Antiabortion extremists have developed a nasty habit of opening fake clinics loaded with Bible propaganda next to abortion clinics. On the 16th of March, one of these fake clinics next to Lakeland Women’s Health Center in Florida held a ribbon cutting ceremony. The ceremony drew an angry and noisy protest from defenders of the legitimate clinic and from Occupy Polk.
The pairs of real and fake clinics are becoming reminescent of the pairs of opposing castles that were often built along European rivers that formed front lines between contending powers, especially in France. All clinics in places like Florida with religious extremists dominating the state government are effectively under siege.
Polk County Sheriff’s deputy Capt Billy Strickland appeared to participate in as well as defend the ribbon cutting ceremony. He was seen seated in the middle of the crowd under the tent during the ceremony, not standing apart to defend it. Interestingly, he donated $88.30 to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd’s reelection campaign. 88 is a well-known Nazi symbol meaning “HH” or Heil Hitler. Adolf Hitler became Chanceller of Germany on Jan 30 1933. Unknown if this is intentional or a cooincidence. In addition, he shot two people while on duty back in 2021, supposedly for trying to ram him with a car.
Up on the fence wall defending the legitimate clinic
Polk County Sheriff’s deputy Capt Billy Strickland in green w star on arm. He appears here to be a participant rather than police defender of the ribbon cutting
With FL SB1718’s brutal provisions forcing a trucking boycott, predictions are out for serious shortages of groceries (and yes, toilet paper…) starting in a bit over two weeks.
The video below is NOT verified by anyone but reportedly has gone viral. Might be a store that can’t get shipments because their regular driver parked his rig. Might just be cleaning the shelves. Regardless of the situation at this isolated store, we may soon be seeing this for real all over Florida as trucks stop and groceries and gas run out.
After that we will see NATIONAL shortages as most of Florida’s crops rot in the fields. We’ve all seen the videos of abandoned construction sites and farm fields. Sorry AmeriKKKa, it’s just too dangerous for many migrants to consider going to Florida to work right now.
For nearly a year, supporters of the pro-Trump insurgents who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 2021 have been protesting outside the DC Jail in support of the terrorists held or passing through there for J6. On the 14th of May, they got a surprise: counterprotesters got their first and took the prime spot! The fascists responded with violence.
The counterprotesters have adopted the name DC Residents against Terrorism and Sympathizers, or DC Rats for short
Although cops had (as the law requires when no permit exists) let the counterprotesters stay in the spot they took first, they also took no action against the right winger who smashed a counterprotester’s glasses. The attacker just barreled into the counterprotest, screaming something about judges and then destroying the glasses. As the fash showed up, police had used some barricades to set separate zones for each side, but with both on the same side of the street this did not prevent Fascist violence. Since the counterprotesters had arrived first, thus had the legal right to the close up spot, and the J6’ers have a reputation for violence, it would have been in the interests of public peace to confine the pro-J6 protesters to the other side of the street.
Heads up! Florida’s economy may be facing a takedown by our Latinx comrades over anti-migrant hate bill SB 1718.
A truck driver’s boycott (will put the economy under siege as nothing comes in or goes out) is brewing, with Latinx truck drivers vowing nationally to refuse to enter Florida.
Note that there is a national shortage of truck drivers caused by brutal scheduling, the hard-to-get commerical drivers license, and the drug testing associated with that license. There is NO WAY DeSantis, Wal-Mart, or anyone else can replace Latinx truck drivers with white drivers.
Also, even though SB1718 goes into effect July 1, workers have vanished from farm fields and construction sites all over Florida.
Such things as gas and groceries may get scarce here, though spot shortages of foods and long gas lines are the most probablyimmediate effects.
On the 13th of May, explicitly Fascist group Patriot Front staged another one of their “mass marches” of a hundred or so in Washington DC. A solo counterprotester called them out, demanding the “get a job,” calling them “incels,” the works.
It is known they came in on the Metro Red Line from Glenmont(what do you wanna bet their cars were parked there!) and that they apparently had to dump their flags and shields to get back on the Metro to escape the city. Unknown if they had anyone in position to retrieve them, or if someone else captured the whole lot.
Back on Dec 4, 2021, they tried U-hail trucks for transportation from their “vehicle exchange point.” Two of the three U-hauls were disabled, trapping them on the VA side of Key Bridge for hours after their rally. When they finally got back to their cars, every one of them had been trashed as well. Their sentry claimed to have been run off at gunpoint, but more likely was sleeping on watch. Explaining the damage to their two rented U-haul trucks may have been the high point of Dec 5 2021 for them. This time around, they rode Metro instead of driving…
Patriot Front boarded Metro at Glenmont, using only the last car
On the 13th of May, far-right Christian extremists again attempted without success to disrupt a drag show at a venue on Barracks Row in SE Washington DC. Again a solid wall of umbrellas blocked their view of people entering the venue, again loud music made their hateful words hard to hear.
Not even violent Proud Boys back on Feb 18 were successful in attempting to shut down a drag show in the DC area. The extreme right has been able to stage media events but not project serious raw power into the DC area since Jan 6, 2021. This while elsewhere in the US, drag shows are being banned outright by state legislatures in some places while in others armed neo-Nazis are held off by armed anti-Fascist activists. Christian nationalists are promoting outright genocide against the LGBTQ community in the South and the GOP is listening to them.
