Olympia Commits to being an Anti-Racist City, Institutionalizing Hate
The real world effects of labeling everything WHITE SUPREMACY
This piece was originally published on Medium on November 30, 2021. I am about to be suspended there for my series on the right being the new counterculture so I am migrating all of my work to Substack.
I just got kicked out of a bar for the first time in my life. I am banned from McCoy’s Tavern in downtown Olympia for being a WHITE SUPREMACIST. I was asked to leave, escorted to the door and told I was not welcome to return. I was told I would be in danger if I stayed. This extreme othering is being done to dehumanize me in order to justify harm against me. It is sadistic and immoral.
The people putting me in peril were allowed to stay. My cab was going to take an hour and I was asked to leave the area of the bar because of who I was. I am a 58 year old disabled woman who poses no threat to anyone, and it should go without saying, I am NOT a WHITE SUPREMACIST. I was left to fend for myself, with known hostile actors in my proximity, by a woman, no less. At midnight.
There was no reasoning with her, her mind was closed. There is also no way I can prove a negative. The disinformation campaign against me works due to ignorance. Low information hate. It spreads easily, a zombie mind virus.
Disinformation warfare
The people who believe these things are fools. It is even more idiotic is when they take real world actions that reflect a sadistic desire to hurt, to humiliate.
What my haters do not get is that it does not work. I have enough self esteem and self respect that it does not affect me in the way they are hoping, in the way it works with so many others.
Tonight does not reflect on me, it reflects on the people who lack critical thinking skills and who have compromised their moral compasses to the cult of anti-racism. I study their hate as the pathology it is.
I have no shame, but they should. They are intentionally dehumanizing me, which goes against the basics of anti-oppression training. The way I was taught by Evergreen professors was that when you dehumanize someone, it is your humanity that is diminished.
I have been targeted for abuse from Antifa since the summer of 2020, when Puget Sound Anarchists put out a call to “creatively silence” me. I am not named in the piece, they are too “smart” for that, but there are enough clues to know I am one of the people they are speaking of.
To this end, Miguel Lofland, who is the main instigator of the Olympia Antifa cell, has waged a disinformation campaign against me since the spring when I announced I was running for Olympia City Council. He has attacked me in print and video on his Antifa News Network, on social media under several aliases and with abusive phone calls. He published my home phone number and I began to get death threats. Most of them were laughable, children throwing tantrums, but death threats nonetheless.
On September 4th, Lofland organized a gang of approximately 30 armed people to attack my campaign rally and video shoot at City Hall. This led to the Proud Boys intervening on my behalf, without my knowledge or any coordination. I did not have contact with the Proud Boys but because they did this, I am now wrongly associated with them. I had already been positioned by Lofland to be a FASCIST PIECE OF SHIT, so this just fed the narrative. Here is primary source footage of the shooting.
Antifa shot a POC that day. There was no outrage from the anti-racists over this man getting shot by a white person. He was not the right kind of victim, he is a WHITE SUPREMACIST too.
The person who was arrested, Benjamin Varela, is sociopathic, as is Lofland. They delight in harming others. Varela had to be restrained for his court hearings due to his violent behavior. It is sobering to know this man had such an irrational and unfounded hate for me that he was willing to bring a gun to potentially hurt me.
This is fundamentalist zealotry, immune to reason. Here is Lofland’s response to the shooting, demonstrating his emotional instability and blatant lies, saying the POC shot himself. He then asked for money so he could buy weapons.
I wrote about the shooting and Lofland’s ongoing oppressive behavior toward me here. This is the video he was trying to shut down.
In September 2020, Lofland was arrested for malicious mischief. He assaulted a teenage girl in March. He was arrested in April for leading an Antifa “direct action” in West Olympia that vandalized several businesses. He also led an attack on the Mayor’s house. All in the name of social justice.
He has waged disinformation campaigns against many innocent people based on his warped perceptions and need to regularly produce content for his media project, in order to raise money and gain social status. His victims have no recourse as their reputations are ruined by his obvious lies, he poisons the well, but because he is careful with his verbiage, there is nothing to be done.
Given the current climate this is highly irresponsible and is going to lead to more people getting shot, arrested and put in jail.
One can only hope that Lofland’s legal troubles eventually make him stop before he becomes shahiid. I got a report from a source that the FBI paid a visit to a house on the West Side and was canvassing neighbors.
Benjamin Varela ruined his life by shooting that man, and that should weigh on Lofland’s conscience. Varela most likely will serve time. He may implicate Lofland to reduce his sentencing.
