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The far right is protesting at LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin's house today. Gonna give some background on the rally in this thread, with a CW here for racism, homophobia and all the other stuff you'd expect from the far right
They've been protesting at his house since at least late May. "Stolen HHH money" refers to a ballot measure to build housing for the homeless. There are legitimate questions about how the $ is being used, but this is not a group concerned with the welfare of houseless folks
The protests have been reenergized since @FOXLA reporter @BillFOXLA reported, apparently falsely, that Bonin had called the police to his house eight times since April to deal with "peaceful protesters" https://twitter.com/mikebonin/status/1291906656423444480?s=19
As @mikebonin notes in the Tweet above, Melugin "broke" the story of Starbucks supposedlu putting a tampon in a cop's coffee, which later turned out to be bullshit https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eater.com/platform/amp/2020/7/30/21347936/lapd-officer-did-not-have-tampon-in-starbucks-cup-investigation-finds
Melugin's original tweet about the tampon got 13k retweets, and when he finally issued a correction (which he called an "update") he got 69 retweets. He *really* went hard pushing this story too. He was at it for *days*
Anyway, back to Melugin's story abt Bonin calling cops. Despite Melugin getting into a big Twitter fight with Bonin about it, and claiming an inside source told him it was def true, turns out... Not so much. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxla.com/news/lapd-clarifies-circumstances-of-calls-made-to-councilman-mike-bonins-home-and-neighborhood.amp
If I was @BillFOXLA and I kept getting played by my insider LAPD sources, I would probably rethink the trust I put in them. But that's just me!
Right-wing media, of course, milked this (fake) story for all it was worth. It even made international right-wing headlines!
Bonin has documented some of the right-wing bullshit that's been going on at his house, and told @FOXLA that the right wingers have torn down his BLM signs and wrote "Black Lives Matter is a hate group" in front of his house https://twitter.com/mikebonin/status/1292574491512410112?s=19
Pause here to note I'm not trying to stan for Bonin here, as I haven't really been in LA long enough to comment on his history as a Councilmember. Dude seems alright from what I've been able to find (e.g. recently voting against resuming homeless sweeps) but I don't really know
Regardless, the people protesting against him are definitely not the good guys. Today's protest is being organized through a FB group called Stop Corruption Now, run by a far-righter who goes by Edward Kaye. Kaye has some... interesting ideas about BLM
The group's members are a hodgepodge of racists, QAnoners and other assorted far-right conspiracy people. Becker, the guy ranting about "racebaiting," is also a founder of the FB group
Edward Kaye accused Bonin of "inciting violence" against the group by saying they tore down his BLM signs, and had somebody threaten to sue him. But Kaye is not too concerned with actual incitement of violence by members of his group
Here's a few other highlights from Stop Corruption Now. I'm off to the protest, I'll start a new thread when I get there
