A report from a reader on the Olympia armed civil disobedience rally.

From Reader AJ:

     My recollection of the day. I arrived just after 11:00 AM, and there were about 1200 people on the grounds. By the time Mike delivered his speech, the crowd had roughly doubled.

     I had no sooner arrived and looked around for a minute or two, when who walks right in front of me but Mike himself. I got his attention and introduced myself and shook hands. We chatted for a minute before being somewhat rudely admonished by one of the others there for talking too loudly while (Gavin, I think) was speaking. Probably my fault, as I tend to speak pretty loud when I'm excited.   

Which I was.

   Mike had to move on, but invited me to join him for lunch after he was finished speaking.

It was a typical cold, gray December day in western Washington.

I milled around the crowd, not really hanging on every word of the speakers, as they were pretty much preaching to the choir with me.

  The Seattle PI reported that the crowd was composed of virtually nothing other than angry middle-aged white males, that assessment is disingenuous at best. In fact, shame on them for trying to interject race into this story. What ever happened to just reporting the facts without an agenda?

I digress.

   There was actually a very large number of women there. At least 1/3 of the crowd was female. And they weren't all just there 'with their man'. Many were present independently. And well armed. There were black people there as well. In a ratio that is probably representative of the black population of Washington State. . (Note: I won't use the term 'African-American'. It was coined by the race-baiting industry. Helpful in keeping the little people divided and distracted.)

   I had a pleasant conversation with Chris, the black man pictured so prominently wearing a pom-pom beanie and toting an evil looking black rifle. Nice guy. And he had the coolest SKS conversion that I have ever seen.

   In fact, everybody I talked to, usually about the rifle that they were carrying, was very nice, pleasant, and lucid. As I was operating on a weird mix of lack of sleep, excitement, and a lot of caffeine, I was probably the weirdest seeming person there.

  Asians were not underrepresented here, either, and there was even a contingent of people flying a rainbow flag. This was not white bread gathering by any stretch of the imagination.

  The police presence was fairly small. I didn't count precisely, but if there were 20 officers, I would be surprised. About all they were even needed for was traffic direction. 2500+ armed, supposedly untrained and unqualified, supposedly angry, allegedly government hating, people in one place, and the cops pretty much had nothing to do. No negligent discharges, either.

Interesting.

   Poor Mike was having a tough time breaking away from well-wishers and admirers to get to the cafe for lunch. We went to Wagner's on Capitol Way. Nice place, good food.

There were about eight of us in the impromptu entourage. Met some more nice folks. One of them, Jason, wouldn't let me pay for my own lunch. So afterwards, I gave about double my ticket to Mike. It wasn't much, but I'm certainly not wealthy either.

Conversation around the table was good. Mike is very talkative, even when obviously very worn down and tired. He told some interesting stories, and had some very good points of advice. In between all of the phone calls he had to field.

The afternoon was just about wrapping up, when Mike's bodyguard, if you will, announced that we needed to get out of there. It turned out that there was a report that some antis (or somesuch) were trying to put a known unsavory individual close to Mike for a photo op in order to damage his character.

   I don't remember his first name, but he . . . got us organized as a buffer around Mike, and we made our exit. LC had also apparently made contact with WSP, and an officer shadowed us for the couple of blocks back to intersection by the rotunda. Thankfully, there was no incident.

   At that intersection, we all exchanged some contact info and said our goodbyes.  I was getting bombarded with texts and calls from my partner who was watching my table at the Chehalis gunshow, so I kind of beat feet with a little less decorum and in a little more of a hurry than I would have liked.

  It was a good day. I met some great people, and got to sit down with one of few people whom I actually admire in this day and age. It was certainly over a little too soon for me.

(MBV: A bit more explanation of the incident with the neo-Nazis.  As I was walking through the crowd early on, we ran across four skinhead/biker types, all armed, one of which had a patch on his jacket "Schwarzer Tod" or "Black Death" in German.  This patch can refer to the actual Black Plague, or a European death metal band with the same name but is most often seen in the US as Aryan code mistranslated by the wearers as "Kill Niggers."  There were other clues among them, and I made them as probable neoNazis.  Readers will recall that I don't react well to neoNazis.  I was pissed enough to stop cold, get into his face and ask "'Schwarzer Tod,' eh?"  And when he grinned and nodded, I took the wad of gum out of my mouth and flung it over his shoulder past his face into the bushes, rather surprising him.  I then walked off.  When our local security folks went down to check them out, they also made one of the people accompanying them as a local anarchist type who was wearing a pen camera.  The conclusion of the security staff was that this was a set-up for some kind of discrediting incident, so they kept a close eye on the bunch of them the entire time.  Because of this incident, I added some comments to the beginning of speech about how I believe that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion.  I had used those words in my Hartford CT speech last year, but I try not to repeat myself too much.  However, with the neos hanging around, it seemed appropriate to hit those lines again, with feeling.  I spoke right after noon, and had made arrangements that anyone who wanted to sit down and chat afterward could meet me in the Wagner's Bakery/Deli a couple of blocks down the street from the rally.  After we had been there in the lower restaurant area a while, this crowd came in and sat down in the upper area and my assigned security guy immediately spotted them behind us.  This seemed to him to be too much of a coincidence and he became concerned for my safety.  Frankly, I was talking and didn't notice that he had tensed up and was alternately texting and talking on his phone to our security folks down at the rally, who were in turn talking to the state police.  I was totally unaware of this.  When a WSP officer shortly thereafter arrived in the restaurant, my security guy interrupted, explained that there was a situation that required that we leave the restaurant and asked the one reader who was there with his young son to leave ahead of us and get his boy clear, saying that we would meet up with them down the block.  He then asked the other folks at the table if they would screen for me and walk on my left side as I exited Wagner's.  They volunteered to a man and we left, accompanied part-way down the street by the WSP officer, and we linked up again with the father and son, who were escorted by my security guy all the way back to the venue since they had now been linked with me in the minds of anyone, included the neos, who had been watching and paying attention.  It may have been unnecessary, but that's how thorough the security operation was.  There was a "VIP security detail" as well as a much larger rally security detail, and all were run in a disciplined and coordinated fashion with tight cooperation and communication with the WSP.  It was impressive, and garnered much praise from the WSP at the end of the day.)