A wall of umbrellas defended the venue from religious extremists possibly w cameras, and a sound system made their hateful words harder to hear (cropped from photo by Our Rights DC)
The 11th of May was the 3ed day of Occupy Polk, which is hard at work kicking off a ballot initiative that could overturn every last one of FL Governor Ron DeSantis’s abortion bans. In afternoon rush hour, activists relocated from the clinic to the Southgate shopping center, where there is considerably more traffic.
If this referendum reaches the ballot it is expected to pass, which would be a major strategic defeat nationally for Christian Nationalists. With abortion protected in Florida, nobody between Key West and Washington DC would have to travel more than 300-400 miles for abortion, and the effects could be felt all the way to Texas. This would also be a humiliating defeat for Ron DeSantis and could take the wind out of the sails of his planned Presidential campaign
Short of the 2024 election, defeating DeSantis (AKA DeathSantis) on abortion will make it more difficult to implement his genocidal anti-trans laws and blunt the momentum of his planned attacks on the rest of the LGBTQ community.
The 10th of May was the second day of Occupy Polk, which is camping on private property at a women’s clinic, out of reach of cops attempting to arrest them for or otherwise prevent them from camping. They are campaigning to put a referendum on the 2024 Florida ballot to guarantee abortion rights and overturn all of DeSantis’s extremist anti-abortion laws.
If this question reaches the ballot, it is very likely to pass as it has in other states in the 2022 election. All of those were states the GOP thought were solidly Christian Nationalist and antiabortion, only to have voters flush these assumptions down the toilet of history.
Rallying at a clinic on S Florida Ave in Lakeland, FL
The Senator from District 12 was not in their office
On the 4th of May, mushrooming financial and ethics scandals continued to embroil the Supreme Court. Protesters demanding a code of ethics for SCOTUS showed up by surprise marching past the Chevy Chase homes of “justices” Kavanaugh and Roberts. This pair of protests apparently took the Supreme Court and the police by surprise: a few US Marshalls were in front of the homes of these “justices,” but Montgomery County police were caught by surprise and did not show up at all.
Author’s commentary on the role of the Supreme Court (as packed by Trump and Mitch McConnell) in creating the current political chaos in the US
The GOP continues to scream about the fact that protesters have marched past the homes of all six antichoice “justices,” while saying nothing about this so-called “court” throwing out 50 years and more of settled law and throwing almost every personal right in the US into chaos and uncertainty. Even no-fault divorce is now on the chopping block in Texas, as sexual and gender taboos excalate to “one man, one woman, one time.
Kavanaugh and Roberts are two of the six “Justices” whose decision to permit states to ban abortion and potentially prosecute women for seeking abortion have pushed the United States to the edge of civil war. Beyond abortion laws, in states like Florida, Texas, Missouri, Montana, and worst of all Tennesee, a full-throated pogrom is underway against transgender folks and especially trans kids. This witch-hunt seemed to detonate out of nowhere weeks after the Dobbs decision came down.
First came hate-filled statements at conventions like that of Proud Boys linked “Moms4Liberty” and Turning Point USA, both in Tampa Fl. By CPAC in Jan 2023, these calls had escalated all the way to an overt call by a Daily Wire columnists to “eradicate” transgender people. Not long after the Tampa conventions, Fascists and overt Nazis putting hate into action began with attempts to storm drag shows, but stout defenses have bogged that offensive down. Not long afterwards, Nazis began targetting the Jewish community as well. As of early 2023, it is considered unsafe to open small neighborhood synagogues in Florida due to the threat from Nazi terrorists. All of this was set loose by the Dobbs decision back on June 24, 2022.
Then came January and state legislatures went back into session. Unbelievably extreme bills with the potential to cost thousands of lives were fast-tracked and signed into law. Speakers at rallies in Florida have warned trans folks to arm for self defense, and indeed many are.
Laws are being passed to take kids from their families, subject them to “conversion therapy” and attempt to destroy their identity. Under UN definitions of genocide, this qualifies. Roberts and Kavanaugh are as responsable as anyone in Florida or Tenn for this hellish nightmare.
Donald Trump in turn is responsible for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh(“Rapey Brett,” and Amy Coney Barret (“the handmaid”) being on the Supreme Court at all. Hopefully the corrupt “justices” voting for chaos and potentially civil war will end up going to prison alongside Trump, convicted of ethics violations for those millions of dollars in gifts more and more of these “justices” are being found to have received. If not, the IRS could take them down the same way they got Al Capone if this income was not declared on their tax returns.
On the 3ed of May, activists from Dream Defenders and other groups all over Florida took over the office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The sit-in lasted 7 hours, and at one point a DeSantis staffer was caught on video brazenly feasting on cake in full “let them eat cake” fashion.
This was ten years after the first Dream Defenders takeover of the FL Governor’s office over the murder of Trayvon Martin. This time around, Dream Defenders was joined by activists from all over Florida, there to oppose his brazen Fascist, even genocidal agenda.
At least one journalist was expelled prior to the arrests, and doors to the entire FL state Capitol locked well in advance. The occupation lasted seven hours before being forcibly removed resulting in 14 arrests. Video showing police behaving violently towards blockaders (included in this video report) got out via an anonymous participant.
While protesters inside complained about DeSantis essentially burning down the state, his mansion-dwelling staffers feasted on cake. Marie Antwonette never actually said “let them eat cake” but DeSantis’s staffers just said it in deeds not just words.
Protest and direct action against capitalism, imperialism, and fascism
