Though we should all be concerned that, as has happened in Berkeley and multiple other places in the country, white nationalists will be drawn to Saturday's now permitted Patriot Prayer rally in San Francisco, the actual stage event as planned just keeps getting stranger. Activist Joey Gibson, who repeatedly has insisted that he want's nothing to do with neo-Nazis and white nationalists, has said that only one planned speaker on Saturday is white and that appears to be Kyle Chapman, a.k.a. twice-convicted felon, Twitter firebrand and Trump supporter Based Stickman. Gibson has also said there would be a black speaker, and "a transsexual." Add to the list of those appearing on his stage local rapper Work Dirty, who KRON 4 is reporting was tapped to perform at the event.
"I'm not no fool, I'm not no idiot you know," says the Vallejo-based rapper who frequently collaborates with E-40 (hear a 2016 track they did together below). But is he just doing this for exposure? To find a new fan base?
His real name is Montrell Harris, and for whatever reason, he's taking Gibson up on the invitation and says he doesn't feel he's being used as a token.
"I can’t bash anybody for their political beliefs, but I’m definitely not supporting nobody that that’s racist or bigoted or sexist or anything like that," Work Dirty tells KRON 4. "Magazine Street, Vallejo, California, I been around violence all my life. We’ve been ducking bullets, ducking shots, people getting their heads blew off my whole life, I’m not worried about a couple of people crying about ’cause some ethnic people out here."
It should be noted here that the scheduled events in Charlottesville, for the Unite the Right rally, never even occurred because there was too much chaos in the city preceding the event itself.
Gibson says he is an "anti-government libertarian" and not a conservative, but he has spent much of the year vlogging his support for President Trump, and taking up various causes that are near and dear to Fox News and conservatives, like marching against Sharia law the implication being that Sharia law may take hold in the US if we don't stop Muslims from instituting it. As Gibson told MyNorthwest.com in May, "Standing against Sharia Law is standing up for Muslims, because Muslims are the number one victims to Sharia law."
Gibson has also been eager to capitalize on nationally publicized instances of violence, such as when he scheduled a Patriot Prayer rally in Portland just days after a man who had attended at least on of his previous rallies allegedly stabbed and killed two people on a commuter train there in the name of "patriotism." Gibson spoke out in the media at the time against Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, angrily denying the idea that his group should be connected to that incident, and defending his own free-speech right to hold a rally.
Similarly, one day after the incidents in Charlottesville, Gibson scheduled Patriot Prayer events in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Portland area sheriff's detective Ed Troyer put it succinctly to radio station KIRO: "Anytime you get a crowd of people together, especially when you have opinions on both sides, you are going draw people with slight mental health issues; you’re going to draw radicals on both sides. Those types of events tend to bring those people in, and it only takes one or two of them to cause a giant problem."
Previously: SFPD Chief: Guns, Tiki Torches, Pets Banned From Crissy Field 'Patriot Prayer' Rally