By Joanna Rozo
On October 2nd, 2021 I went to a rally for Women’s/LGBTQ+ rights. While there a man with a bible showed up to preach at the rally supporters. He, of course, was not wearing a mask. Yes this rally was outside, however it was still a decent sized crowd and most of the rally supporters were masked up.
At first this man was asked to leave. He continued to preach and raise his voice. So of course, I pulled out my phone and started recording. He reminded the attendees of this rally and me of the stereotypical mentally ill man standing on a street corner yelling, “the end is nigh.”
I was across the street from him when he started preaching. A new friend I recently met through my sister was misgendered by this man. She corrected him, but he continued to call her ‘sir’. This motivated me to cross the street. This man sees me filming him and continues to preach as if he isn’t embarrassing himself. Many of the rally supporters, including my new friend, crossed the street to put some distance between them and him. I heard some people say, “this is not what I signed up for,” as they started dispersing.
However, this confrontation never became violent. I continued to film as some of the rally supporters had a conversation with him. I chimed in a few times, but mostly just listened. At no point did this man make any sense to me.
Although I am an atheist now, I grew up Christian. I remember reading that homosexuality was a sin, for some reason in the same paragraph as bestiality being a sin (duh). This is part of why I decided I could not be a Christian anymore. But that being said, I still didn’t understand what this man was trying to accomplish. Was he trying to ‘save our souls’? I suppose from his point of view that may be what he was doing. But he lost all creditability when he said that slavery wasn’t necessarily bad. Excuse me, WTF? His claim was that if someone owed you a debt it was okay to make that person your slave until the debt was paid …again, WTF?
So, I asked, “wouldn’t it be better just to forgive you of that debt?” Thinking that would be the “Christian’ thing to do. He seemed surprised by this question. He asked if I would really do that. Well, considering that owning someone is absolutely disgusting, then yeah. If my options are to forgive a debt, or have a slave, I would choose to forgive. Isn’t forgiveness something talked about in the Bible? The book this man was holding and reading from.
At no point did this incident become violent.
Roles were reversed later that month when I attended a gubernatorial debate in Bandon. My friend who lives in Bandon informed my husband and me about this debate and the three of us attended together.
We did not realize until we arrived at the Sprague Community Theatre that all the candidates speaking that night were Republicans. The three of us looked at each other wondering if we should stay. We decided to hear them out, we were already there, so why not? We were wary of course, partly because we were the only three people at this indoor event, with a large crowd, that were wearing masks.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at how the night ended, but damn what an eye opener.
I started filming, but quickly stopped when one of the speakers asked that the crowd didn’t film anything. I left my phone on, and in my purse to catch the audio of the event. Within the first few minutes I was angry as the speaker made disparaging remarks about immigrants. As the daughter of immigrants, I highly disagree with what this speaker was saying. However, I bit my tongue and continued to sit there, mostly quietly. My husband, friend and I would make hushed comments occasionally, and laughed at some of the things the speakers, candidates and said.
We were told to quiet down, and we honestly tried. But it was hard to sit back and be silent when the people on stage were spewing blatant lies. Eventually my husband was asked to be quiet or leave. He decided it was the right time to leave anyway. I was about to follow, but my friend did not want to. I wasn’t about to leave her there by herself, so I stayed. We were told if we ‘interrupted’ again we would have to leave. Our snickers and comments at this point had not derailed the speakers, or even caused them to pause. Although we were apparently annoying the people around us.
About a few minutes after my husband was already outside (about 20 minutes into debate) my friend had had enough. She stood up and yelled, “you need to stop lying”. The candidates were going on and on about all the ‘voter fraud’ in the previous election, implying that Biden had not actually won.
I stood up with my friend, since I agreed with her. We were of course asked to leave. Which we fully intended on doing, however we were immediately swarmed. As the crowd yelled at us to leave, they were also blocking us from doing so.
Members of the mask-less crowd were in my friend’s as well as my face. My friend and I are of very short stature and she is 60 years old. She recently beat cancer and remained highly concerned at the fact that no one else was wearing a mask. As a tall middle-aged man got very close to her she tried to shoo him away with her cane. Crowd immediately claimed assault as she softly poked this man with her cane. I got in between my friend and this man, as I feared retaliation.
This man backed off. We continued to try to leave as we were blocked and yelled at. My friend would occasionally shout things like, “Trump lost,” and “what happened to the mask mandate?”
The crowd chanted, “Trump, Trump, Trump.” Then they chanted “Let’s go Brandon.”
Another tall middle-aged man got behind me, bent down so his lips were near my ear, and I could smell his nasty breath. The memory still makes me cringe.
He grabbed me by the arm as he called me rude and insulting. I pulled away from him which led to a slight push back and forth between us. A woman seated behind us had started filming some time before this and her husband told this man to back off. Another man in the aisle was also telling this man to back off.
I was unaware of this at the time, but the man that harassed me was none other than Rob Taylor, from Rob Taylor Report.
If even your fellow right wingers are telling you to back off, maybe you should back the fuck off. Why did this crowd act as though my friend and I were such a threat to them?
Rob Taylor and a few other middle-aged men followed my friend and me to our car. As soon as we stepped outside my husband was out of the car walking up to us asking if we were okay. At this point my friend was trying to catch her breath. One of the men that followed us told the other men to let her catch her breath. We were heading to the car, about to leave, I am unsure why a handful of them needed to follow us out.
We repeatedly had to ask these men to move away from our vehicle as they were standing in front of it, as they continued demanding that we leave.
When the couple that filmed us being escorted out posted the video on Facebook we were labeled “Crazy Liberals” and “Batshit Leftists.” Many of the commenters agreed that my friend was “assaulting” the man she poked with her cane. But what about Rob Taylor’s behavior? If my friend was in fact ‘assaulting’ that man (which I disagree with), then what would you call what Rob Taylor did to me?
And again…What the actual fuck?
