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On 4 September 2017, the right-wing web site Breitbart.com published an article by former California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly reporting that a violent mob had descended on a small pro-Donald Trump group of people who were present in an historic San Diego park, ostensibly intending to eat a pizza lunch and view cultural murals they were campaigning to have dismantled. In a story headlined Violent Mob Forces Police to Shut Down ‘Patriot Picnic’ at Chicano Park, Donnelly, a Breitbart contributor, wrote: Although article's headline included the phrase violent mob, its text, which was aggregated from other sources, didn't support that wording: San Diego police told us they made no arrests and received no reports of violent activity during the event, while a rally in support of the historic park murals, which depict the culture and history of the predominantly Mexican-American and immigrant community surrounding the park, lasted four hours. A brief but tense confrontation with the Patriot Picnic attendees lasted about 30 minutes but ended when police escorted them away, and the remainder of event was peaceful. Witnesses told us the Patriot Picnic group were partially responsible for instigating the confrontation, and both sides could be seen on video taunting each other. The Patriot Picnic event was put together shortly after city officials removed a Confederate plaque from a downtown San Diego Park. According to Roger Ogden, the Patriot Picnic organizer, the group's event was supposed to private, but an online backlash manifested once word of it leaked out. As a result, Ogden told us that the day before the picnic event he issued a press release in the hopes that violence would be averted due to the presence of news media: The Patriot Picnic group comprised about five men who, roughly two weeks prior, had made a blog post in which they expressed a desire to see Chicano Park, a historic landmark to Latino heritage, toppled. Once word spread that the men were planning to hold a picnic at the park on 3 September 2017, the community planned a counter-demonstration which came to be known as the Solidarity Rally. About 500 people attended the counter-demonstration, which was organized by the Chicano Park Steering Committee. Ultimately, counter-demonstrators and the San Diego Police Department succeeded in preventing violence. The handful of people who showed up for the Patriot Picnic were surrounded by a large group of police, while activists from the counter-demonstration side also helped keep the two groups separated. According to local news reports, the counter-demonstration started at noon, with speakers including faith and community leaders. Proceedings became heated only briefly when Ogden's group showed up at the park at 1 p.m., as scheduled, and set up at a picnic table across the street from the larger event. Three journalists we spoke to who witnessed the incident said Ogden's group actively attracted the attention of counter-demonstrators by waving at them. A video posted by Patriot Picnic participant Arthur Schaper corroborates this, as does a report by the San Diego Union Tribune. Ogden told us that by the time his group started waving, they had already received the crowd's full attention. But San Diego Free Press reporter Doug Porter telated a different version of events to us: Schaper, who narrates the video he posted, can be heard pointing at murals and angrily mis-translating the word yonkes to mean yankees and claiming that the murals were evidence of racial bias. (Yonkes is a Spanish slang word for junkyards. The Spanish word for yankee is more similar in pronunciation to the English version: yanqui.) Schaper's group can be seen yelling greetings in Spanish at counter-demonstrators, at which point a crowd crossed the street and a shouting match between the groups ensued. Shortly afterwards, a police officer told Ogden's group that things were going south quick and instructed them to leave. Schaper filmed the group's police-escorted exodus from the park, and although the two opposing groups continued shouting at each other, no one was physically assaulted. Multiple witnesses told us that Ogden's group was able to walk to their cars and leave peacefully. According to the San Diego Free Press, both Ogden and Schaper are well-known far-right figures in the community with a storied history of whipping up supporters on topics such as immigration and refugees. The San Diego Union Tribune reported that Ogden has been behind a number of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant websites and social media accounts. In the days immediately preceding the picnic, Ogden published a post on his Patriot Fire blog calling for the murals at Chicano Park to be toppled and urging supporters to email San Diego city officials calling for the park to be dismantled: San Diego Free Press reporter Doug Porter then published an e-mail he'd obtained in which Ogden urged his followers to complain about Chicano Park to San Diego city officials and asked whether anyone would like to visit the creepy un-American landmark to see it in person. Porter also reported on the broader campaign to do away with the park: In an update appended to that story, Porter presciently noted that Mr. Ogden and a small number of his fellow cockroaches WILL likely show up at the park, armed with cameras, hoping to get footage for a YouTube video they can shop to various reactionary media organizations. As if on cue, on 4 September 2017 Breitbart.com published their sensationalized story. Sandy Huffaker, the professional news photographer whose pictures Breitbart.com purchased from the stock image service Getty Images for their article, also told us the claim that the counter-protesters were violent was false, saying: That’s the biggest lie, [Breitbart.com] totally mis-portrayed that. Yeah, there was a lot of yelling but there was no violence.
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