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Today’s blacklisted American: Pro-parent event silenced by threats of violence from leftist queers

They’re coming for you next: An event organized by three different groups working to get the queer agenda out of elementary schools was canceled by the theater operator after he received numerous threats of violence from queer leftists.

“I was really proud to be able to provide an opportunity for a forum for some positive, hopefully positive, or what I thought would be possible discussions,” said operator Ron Onesti.

But instead it brought cascading concerns, and he said he canceled the event after receiving threats. “It’s not my role to have a stance with these issues. I’m merely the venue,” he said. “They said they were going to bring guns and show you what it’s really about. It just got really, really bad involving all kinds of things, bullets and dog feces.” [emphasis mine]

This is the left. Dare to express any opinion they disagree with, and they will work to blacklist and censor you, and if you show even the slightest resistance, they will then threaten you with violence.

Des Plaines Alderman Carla Brookman
Des Plaines Alderman Carla Brookman

The event itself had been scheduled to occur on February 8, 2023 in Des Plaines, Illinois. The organizers were a coalition of several organizations, Awake Illinois, Moms for Liberty, and Gays Against Groomers, all of whom oppose strongly the effort by queers to sexualize young children, often against the will of their parents. Though the theater is owned by the city, it was the theater operator who canceled the event.

I first found out about this story from this Pajamas Media story, which instead of focusing on the actual blacklisting and violence decided to center its story on the public statement of a Des Plaines council alderwoman, Carla Brookman, who called the effort to shut down the event wrong, a violation of free speech, and a demonstration of intolerance by the protesters.

You can watch her statement here.

PJ Media called her defense of free speech “glorious.” I applaud her as well, but in watching that video glorious is not the word I’d use. Instead, I saw it as depressing, since it clearly demonstrated the fear ordinary people have of the power-hungry left and its allies in the queer community.

First, Brookman is continually interrupted by a heckler in the crowd, who tries to silence her by screaming over and over again that the organizers of the event were “hate groups” (an accusation by the way that was pure slander and untrue). Both Brookman and the head of the council repeatedly plead with this woman to be quiet, without success. At several points, the council head threatens to clear the room, not remove this one heckler. It is clear that he is terrified of challenging this woman singly, no matter how badly behaved she is.

Brookman herself qualifies her criticism. In noting the heckler’s intolerance for free speech, she keeps saying that “This is a systemic problem in America,” which is painting the issue with too broad a brush. The problem is systemic, but it is a problem on the left, not all of America. And at this specific council meeting, it is only a problem by this one intolerant leftist attendee, not anyone else in the room. By applying her accusation to everyone, Brookman instead devalues her attack on the real culprit.

And finally, despite Brookman’s strong defense of free speech and the council’s apparent decision not to cancel the event, the left’s threats of violence worked anyway, because the event was cancelled. The bullies won. Free speech in Des Plaines is no longer permitted. The left has decreed it, and woe to you if you dare challenge them.

Above all, remember the slanders screamed against these organizations. These big lies, Barack Obama’s legacy of hate, will be repeated again and again, unchallenged, resulting in more canceled events and further silencing. In the end the lie will be seen as true, and these entirely reasonable organizations and the people who run will be seen as extremists, while the intolerant extremists will be in control.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Alec Rawls

    Organizing to block other people’s speech is conspiracy to suppress civil rights, which is both a crime and a tort under the civil rights acts. Obviously, the Biden administration, squarely on the side of the radical leftist speech suppressors, is not going to bring any criminal charges (which carry very serious criminal penalties penalties, by the way, up to 10 years for each violation against each victim, which would be everybody in that room.)

    But the people whose rights to speech and association are being suppressed can still sue, and they need to start doing it. Of course they will need to have more of an understanding of their rights and how those rights are being violated than the organizers and moderators of this event did. They need to set rules for participation, and for kicking out people who violate the rules, and then sue those who obstruct in violation of the rules.

  • Unknownsailor

    Venues are going to have to start responding to threats of violence by allowing overt displays of force by the group organizing the meet. It used to be that Americans understood that this was the only way to respond to threats, but we have gotten too civilized, allowed lawyers to determine levels of risk.

