Spouting ‘groomer’ rhetoric, ‘Patriot’ bikers plan to confront Pride rally next month in Idaho

This post was originally published on this site

Taking their cue from the incoming tide of far-right fearmongering about “grooming” and an “LGBTQ agenda” in schools and libraries, a group of Idaho biker militiamen are planning to show up to confront people celebrating a Pride event in a downtown Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, park next month.

Two men from the leadership of Panhandle Patriots, a militia-oriented bikers club based in northern Idaho—Justin Allen, the group’s vice president, and Jeff White, its “sergeant at arms”—told a recent gathering at a church hosted by Republican state House member Heather Scott that they planned to have a gun-driven event next month in Coeur d’Alene the same day as the city’s Pride Celebration at a park less than a mile away, and that they planned a confrontation: “We actually intend to go head to head with these people. A line has to be drawn in the sand. Good people need to stand up,” White told the audience.

The meeting, titled “Gameplan to Remove Inappropriate Materials in Our Schools and Libraries,” was held at Regeneration Calvary Chapel in Kootenai, a small town north of Sandpoint. Scott—who has a long history of associations and identification with the far-right Patriot movement—cohosted the gathering along with Amy Henry, who spoke remotely via Zoom. About an hour into the discussion—which mostly involved efforts to censor LGBT-friendly material from local public schools and libraries—Scott invited Allen and White up to the podium to speak.

White was the only person who actually spoke; Allen said not a single word during White’s soliloquy:

In Coeur d’Alene, on the 10th of June, there is Family Day. And at Family Day they are promoting family values, activities, and everything. The very following day, they are having Gay Pride Day. In the very same park the very next day, where they will be allowed to parade through all of Coeur d’Alene—drag queen dancers, education hour, making all this material available for all the kids in a park that is designed for kids.

We are having an event the very same day. That very same day we actually intend to go head to head with these people. A line has to be drawn in the sand. Good people need to stand up. And she was talking about the repercussions. We say, Damn the repercussions. Stand up, take it to the head. Go to the fight.

If you can, possibly, we know a lot of you are in Bonner County—we live in Bonner County. We are fighting in multiple counties. We are asking for all of you to come stand with us.

Ironically, the event being planned that day by Panhandle Patriots, dubbed “Gun d’Alene,” is being billed as an anniversary of the day in 2020 that armed “Patriots” flooded the streets of Coeur d’Alene in response to hoax rumors of the impending arrival of buses full of evil black-clad “antifa” vandals who mysteriously never showed up anywhere they were rumored to be going.

Dozens of people showed up on armed patrol, toting AR-15s and wearing body armor, at a downtown shopping strip mall. In a cellphone video shared on Facebook, one videographer said: “If you guys are thinking of coming to Coeur d’Alene, to riot or loot, you’d better think again. Because we ain’t having it in our town. … I guess there’s a big rumor that people from Spokane are gonna come out here and act up. But that shit ain’t gonna happen.”

Of course it didn’t happen, because it was never going to happen in the first place. The event next month is essentially celebrating the Patriots’ lethal gullibility. But that’s not how White described it, of course:

Our event is advertised as “Gun d’Alene,” because it’s an anniversary of when we stood to protect our community. We’re standing again to protect our community. We shifted our date to be able to go head-to-head with these people. They are trying to take your children.

Considering that the flagrant brandishing of weapons is part of the event’s entire raison d’être, his words also took on ominous overtones as he urged the audience members to come support them:

This fight is not just paper, it’s not just words, it’s not just politicians. They have to see people standing in their face saying ‘No more.’ If we don’t do this—they’re winning, as she said. The amount of steps they take are 10 to 1. They’ve got people nonstop. Nonstop on this. We gain two steps, they gain twelve. We’re not gonna win, we’re not gonna fight back at a leisurely pace. We’re busy six days a week doing this, and we know a lot of you are too. But we’re asking a lot of you—leave your homes, leave your comfort, come stand.

If you want to see it, if you want to see what they’re promoting, come down there on June 11. Come see what they’re doing. Come with us—come stand.

Another flier posted by the Panhandle Patriots advertising their planned confrontation with the Pride event shows a drag queen reading at a public library, and urges people to join them “in standing up against the indoctrination and grooming of our children.” Among its slogans: “If you don’t protect children, you are part of the problem.”

The park where the Patriots plan to hold their gun event, McEuen Park, is on the Coeur d’Alene waterfront less than three-quarters of a mile from Coeur d’Alene City Park, where the “Pride in the Park” events are scheduled to be held.

The Panhandle Patriots have been harassing members of the LGBT community in northern Idaho for awhile now. Last November, in conjunction with a local evangelical Christian church, they organized a protest in Post Falls outside the city library on the night it was hosting a program called the “Rainbow Squad,” an LGBTQ-friendly reading-discussion program.

Among the signs they carried, police body-camera footage shows, were slogans like “Flee From Sexual Immorality,” “Obey God Not Men,” “Sexual Immorality is an Abomination to God,” and “The Solution is Jesus Christ.”

On Facebook, Panhandle Patriots shared a post with its members calling out the library network’s upcoming meeting and urging others to attend:

The perversion that is becoming so pervasive in these libraries needs to be called out and CAST OUT.

We need people to show up and speak out, demand the removal of pro-LGBT books like the following:

[Links to such books as Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero and Be Amazing: A History of Pride.]

A Post Falls native named Michelle White told the Coeur d’Alene Press that she and her two children had been participating for several months in Rainbow Squad events, saying she had always thought of the library as a “safe space” without judgment.

“These people are making it not a safe place for kids to gather by picketing and yelling at them as they go inside,” she told the Press. “Creating an environment that is not safe is not OK.”

Jessica Mahuron, the North Idaho Pride Alliance outreach coordinator, attended the November Rainbow Squad event and observed how the protesters’ intentions were to eliminate that safe space—and they succeeded.

“There were some people who felt intimidated from entering the building, others left because they were feeling so terrible, and for some, this is nothing new to them, so they stood strong,” Mahuron said. “The program is supposed to provide a safe, inclusive space for fun and friendship. What they experienced coming into that meeting was the exact opposite.”

As Tess Owen noted last year at Vice, Panhandle Patriots is closely associated with the so-called “American Redoubt” movement that is trying to organize a secessionist 51st state in the interior Northwest as a homeland for “Patriots.” And they’ve been increasingly busy the past few years: teaming up with anti-immigration vigilantes at the border (which involved confiscating drinking water left for migrants), leading anti-vaccination rallies, and swarming libraries to demand the removal books they say promote “an LGBTQ agenda.”

Their leader—a man named Mike Birdsong, who uses the nickname “Viper”—was present at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6 insurrection, and was photographed engaging the police in battle at barricades outside the building, though he has not been charged with any crimes from that day. Birdsong also has been photographed alongside well-known Proud Boys who have been charged with conspiracy at the insurrection.