In Seattle last weekend, violence broke out—not from the pulpit, but from the pavement.
Pastors and churchgoers, gathered for a permitted worship event in a city park, found themselves besieged by a black-clad mob who attempted to tear down fencing, rush the stage, and shout them down.
The attackers were not counter-protesters in any constitutional sense of the word. They were masked militants whose tactics have become a hallmark of Antifa: organized, aggressive, and aimed not at persuasion but suppression.
To their credit, the Seattle police intervened. Arrests were made. Barricades held. For a moment, law reasserted itself in a city too long governed by hesitation.
Bruce Harrell, elected to lead but seemingly content to triangulate, did not respond with praise for law enforcement or a reaffirmation of Seattle’s civic obligations to neutrality and free expression.
Instead, he questioned the Christian group’s presence—why they had been issued a permit and why their event had not been relocated to a “less provocative” area.
Translated: The fault lies not with the mob—heaven forbid—but those who dared to speak within earshot of it.
This goes beyond appeasement or failed civic leadership. The mayor effectively signaled that the rule of law in Seattle is conditional—and that those who assault Christians may expect indulgence, while those who dare to preach in public may expect scrutiny.
Harrell’s statement is a masterclass in moral evasion. It nods toward “anarchists,” then downplays their aggression with sanitized language like “infiltrated” and “disrupted”—as if masked militants had simply wandered in with the breeze.
Rather than commend his officers or affirm the constitutional right of peaceful assembly, Harrell issued a statement directing the Parks Department to reexamine the permitting process and urging the police to produce an after-action report focused on crowd management tactics and the arrests themselves.
The subtext was unmistakable: those arrested may soon be recast as misunderstood protesters, and the officers who protected the event could find themselves under internal review.
In Seattle, even enforcing the law can become grounds for investigation—if you defend the wrong group.
The mayor then implies that the real danger lies in “far-right” speech held in a historically LGBTQ+ neighborhood. In other words, the public square is now zoned for ideology.
Speech rights may exist on paper but are conditional—revocable if your message strays from the orthodoxy or irritates Seattle’s cringeworthy Mayor LaTrivia, always eager with bureaucratic balm for the mob’s bruised feelings.
Hellbound and Down 