    This is something meet organizers need to think about when putting these sorts of things together, too. You need to pick a venue that won’t freak out if your group wants to match the level of threats offered by protesters, and you need to have open lines of communication with the venue so that any threats to them get passed on to you, so you can adjust your security plan accordingly.

  • elphupphy

    Letting yourselves be bullied by a bunch of raging faggots is cowardly. Hold your meeting and make sure to bring your own protections.

  • Tim Gannon

    Mr Garland,

    Are you going to protect the rights of parents with school board members to have an assembly without threats of violence?

  • Joe Smith

    Unknown Sailor and elphupphy, the problem with your counsel is that the event was being held in Illinois, which just banned the most effective devices for protecting such a gathering, and where one can be sure that in any confrontation between the woke and the sensible, the sensible will be the ones prosecuted if anyone gets hurt. Given the gratifying negative response most of the counties in the state have given to the new law, you might get away with such things in rural areas (though even then, the state police would probably come down on you like a ton of bricks.) But in the suburbs of Chicago? Not happening. I’m sorry to say that the most reasonable way to protect your kids is to move them elsewhere–if you must stay in the cold Midwest, try Iowa, which just passed one of the most sweeping school choice measures in the country.

  • GWB

    an accusation by the way that was pure slander
    And they should be SUED for such. The malice is obvious, and the charge can be proven false, so SUE them.

    Also, I would offer “private” security for the event and venue if I were local to it. “Don’t worry, sir. Threats will be dealt with directly and summarily.” And I would put a trace on their phone and immediately investigate all electronic threats. Don’t hide from these people. Shine the brightest light you can into their holes, then squash them for the cockroaches they are.

  • Cotour

    Related:

    ATLAS WILL SHRUG

    (But maybe that is the plan?)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11670157/Californias-lawmakers-consider-wealth-tax-1-5-global-worth-1billion.html

    “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/33/af/eb33af6a4e9b43e3dbddf10ed2fc6361.png

  • Madam DeFarge

    Too bad we no longer have a government that protects all the people. Also too bad we have spineless folks who cave to bullies. What goes around come around, always does.

  • Edward

    Form the article:

    The Des Plaines Theatre canceled an event that was to be held by Awake Illinois, a group that has faced some backlash for controversial comments on the LGBTQ+ community, after receiving backlash and threats.

    Robert noted: “This is the left. Dare to express any opinion they disagree with, and they will work to blacklist and censor you, and if you show even the slightest resistance, they will then threaten you with violence.

    At first, the LGBTQ+/ community wanted recognition. Then they wanted acceptance. Later it was equality, supposedly at no cost to everyone else, but then they received expensive benefits. Then they demanded participation, with $135,000 fines for people who would not participate. Then they declared superiority over other people. Soon after, they took away other people’s rights — those other people are inferior, after all, and must call them by their preferred pronouns, removing our previously protected First Amendment rights. Now they rationalize violence against those inferior other people — and look who is willing to accept that violence as acceptable behavior. What will come next?

    It looks like those who deny that there is a slippery slope are wrong.

  • Cotour

    Madam D:

    “Too bad we no longer have a government that protects all the people.”

    That condition has never really existed.

    I would adjust your statement a bit. I know what you mean but your statement is misleading and not as accurate as it could be.

    It is the Juridical system structured by the Constitution that protects all of the people in theory and NOT the government.

    The entity “Government” which is populated by politically biased and empowered human beings is in fact the natural enemy of the people’s freedom and is always an ever-present threat to it.

    If the people have no freedom to protect that means that that their freedom has been usurped and taken by the government.

    The fundamental problem that we see revealing itself to most all today is that the “Government” in the form of the Democrat party which is now controlled by radical “Fundamental change” extremists has philosophically taken over most all internal structures that are established by the Constitution in the executive, judicial and the legislative branches of “The Government”.

    The “Government” is not in reality your friend, the Constitution as intended is your friend.

    And that is why within the Constitution there is the Second Amendment. Why was that included? Because the Founders who studied all forms of government who attempted to counterbalance Governments nature related to the abuse of power and the people’s freedom knew that in time the people would have to take it all back and start over.

    So prescient, so simple, so smart. That is if you are concerned with the people’s freedom. The King of England? Adolph Hitler? Stalin? Gengis Khan? Kim Jung Un? Not so much.

    It’s all a matter of what you set out to accomplish and choice.

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