Who You Callin’ Snowflake?: Report from Mar-A-Lago

Palm Beach County—like most of South Florida—is a disgusting display of riches and glamour. But all that glitters is definitely not gold (and what’s so great about gold anyway). If one looks closer they can see the corruption, poverty, and violence that allow the rest to occur. Although the county voted overwhelmingly Democrat (which means tons of middle-to-upper-class liberals), we are also home to the Mar-a-Lago golf resort, also known as the ‘Winter White House,’ outside of which, Trump supporters tailgate every single weekend along with a number of high profile white supremacists. Protesting are a solid amount of anarchists, communists, and other radical folks.

In PBC, the response to the election result was quick and solid. Three days after election day, a few thousand people—unforeseen numbers for the area—gathered in downtown West Palm Beach. Although the majority of the crowd chanted about how Hilary was actually president or asked “what does democracy look like,” as peace police tried to make sure no one caused any inconvenience to the police or other citizens. However, there were enough radicals to eventually convince around 1000 people to take the streets and march through an area where drunk hipsters were enjoying overpriced IPAs and vegan pizza.

Since then, however, the liberals have tightened their grip. They have bigger networks, more access to social media, and work with the police. I won’t go into detail here, because any radical fighting anything anywhere has probably run into the liberal problem. I’ll say this though: it got so bad that a march with 3,500 people that planned to show up at Trump’s house ended up—because of requests from the police department—not leaving the sidewalk, obeying all traffic signals, and not actually crossing the bridge that leads to the island where the scumbag lives. After much conversation amongst ourselves and larger groups, we decided that there were a number of ways to approach the situation. It was bad enough having to fight law enforcement and neo-Nazis, we didn’t have the energy to also be constantly arguing and fighting with liberals and their peace police. The tactics we chose to try out first were making the FB event page before them and having dialogue with the liberal “leaders.”

Within 24 hours a liberal had copied the page—pictures and all—and added that it’s a peaceful event and that we would be working with the local police and secret service to make sure nothing bad happens.

When we found out that March 4 was deemed March 4 Trump day, and that an event was planned in our backyard, we got on it. The page we made called for folks to confront the Trump supporters and that’s it—no mention of working or not working with the police, nothing said about violence or nonviolence. Within 24 hours a liberal had copied the page—pictures and all—and added that it’s a peaceful event and that we would be working with the local police and secret service to make sure nothing bad happens. The next ten days leading up to the event were filled with Facebook arguments and face to face meetings.

In the end, most of the liberals seemed convinced that any violence would be on the part of the police or Trump supporters and that confrontation is a necessary step. Those that didn’t agree had the option of staying home or protesting at a different location, about a half a mile from where the Trumpettes were gathered. We also attended one of their “protests” the week before and handed out fliers about consensus organizing and what it means to be an anarchist and were invited to one of their meetings where we pitched the idea of giving the liberals some direct action training.

With less than 48-hours to go before the big march, we were alerted to a speaking event with Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Donald Trump, happening at a hotel within walking distance for most of the radicals in PBC. We hastily organized an event and it was quickly shared by all the liberals and their groups. We crossed our fingers. About fifteen to twenty anarchists showed up, each of us carrying a megaphone or some kind of musical instrument and we were rowdy. A crowd of about 40 liberals was gathered on the opposite side of the small, two lane, island road, holding signs and watching us. Two old men with Trump hats stood 100-feet down the road and two beefy undercover cops were mingling with the crowds. Right off the bat, we were told by the Palm Beach Police that we were on private property. We were on a public road, which we made known to the cop. Him and two of his buddies kept repeating, “This is private property, please move to the other side of the road,” while we ignored them, dodging their attempts to corral us, and chanting less and less friendly slogans. This would normally be the time where the liberals begin to shout at us to stop provoking the police, follow the laws, and be peaceful. This time though, they cheered for us and didn’t try at all to discourage our activities.

The reaction of the liberals was mixed—some demanded her immediate release and an end to the repression, some were thankful that it “wasn’t worse,” and others remained silent…

Eventually backup came and we were grossly outnumbered—for just over fifty protesters, the state responded with over 75 law enforcement officers. They slowly but surely forced us across the street to where the liberals were standing. Some of us resisted and the reaction of the cops was disgusting. When a male presenting person refused to get off the streets, the riot squad would get in his face and yell. When a female presenting person did the same, cops would get very handsy. One female protester took exception to the assaults and tried to escape; she was surrounded by police and secret service and forcefully arrested. The reaction of the liberals was mixed—some demanded her immediate release and an end to the repression, some were thankful that it “wasn’t worse,” and others remained silent or chanted about democracy or the need for a leader and not a silly tweeter. When the riot squad got bigger and demanded that we move south 1000 feet to make room for the president’s motorcade, most of the radicals stepped to the back of the group because of tiredness and concern for our arrested friends (we had since learned that another friend had been taken into custody by the secret service). It was encouraging to spend the next fifteen minutes watching the faces of the liberals as the police pushed and threatened senior citizens and members of the media with violence and chemical weapons.