I have friends in the activist community who have been compelled to go before grand juries or face jail sentences, the pressure to talk is immense and few can resist incriminating comrades. Sometimes these grand jury hearings are secret, often the person being compelled to testify is also highly motivated to keep their testimony a secret for fear of retribution.
There are indications Antifa may have turned on Lofland, and it is not clear if he is still in Olympia. The poster on the left was sighted on the West Side, in proximity to Lofland’s last known address.
I have often wondered how his comrades could be so easily manipulated by him. When I was doing activism in Olympia, people of his ilk were not tolerated. Hate like his was marginalized and I find it curious that is no longer the case.
Sources tell me Lofland has left town, and his Instagram has pictures that do not look like Olympia, but I have not been able to confirm that. He has scrubbed his accounts of many issues of Antifa News Network, which were incriminating.
I am at a loss to explain his fascination with me, other than I am a useful enemy. He needs people like me to give meaning to his life.
Hate breeds hate
I stood outside of McCoy’s tonight, people verbally abusing me, giving me the finger and mocking me. One intentionally bumped into me. I called a friend and he said he would be there as fast as he could. Three people, one who had spoken to me earlier, saw what happened and stayed with me until he arrived.
They were very nice and I was grateful. They hugged me and made me feel I had allies. They were decent and more importantly, though they were strangers, they saw I was authentically good, and they reflected that goodness back.
They saw my videos, voted for me and assured me I have support in the community even if I don’t always see or feel it, people are rooting for me. They told me to keep working, what I am doing is valuable and needed. It was a literal antidote to the hate.
Since the election, I have had many people reach out to me with similar messages of encouragement and praise. It has been touching, and gratifying that my ideas are getting noticed. My whole goal has been to change the conversation, especially around homeless response in the PNW. Though I lost the election, I got in front of thousands of people and said what needed to be said, without fear or apology.
Feel the chill yet?
More than anything, I was truly shocked tonight. It was an unexpected emotional IED. I did NOTHING wrong, yet was treated like vermin. In the name of inclusion, I was once again cast out because of my refusal to conform.
Luckily, it was the end of the night and I had already seen the bands, who were EXCELLENT. I had a GREAT time.
This was my first visit to McCoy’s. I actually had been feeling safe and at felt home, happy to discover a new dive bar, since Le Voyeur has been closed. I was looking forward to going to see more bands there. I am sad that option is off the table. I am rightfully angry at this arbitrary treatment that reeks of discrimination.
This is chilling and I now have even more of a visceral understanding of how the Holocaust and the Cultural Revolution happened. People intentionally harming others based on lies. This is no different than being refused service due to race, gender or sexual orientation.
We are living in a bad YA novel
I have been saying downtown does not feel welcoming and has a vaguely hostile feel to it, not because of the specific hate directed at me, but in general. In this instance I am not referencing the street subculture, but the entire vibe of aggressive symbols ostensibly about tolerance, but feel anything but. It is hard to put into words, but Olympia is not the safe bubble it used to be, it is oppressive AF.
I also made a rare solo trip to the West Side this week, and I felt nervous the entire time. Up until now I have NEVER felt unsafe in Olympia, and I have NEVER been unsafe like THIS in my life. I have people, proven to be violent, who actively want to hurt me. BASED ON LIES. WTF?
I expressed this to a city employee I was interviewing today, asking how the city was going to implement its new anti-racism policies. She said they would be looking at who is being left out of the conversation.
I know I was not and will not be invited to the DEI focus group despite legitimately being one of the most actively hated people in Olympia. The perpetrators of that hate are not held to account, my concerns are dismissed and my complaints are seen as more evidence of my WHITE SUPREMACY. On September 4th, I was told by OPD that I should be prepared to protect myself.
My opponent in the City Council race, Clark Gilman, wrote “A Love Letter to My Friends Dressed in Black” in 2020 after they caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage to City Hall and downtown businesses. Also, in 2020 he called middle aged white men a “violent threat to the community.” Their crime: cruising in classic cars during COVID. This unequal treatment is causing discontent.
Imprison The Cruisers!
On May 9, 2020, Olympia city council member Clark Gilman was so distraught about a car show and cruising taking place that he made this statement. Video link.
The city is making things worse
Earlier this week, the city announced Olympia was now formally committed to anti-racism. Here is the video where they say words about their strategy but give no specifics as to how this is to be implemented, and no evidence of the structural barriers they profess exist. It was all words, imaginary dragons and magical thinking, while the real and present crisis of hundreds of people living in encampments is not given the same level of attention or concern.
