On August 18, 2018 in Seattle, Washington, numerous politically oriented groups gathered along the west side of 4th Avenue in Seattle to protest a rally being held across the street by a political organization called the Washington Three Percent. One of the counter-protest groups, called the Freedom Socialist Party, displayed the large banner depicted in this photograph.
The banner displayed by the Freedom Socialist Party, which was counter protesting the Washington Three Percent rally across the street, includes phrases such as "unite against fascism", "No Nazis", "No KKK", "Radical Women", and "pull 'em up now before they take root". These counter protestors, who were apparently with the Freedom Socialist Party, refused to be interviewed. Some of the counter protesters even attacked and assaulted a Studio 2.8 photographer. One of the masked attackers was arrested for that assault. Upon that attacker's arrest, the Seattle Police discovered that he was armed with a concealed, loaded, small frame Glock brand handgun. Consequently, it wasn't possible to obtain much information directly from the Freedom Socialist Party during the August 18, 2018 rally and counter protest event.
However, within the details of the "Freedom Socialist Party" website, at socialism.com, the group repeatedly describes itself as "trotskyist" (see google search evidence). On the socialism.com website one of its thousands of statements about the group's Marxist / Leninist / Trotskyist ideology states:
Only Marxism ... lays the basis for common understanding of the revolutionary tasks at hand. Only Leninism—the method of welding a Marxist vanguard into a united striking arm against capital—can draw behind it the mass of workers and oppressed in a conscious and therefore implacable struggle for socialism. Only Trotskyism—rooted in Marxism and Leninism and standing on the theory of Permanent Revolution—can delineate the contours, dynamics, vicissitudes, and complexities of revolution in our time, organize the oppressed, and lead them to victory.
There are thousands of references to the group's ideology as Communist on the socialism.com website, describing the Freedom Socialist Party's ideology as radical Marxist communism. As in the quote above, the socialism.com website utilizes the phrase "Permanent Revolution" hundreds of times throughout its content. Is the Freedom Socialist Party implying that it espouses the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. Constitutional Republic government and replacement of the United States with a Marxist / "Trotskyist" communist regime? In any event, this is the Seattle based Marxist / Trotskyist organization that was displaying the large banner depicted above.
Although the Marxist counter protesters refused to be interviewed, the people across the street that they were protesting, were available for interview. Members of the Washington Three Percent specifically disavowed any association with "Nazis". Members of the Washington Three Percent specifically disavowed any association with the "KKK". Members of the Washington Three Percent specifically disavowed any association with "Fascism". In fact, the Washington Three Percent was flying an Israeli flag across the street from the Marxist protesters. Members of the Washington Three Percent also pointed out that there are numerous Jewish people among their membership. There were also African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and Asian American, Washington Three Percent members present at their groups August 18, 2018 event in Seattle.
One of the "takeaways" from creating an in-depth photojournalistic record of these political rallies and the counter protesters against them, is the surreal disconnect between the political content of the official rally, held with a city permit, and the counter protests of them, attended by people without a permit from the city to block the public sidewalk, is that the counter protesters appear to be protesting controversies that are not associated with the people across the street from which the counter protesters protested.