No one else was arrested and eventually the crowd mostly dispersed. Thanks to the precision of skill of our police liaison, both of our friends were released without being taken to jail—one got a traffic summons and the other only a mark on her permanent record. The ACLU has offered to help both of them. By the time I got home there were already numerous comments on our Facebook event page, mostly from liberals, and all positive. We were stoked (and slightly nervous) about the next day.

The next day our people drove in from all over the state—as far as 5 hours away—and psyched ourselves up for what was to take place. A scout had informed us that there were at least 100 Trump supporters on the island and that they were blasting music, drinking beer, and being quite rowdy. Despite reservations on social media, in real life the majority of the folks gathered were more than down to cross the bridge and confront the ignorant pieces of shit waiting on the other end. We already knew the cops were on their side, because of the fact that they were allowed to march in the street and hang out on the island, while we were—week in and week out—told that if we stepped off the sidewalk or tried to cross the bridge, we would be teargassed. Still, we gathered our courage and walked into the belly of the beast.

There’s no way to aptly describe the atmosphere on Bingham Island. I’ve never been to a KKK rally or white supremacist luncheon, but I imagine there would be similarities between the three. As soon as we got over the bridge people began yelling at us. They called us snowflakes (which I still don’t understand) and anarchists and told us their feelings about Obama. Often they would call us anarchists and Obama supporters in the same sentence. When I tried to point out the contradictions in this statement, a man in a leather jacket with “fuck Obama” written on the back, grabbed his crotch and repeatedly squeezed it. For about 45 minutes we yelled back and forth with the increasingly belligerent racists, then we decided to up the ante.

Being led by a giant banner, we pushed our way across the street and into the throngs of enemies. Immediately we were surrounded; for every one of us, there were at least 7 or 8 American flag waiving, Make America Great Again wearing, bullshit spouting, ignoramuses screaming in our faces. When any of us would try to engage one of them in a reasonable discussion, we were immediately shouted down with cries of, “Weh, I need a safe space,” or “Ohhh, you snowflakes are so sensitive,” or simply chants of “USA” or “Trump.” When one, inches from my face, called me a fascist over and over again. I calmly asked him what his definition of a fascist is. His reply? “You.” When I let him know that in my opinion he wasn’t very good at words, and he should stop using one’s he doesn’t understand, he told me, “Fuck you. How’re those fer some words.” After this and many other pointless conversations, one friend getting smacked in the face, and much pushing, we decided to cross back to the other side.

Police stopped traffic for us to cross, but halfway there we were swarmed by Trump supporters and ended up stuck in the middle of the road for about 15-30 seconds. Cops were there post-haste; they separated us, pushed us to the side, and then let all the protesters know that if we blocked traffic again we would be arrested for trespassing. When we feebly pointed out the double standard (as Trump supporters were constantly crossing the street and blocking traffic without permission) we were ignored. When we asked the police why they were standing in front of our sign, while not harassing the Trump supporters who were being violent, we were again ignored. If there was any doubt left who’s side the police were on, it was cleared up a few minutes later.

There were three dudes, probably in their early 20’s, who were throwing up white power signs at us from across the street for about an hour. Eventually they came over to our side and asked us why we didn’t want to be friends. We called them white supremacists. They told us they were only joking. Then they asked if we liked Jews. We began ignoring them again, and when I turned around to check up on them a few minutes later, they were standing about casually joking with one of the cops. After all four of them fist-bumped, they went their separate ways and we took photographs of all of them.

Minutes later, those of us remaining decided to call it a day. There were no arrests, no major injuries, and it appeared that we snagged a few liberals. Going forward we must build on this. Even if only 10% of the liberals join us for 10% of our actions, that would mean hundreds of extra people escalating the fight. This is a war and we are on the front lines; wars are not won with silent sign holding or writing letters to your so-called representatives. At the very least we hope that we can do our thing, the liberals can do theirs, and we can figure out some way to not fight each other in public.

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