After this past bloody weekend of assaults on free speech rally-goers by the violent leftists of one Antifa group, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said Antifa should be considered a gang by law enforcement.
“We should classify them as a gang,” Arreguin told local CBS affiliate KPIX in a televised interview. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons. They’re almost a militia. I think we should think about that when it comes to our law enforcement approach.”
“We’re going to have think big picture about what’s the strategy on how we’re going to deal with these violent elements on the Left as well,” the mayor said. “We also need to hold accountable and encourage people not to associate with these extremists because it empowers them and gives them cover.”
How convenient this is for the mayor who has nothing but disdain for conservatives. You see, Arreguin is also calling for the cancellation of the conservative Free Speech Week during which Milo Yiannopoulos is expected to speak. Arreguin is still silencing conservatives.
Arreguin’s calling out the violence and suggesting Antifa be labeled a ‘gang’ were described as “tough words” by the media but are they? Calling communists and violent anarchists a “gang” is likely the least offending name he could come up with.
Antifa are not a gang. The are a paramilitary communist and anarchist group by their own description. It is how they want to be known.
When Milo Yiannopoulos tried to speak to students in Berkeley early this year, he was stopped by an Antifa group called BAMN, By Any Means Necessary, a group that the mayor labels a “gang”.
Mayor Arreguin is tied to Antifa
BAMN was investigated for engaging in terrorist activities in 2005 by the FBI. In 2009, the Department of Defense classified the group’s activities as “low-level terrorism.” In June 2016, BAMN led a violent counter-protest outside a white nationalist rally that resulted in ten people being hospitalized with stab wounds.
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Often described as a “militant left-wing” activist group, BAMN frequently engages in violent forms of protests. A Berkeley newspaper noted in 2001 that the group was a front for an “an obscure Detroit-based Trotskyist political party called the Revolutionary Workers League.”
BAMN was cited in January 2002 FBI report as among “various groups and individuals within the state of Michigan who are thought to be involved in terrorist activities.”
The agency internal document relayed discussions at a domestic terror symposium hosted by the Michigan State Police Criminal Intelligence Unit, and attended by the FBI, the Secret Service, Michigan Department of Corrections, Michigan State University Public Safety, and the Michigan National Guard/Army Reserve.
There, one Michigan detective “presented information on a protest from February 8-10, 2002 in Arin Arbor, Michigan, by the group Any Means Necessary,” adding, “Michigan State Police has information that in the past demonstrations by this group have been peaceful.”
The Berkeley mayor who is suspected of telling the police to stand down during the riots over Milo, is tied to BAMN. Got News reports that Mayor Jesse Arreguin is a member of the communist anti-facist militia (Antifa) By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).
The mayor spoke against having Milo speaking earlier this year.
I consider much of what Mr. Yiannopoulos says to be hateful. But I regret and apologize for the white national label.
— Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017
Mayor Arreguin was listed as a member on Facebook among 35 group memberships but has since taken it down. He still lists the lead BAMN ringleader Yvette Falarca as one of his friends on the social media site.
Arreguin’s Facebook friend Falarca was identified at a Berkeley anti-censorship rally, where the woman was among masked individuals who assaulted, and could have murdered attendees.
BAMN no longer pretends to be anything but violent.
Felarca called one violent assault a “stunning achievement”. The Milo Yiannopoulos event was Fellarca’s work as well.
Fellarca is a middle school teacher who helped plan the original Berkeley riots. She and her goons attacked Trump supporters without any repercussions. The police just stood there doing nothing.
Cancel the conservative free speech week
Mayor Jesse Arreguin now has a special request for UC Berkeley: Cancel campus conservatives’ Free Speech Week next month because . . . antifa.
Don’t “provoke” the hundreds of goons with opinions they oppose, for fear they’ll again turn out and smash things.
“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” said Arreguin. “I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem.”
Arreguin says he “obviously believes in free speech, but there is a line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety.”
Sure, he believes in free speech and a communist movement is a “gang”. Never mind that he’s basically letting extremists’ proclivity to harm public safety limit others’ freedoms.
Instead of canceling a free speech event, he should be canceling BAMN and Falarca certainly shouldn’t be teaching school children.
Finally, Berkeley’s Mayor Arreguin’s Twitter logo is ‘Berkeley Stands United Against Hate’, and ‘United Against Hate’ is an Antifa slogan.
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