At the end of the video they call on all businesses to support their anti-racist strategy. Apparently McCoy’s tavern got the memo, and they removed me from the premises in an attempt at actively fighting WHITE SUPREMACY as they see it.
THIS is the effects of institutionalizing toxic anti-racism policies that aim to treat people differently based on their inherent traits. In this nouveau religion, anyone and anything can be declared white supremacist, casually, without cause, by association.
I cannot publicly name my collaborators for fear they will be targeted. People were afraid to donate to my campaign for the same reason. I was worried about having volunteers canvas for me due to the potential for abuse, some of which I witnessed when we did sign waves, which I never announced the location of, due to safety concerns. Now I am no longer safe to walk the streets of Olympia.
There is precedent, Bret Weinstein had to leave town for his family’s safety.
That is how bad it is.
When are people going to wake up?
What is happening to me is going to happen to you too, and you know it. That is why you censor your speech.
My “BIPOC” bus driver told me he shuts the window when he is on the phone due to fear of what he says being misinterpreted. He did not feel his brown skin color would protect him from the fundamentalists. He did not feel welcome in the smoking lounge at his apartment complex and it was definitely not due to WHITE SUPREMACY.
DOTHEWORK
Olympia News Network wrote to the city to clarify what being an anti-racist meant in practice. The reply from Kellie Purce Braseth, Strategic Communications Director, representing the City of Olympia, was highly inappropriate and shocking in its religious conviction and cult like thought. The ONN story can be found here.
1. Is Olympia a racist city, and if so how? Please be specific and include examples of current racism by the City of Olympia.
2. What barriers are currently in place impacting black, indigenous, and people of color? Again, please be specific.
3. What specific harm has the City of Olympia done to the BIPOC community that needs repairing?
ONN received the following response:
“Good morning. Your media inquiry was forwarded to me for response. Unfortunately, the intent of your inquiry was unclear, and I was confused as to the underlying premise of your questions about the City Council’s recent Anti-Racism Statement.
If we assume your line of inquiry about the statement is sincere, then we will also assume you truly do not understand the long and difficult history of racism and white supremacy in America and how it has been experienced and expressed in the past and currently in the City of Olympia. If our assumption is correct, then there is far more for you to learn than can be done in a media response from the City.
We recommend connecting with local organizations doing excellent work in this area to help you answer your questions. The Olympia YWCA would be a great place to start and would embrace helping you learn more.
If we assume your line of inquiry about the statement is meant to challenge the City’s anti-racism stance, then we will assume your intent is to write an article opposing anti-racism and the City’s efforts to challenge racism and promote equity and inclusion.
If that assumption is correct, then you should understand that we will not participate in anything that perpetuate and promotes racism and bias, including efforts that suggest racism and bias are not real and do not exist.
As such, the City of Olympia will not engage with, support the viability of, or recognize the legitimacy of any media entity that trades in hate and hateful ideas, that supports racism and racist ideology, and that in any way supports and spreads white supremacy.
This is how the City of Olympia practices anti-racisim. (sic)”
The spokesperson for the city of Olympia basically told ONN to DOTHEWORK of the cult and then shamed them for being WHITE SUPREMACIST and fomenting hate. ONN presents primary source materials and is intentional about not editorializing. Again, it should go without saying, they are NOT WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
She refused to answer the good faith questions of a journalist and defamed him, putting his character on trial. How is this acceptable for a city employee?
In my conversation with her today, I felt she did listen to my concerns. The call was originally just reporting questions, but due to the nature of the topic, it did get personal. We agreed that fairness should be at the root of all policies.
Purce Braseth did confirm there will be no hiring decisions based on race, that all demographic information is being scrubbed from resumes when deciding who to interview. Given the above rhetoric, it is quite possible hiring decisions will reflect implicit bias once the candidates are met in person. Anti-oppression doctrine holds intent does not matter, only outcome, and to that end, they are engaging in social engineering to get to their desired amorphous vision of utopia.
Moral panic
In a recent city survey, there was a large set of questions designed to get data to support the DEI initiatives. It found that 46% of non college educated white people do not feel welcome or accepted in Olympia, the same percentage as BIPOC, in a survey that was carefully weighted demographically. The difference is that represents thousands of white people and hundreds of BIPOC.
My concern is that the city’s focus on smaller demographic groups is going to further alienate the majority. The city will try to blame their feelings on white fragility, but it has nothing to do with that, it has to do with the inability to speak freely, and people are sick of being dehumanized and demonized and there being two sets of rules, as noted with Councilmember Gilman’s rhetoric.
