. We find this ironic, seeing as Milo’s visit to school—and the racism on campus he inspired—scared many students and even after a large community outreach to call off the event, Cal Poly president Jeff Armstrong did nothing. He has repeatedly stated his willingness to protect “free speech” and has shrugged off others students speech regarding the the racist, unsafe environment that has been created on campus. Admin fearfully responded to the mobilization by joining with the city to create a last minute plan to hire 109 law enforcement officers and additional SWAT team members to protect Milo’s speech and intimidate the activists who had gathered to oppose him.

Campus President Jeff Armstrong has a PhD in animal science and worked as a designer for McDonald’s factory farms and quality assurance. Under his leadership, the population of black students on campus has dropped below 1% and 40% of black staff and faculty have left campus in the last year. His staff has voted no faith in his leadership and students have begun to call for him to resign.

A few months prior to Milo’s visit, the campus Republicans built a “Free Speech Wall” which—in the usual Cal Poly Republican fashion—was filled with hateful rhetoric and doodles. The school refused to act citing that they believed in freedom of speech, anti-fascists responded with their own free speech and deconstructed the walls shitty existence. The days after it fell students continued to voice their discontent before it was finally entirely painted over by the on campus progressives “SLO Solidarity.” This is the second year the administration has allowed for the construction of the “Free Speech Wall” and it is the second year white supremacist words have gone up on it. In the months leading up to Milo’s event, numerous racist and sexist flyers went up on campus, mocking SLO Solidarity. Administration refused to acknowledge their existence and the fear it created in students, and when they did it was a half assed email citing “freedom of speech” to post such hateful flyers.

In addition to organizing a shutdown, we worked with our friends in The Cloven Hoof Society and the on campus club Cal Poly Students for Quality Education to create a counter-event to poke the buttons of the right and of Cal Poly administration. On February 4th we held a movie night where we showed two films: Invocation of My Demon Brother and ReGorgitated Sacrifice. The goal of these movie showings was to connect with like minded individuals and to push the envelope of “free speech” that the school was hiding behind. If campus was going to bring Milo in and protect it, we were going to use our free speech to show artistically fucked up horror movies with satanist themes. Breitbart—and many conservatives in the community—lost their shit and ran a few stories about it, which made us giggle like little school children. They mistakenly associated the event with the Satanic Temple and then quickly made up more lies in a follow up article to “fix” their mistake. We made many connections with new comrades and received quite the attention for our event, so we felt that the night’s goals were successfully met.

January 31st Reportback

On the day of, the school decided to spend $68,000 on security for the event, and instead of making the College Republicans front the bill, Cal Poly and the CSU system split the costs. Administration built a fence early in the morning around the area in front of the venue, and during the event it was used as a spot to hold special conservative snowflakes and separate them from the activists who had gathered outside to oppose Milo and Armstrong. The school set up security cameras set up on multiple buildings, deployed snipers, had two SWAT armored vehicles (what looked like MRAPs) on standby, and about 100+ officers to protect the building. Because the theater was connected to other buildings with classes in them, all of the building entrances had been closed off and were guarded, and a handful of tight security checkpoints with metal detectors had been set up. Milo was said to have offered the school 3 million dollars in liability costs, and opened his speech by telling his audience that he would be giving grants to white men attending Cal Poly.

Currently the Cal Poly Muslim Student Association is fighting with Administration about the fact that they were charged $4k for security costs they didn’t ask for during and event they held on campus. They are furious at the fact that their student club was forced to pay high fees while Armstrong has been adamant that the school does not charge their student clubs and that is why the Republicans did not have to pay for Milo. About an hour before Milo’s event began, a liberal march met up with the bloc that had gathered out in front of the theatre a while beforehand—and in hindsight there should have been better coordination for that. The liberals organized their response too late in the day and we organized ours too early. A confederate and swastika flag were both burned before antifascists got the opportunity to hijack a megaphone. The liberal chanting and crowd attitude was quickly flipped from sentiments of “Love trumps hate!” to “Everybody hates the police!” From that point on, the collective stood around the fence and antagonized the police. The crowd’s morale and energy really started to grow after the flag burning and speaker change, and the energy of the crowd became more and more aggressive—protesters started to bang the flag poles that we provided on the fence so hard that they began to break off and fly towards the cops.

