Nearly two dozen people were arrested in Seattle over the weekend after left-wing protestors clashed with police at a conservative Christian rally in the heart of the city’s historically LGBTQ neighborhood.
Seattle police arrested 23 people at Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill Saturday, where Mayday USA — a Christian group with staunchly anti-trans beliefs — was holding a rally as part of its national “#Dontmesswithourkids” tour, according to the Seattle Times.
Protesters of the MayDay rally waving transgender flags began clashing with police almost immediately after gathering around 1 p.m., with officers in riot gear being shoved and soon pelted with water bottles and other items.
Eleven demonstrators were quickly arrested in an “initial scuffle,” police said, with the remainder of the arrests happening over the course of about five heated hours as pepper spray was launched into the crowd as it chanted “Go home, fascists!”
“The Mayday USA rally in Seattle is provocatively being held in the heart of the Queer community,” said organizers of the counter-protest — which they dubbed “Keep Your Bibles Off Our Bodies.”
The protest’s aim was to fight “fascist family values,” the organizers added, calling Mayday USA’s rally a “well-funded anti-trans, anti-queer event that is led by far-right Christian activists.”
About 500 demonstrators showed up to the “Keep Your Bibles Off Our Bodies” protest, with about as many people participating in the Mayday USA rally, the Times reported.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell seemed to side with the counter-protesters, accusing the “far-right rally” of selecting the city’s historically queer neighborhood as a location “to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values.”
“Anarchists infiltrated the counter-protestors group and inspired violence, prompting SPD to make arrests and ask organizers to shut down the event early, which they did,” he said, adding that he’d ordered his administration to look into the event’s permitting.
But Mayday USA organizers say the only people causing trouble were the counter-protestors — and that they didn’t even want to hold the rally in Capitol Hill to begin with.
“They say we don’t like people. We’re not the ones throwing things. We’re here to love Jesus,” said 58-year-old pastor and Mayday USA spokesperson Folake Kellogg, explaining that they tried to hold the event in a different neighborhood but that the city wouldn’t let them.
Mayday USA said in a statement that it refused “to stand idly by while the children of our nation are indoctrinated by a liberal, political, and sexual agenda that seeks to destroy their God-given identities.”
But counter-protestors characterized the religious group as hypocritical.
“They like to cherry-pick quotes from the Bible. They say they want to protect children from people supposedly bad because of misinformation about trans people,” said 19-year-old protestors Kaitlyn Calkins, who carried a sign reading “The Trump fascist regime must go now!!!”
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