There is no evidence of WHITE SUPREMACY in Olympia. It is a moral panic, a mass delusion. They have changed the language to give cover to diversity initiatives which otherwise would not be necessary. There is no evidence they can point to in city policy or actions that support their hypothesis that can be changed without discriminating.
According to Purce Braseth’s response to ONN and our conversation today, the above statements are confirmation of my racism and I will surely now have actually earned the label WHITE SUPREMACIST.
In our conversation, she brought up that she has been followed in stores. So have I, because I am usually dressed like homeless antifa in a 10 year old hoodie that is frayed and full of holes because I could not afford a new one. I would show up at Council meetings and be met with some interesting looks, let’s leave it at that.
Purce Braseth earns approximately 130K a year. She earns in one month what I get from Social Security in a YEAR. She is not disabled. She has college degrees, I do not.
Who is marginalized in this scenario? How can she argue she is “more oppressed” than me?
I will never accept her judgment and she has no right to put my character on trial. I know what is in my heart, and there is a record of my action when it comes to actually encouraging cultural exchange. I worked for a decade on building relationships with Gaza with the Craig and Cindy Corrie after Rachel Corrie died, and wrote for electronic intifada for fuck’s sake. I hosted people from Rafah, who’s first experience with America was with my family.
I was the only journalist to do a deep dive into the OPD shooting of two young black men. I have done clinic defense, I was a rape crisis counselor, a regular crisis counselor and I have worked with the Northwest Justice Project. I have bona fides.
Not good enough for the STASI.
No evidence will prove I am not a WHITE SUPREMACIST.
I have been going to many right wing events when campaigning, and have watched hundreds of hours of primary source footage of rallies at the Capitol etc. for my reporting on extremism. I have seen ONE legit white supremacist in a video shot when the Governor’s mansion was protested on January 6th. I also watched other conservatives shouting him down and marginalizing him. They wanted nothing to do with them.
When Sasha Baron Cohen tried to bait conservatives to sing along to a racist song at a fake rally he set up to trap them, they refused and ran him off the stage. He then played the victim saying he feared for his life. Under anti-racism, he should have, what he did went against all the city holds sacred.
The city is setting the tone for harassment of people like me
When I went before the council after the September 4th shooting asking them to denounce the violence against me, Councilmember Yen Huynh took the opportunity to reinforce the disinformation narrative and victim blame me. That video is here.
UPDATE: I went before council regarding this incident, in the video below. In this video, CM Jim Cooper declares he is proud to be antifascist, and nobody condemns the campaign of abuse against me. Note CM Renata Rollins and Lisa Parshley smiling as I describe being harassed by Antifa.
Tonight proved my theory that downtown is not safe for me to go without security.
A disabled 58 year old woman who can barely walk.
Are you OK with this Olympia?
How do you defend this?
It is getting darker and more dystopian in Olympia by the day.
It is frustrating that people do not see the ugliness and the slippery slope we are perched on at this moment, and those in power, who should be leading by de-escalating, are only making the situation more intense. I do not know how this is going to end, other than not well.
I have deep angst over how people feel justified in doing to me what was done tonight. It is morally disgusting. There is no other way to put it. It is creepy and abusive.
The woman who escorted me out of the bar did something reprehensible. She lost a good customer. She lost her critical thinking skills to the cult. She lost her humanity to her ideology. She broke bad.
I will always win against Antifa
I will remain defiant. This will not silence me or stop me. The hate only make my work stronger. Game on.
I will carry the kindness of my protectors and my friend who rushed out at midnight to rescue me. I hold close all the people who supported my campaign because they see the value in my work and want me to succeed.
I still feel the joy of seeing live music, there were three bands, I did not get the name of the first one, the second was GMO who were spectacularly intense. The headliners were a band called Souls Worn Thin, who were so good they made me wish I was still a rock critic so I could write about them. They covered Breed by Nirvana which is one of my fight songs, and they have a track called Will Not Comply.
Appropriate.
When it comes to Antifa v. Candace Mercer, I will always win, because I am the better person, with the better ideas and with the most support. I am the light to their darkness. That is why they want to extinguish me, because I am going to keep shining that light on them and their authoritarian tactics. They do not like that.
Good.
#decencyFTW
Thank you for reading.
Candace Mercer is a progressive artist/writer/activist based in Olympia, WA. She reports on homelessness, political violence and public safety. She ran for Olympia City Council in 2021 with an innovative local campaign but lost. Her next project is For The Win: How to be Dangerous, a YouTube channel teaching people how to fight ethically and effectively.
She is available for media interviews.
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Email OlympiaFTW2021@gmail.com