On a few occasions, liberal organizers asked the bloc to help them push down the fence. On those occasions it was pushed just hard enough to make it tip but not actually fall over, and once the cops became more aggressive students began to back off. However, we feel like this could have been more beneficial to our cause than if the fence actually fell. The only accomplishment knocking the fence down would have achieved would have been starting a fight with the cops. We understand that that was not the goal of everyone who had arrived in that moment and did not want to endanger those who were just getting the feel for radical action. Rushing into the fight headfirst could have gotten many of the protestors arrested or injured, and that could have caused them to disconnect from all future actions. We would much rather take our approach to this fight one step at a time, so that our momentum can get to a point where it’s unstoppable.

As the night went on, the protesters became further and further frustrated by the police presence. A week later there is still an uproar about the militarization of the Cal Poly campus and Armstrong’s strong approval of it. The crowd got really into what the bloc was doing during the action, and numerous individuals told us that in that moment they stood against the riot cops they understood why we wore masks, and that they would be doing the same next time. Many individuals during the Anti-Milo Action were given the opportunity to express their frustration in ways they never had been able to do before. Many individuals have thanked us for this chapter’s existence because they “have been waiting for something like this to come along.” That in itself is something to feel victorious about.

After Milo fans had been escorted into the venue, we continued to use our megaphone to heckle the police forces that were guarding the building. This allowed us to keep morale up and allow everyone to have some fun with what we were doing as well. We have never seen police react in such a wide variety of emotion to an action or to our words. Some of the officers became irritated by our harassment, others tried their hardest not to laugh at the ways we made fun of their friends, a handful of officers looked shamed, and a few more officers looked more scared than we’ve ever seen before. The riot cops may have been able to intimidate certain individuals, but we know that many of the cops themselves were scared shitless of us. Black bloc tactics are not something this community has been very well exposed to, and so we must find ways to use that lack of exposure to our advantage.

A Reflection

While we are mildly embarrassed that we did not succeed in shutting down Milo’s platform, we recognize there was little more we could have done in our situation. A bloc of 15 people alongside a 140 person protest against a heavily militarized police force is not usually a winning recipe. However, we feel we learned a lot from this action, and that we gained a lot of experience while the school wasted a lot of money. Many of our comrades have never encountered police tactics like the ones used last Tuesday, but they were able to get really familiar with those tactics in the 7 hours we spent dealing with them. There have been numerous discussions about how to react to certain situations in the future, and how to make our tactics the most potent that they can be. We want to better construct and utilize our shields and flagpoles as well.

At the end of the day, we many numerous strong connections with our community members, and they were very receptive to our ideas and words. Some of those we connected with were students, others were locals—many of them stated that they would start coming to actions in bloc, because they now recognize how important that is. From here on we want to strengthen our ability for future action. While we feel we did a good amount of community outreach for this action, we want to become more deeply involved with anyone and everyone we can. We also want to make sure that we reach out to other antifa chapters across California in order for us to help build a strong anti-fascist network in our state. We feel that if we could have mobilized comrades from other areas we could have been more successful.

In our own community we plan to host Food Not Bombs sponsored art shows and antifa movie nights to help gather radicals in the area. While our Anti-Milo Action was not successful in its goals to deny him a platform, we feel we were successful in taking a strong stance against racism in our community. While we did not shut down Milo, we made a strong step towards radicalizing others and getting them more comfortable with direct action.

Solidarity with antifa nationwide who have worked to combat the fascism Milo brings to college campuses.

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