After a group of armed right wingers breached the gate to the Washington Governor’s Mansion on Wednesday (January 6th, 2021) while Gov. Jay Inslee and his wife were home, the governor has announced that he has activated up to 750 of the Washington State National Guard to be in Olympia in coordination with WSP.
“we must do whatever we can to ensure that they can do that work without fear, intimidation or harassment. The actions we saw in both Washington, D.C. and Olympia earlier this week were completely unacceptable and will not be repeated in our state capital again…” said Gov. Inslee, adding that because of the recent armed insurrection, government officials can’t risk the potential harm for predicted actions.
Governor Inslee explains that these concerns are for the 2021 legislative session (and I’m guessing because they know there are demonstrations planned this weekend), which makes sense, but nowhere in this statement has he mentioned other safety concerns such as right wing terrorists shooting an antifascist two weekends in a row in December, I guess “fear, intimidation, and harassment” only matter when it’s being done to cops and politicians.
Taking into consideration the two shootings in Olympia by right wing extremists, alongside the fact that on the 12th of December the RW & police were nearly in formation together shooting munitions & projectiles at antifascists, both shooters getting away despite evidence (I got footage of both incidents from a few feet away, as did others), and not to mention the fact that before this happened the police knew the RW had plans of breaching at the Capitol, I can’t help but wonder if the NG would have been called and Gov. Inslee would have taken all these measures if it wasn’t for this event taking place by antifascists. Olympia has shown some of the clearest depictions of kops and klan.
And again, there are still threats from the right and more threats of insurrection- and I’m sure it’s a ‘valid concern’ at least to some gov’t officials/etc — but these threats don’t seem so weighted when the police are welcoming them inside and condemning them after on camera.
Washington state patrol said they did not make any arrests when the far right breached the property, they stated that it was a “tactical decision to try to minimize any escalation.” Must be nice.
After we were all fucking traumatized last month basically everyone assaulted & watching our friend get shot the kkkops kept trying to kettle us & shoot crowd control munitions at us as we were trying to fucking leave. But sure yeah, now they think they know what de-escalation is.
And no this isn’t a cry for the police to help. Just more redundant anecdotes to why they’re fucking worthless.