From Anti-Fascists of North Idaho
It’s been a few days since Matt Gaetz came to North Idaho to speak at the KCRCC event and we wanted to give an update on how the community responded. Unfortunately, we were disappointed. As usual, Indivisible completely set the tone and made sure no one disrupted the event.
There were two groups which showed up to protest the event. One was CDA Indivisible and the other was not affiliated with any orgs as far as we were aware. Indivisible made a concerted effort to keep their distance from the other group. They maintained a gap between them.
When someone from the community showed up to protest, one of the green vest “peace keepers” affiliated with Indivisible would ask them to move away from the other group. Indivisible’s reasoning was that the other group was yelling at event attendees. The green vests even asked protesters to make sure that the side walk was clear for people to continue walking through without hindrance. Indivisible did more policing of their own people than they did confronting the fascists showing up to listen to a sex trafficker.
Although the other group was more verbally engaged in the protest than Indivisible, they too did nothing more than hold signs and yell at cars as they went by. Some of the things being yelled were homophobic and generally a distraction from the intent of the protest. Some of the people yelling at cars, when they would see children in the cars, would yell something along the lines of, “bring your daughter in there. I’m sure she would be popular.” While the intent of such language is clear, this kind of rhetoric does nothing to protect kids.
Many of us in this area who fight against fascism in North Idaho come from families where we were victimized by fascists as children. Telling attendees with children that their “daughters will be popular” is dehumanizing and triggering. When these concerns were brought to their attention, our concerns were ignored. Both groups had individuals taking pictures of protesters and we assume these pictures were posted to their socials. Safety for protesters was ignored. No one was masked either.
When we were threatened by a fascist who yelled racist and homophobic slurs in our face, no one from either group came to our defense. Instead, the green vests said, “don’t talk to them. That’s what they want.” To be frank, the protest was a complete joke and did nothing to challenge the event attendees, Matt Gaetz nor the CDA resort for hosting and attending such a disgusting event. North Idaho is not only overrun with fascists but liberals as well.
Do not trust CDA Indivisible. They are completely worthless.