Antifa Rallies Planned in at Least 20 U.S. Cities — Won’t ‘Stop Until This Regime Driven from Power’

LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images
LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images

The left-wing, Antifa Refuse Fascism group is planning rallies in at least 20 cities across the United States on Saturday to demand that the duly-elected President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence be “driven from power.”

In a full-page ad in the New York Times on Wednesday, the group advertised its event:

Nov 4 it begins — be there — join with the thousands who will gather in cities and towns across the country. A movement of protests that continue every day and night, growing until we become millions … determined not to stop until this is driven from power.

Newsweek reported on Thursday:

“Refuse fascism,” a nascent protest group with ties to a more explicitly left-wing radical group, “the revolutionary communist party,” doesn’t seem like a typical fit for the left-leaning pages of the paper known as The Gray Lady, but very little has been normal about the Trump era so far, according to organizers.

The regime is destroying the planet by ignoring climate change, they say, and they claim it is turning America into a fascist country through an unprecedented series of executive orders.

“What Trump and his administration are doing could pose an existential threat to humanity,” Andy Zee, a member of the advisory board for Refuse Fascism, told Newsweek in a phone interview.

“We’re in one of the most perilous moments in history right now,” Zee said.

The Refuse Fascism website states:

No! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America! Take to the streets and public squares in cities and towns across the country continuing day after day and night after night — not stopping until our DEMAND is met: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

A list follows naming what those nightmares are, including discrimination against Muslims and gays, objectivism and harassment of women, and the danger posed by climate change.

The “about” portion of the Refuse Fascism states:

We launched RefuseFascism.org at an emergency meeting at the Great Hall of Cooper Union in NYC on December 19th, 2016.  Watched by some 200,000 people on HuffPo’s FaceBookLive, Andy Zee, PZ Myers, Carl Dix, Jeremy Scahill, Imam Ayub Abdul-Baki, Rev. Doris Johnson, Sunsara Taylor, Immortal Technique, and Fran Luck spoke along with messages from Gloria Steinem, Chase Iron Eyes, Isabel Cardenas, and others on the fascist character of the Trump/Pence Regime and called on people to get organized to stop it before it came to power.

But some are saying that the reaction to the planned rallies is overplayed and is being characterized by some conservative websites as the start of a civil war.

The Washington Post reported:

Infowars has warned “Antifa Plans ‘Civil War’ to Overthrow the Government.” The John Birch Society put out two recent videos warning Americans to “stay home and tell your children to do likewise” on Saturday.  YouTuber “A Glock Fanboy” notched more than 400,400 views for a clip raising the alarm about “the first day of the revolution or whatnot.”

Time magazine flatly said the claims of an insurrection are: “simply not true.”

There will indeed be anti-Trump rallies in 20 cities around the U.S. on Saturday, from Atlanta to Honolulu, organized by a left-wing political action group called Refuse Fascism whose goal is unseating Trump. But its tactics — including but not limited to a “passionate speak-out with music and participatory art” — are a far cry from violent insurrection.

Nor is it likely that the streets will be teeming with angry mobs: only 990 people have said that they’re attending the demonstration in New York, according to the event’s Facebook group.

Among the at least 20 cities where rallies are set to occur are Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle.

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