A huge fight broke out outside the Glendale School Board meeting in Los Angeles as parents, many of them from the Armenian-American community, came to protest the school’s pride events. Naturally, the left-wing zealots—read “Antifa”—showed up in force, and as you will see, some serious punches were thrown on both sides. A heavy police presence attempted to stop the fighting, violently pulling apart combatants to prevent serious injury.
Someone with a bullhorn shouts, “Do not engage! Step away. We are not here to fight!” Maybe that person wasn’t there to fight, but plenty of other people were. One man wearing a black helmet seems to stagger into the arms of policemen as he steps away from the brawl in the second video.
Warning: Violent content
In other footage, a KCAL newscaster can be heard incredulously saying, “Wow. Oh boy” as he watches the violence escalate:
The confrontation was not entirely a surprise, as things had been heating up beforehand, as the Los Angeles Times noted:
City and school officials were bracing Tuesday for a school board meeting that was expected to be volatile as pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ protesters and speakers were set to face off on issues that touch on the role of schools in teaching gender and sexuality.
The agenda for Tuesday night’s board meeting, scheduled to start at 5 p.m., includes a vote by members on recognizing June as Pride month. The meeting comes amid a simmering climate on LGBTQ+ rights that boiled over last week when protesters violently clashed at a North Hollywood elementary school over a Pride-themed assembly.
Glendale school board meetings have been attended by protesters for the last several weeks, with anti-LGBTQ+ activists criticizing district staffers’ handling of LGBTQ+ material.
Glendale police said the clashes between protesters have included shouting but no physical confrontations. The department will have a presence at Tuesday’s meeting, officials said.
It’s notable just how slanted the Times‘ coverage is, calling protesters “anti-LGBTQ+.” They may not be; their argument is that this stuff shouldn’t be forced on their kids.
Glendale has a heavy Armenian-American presence—in fact, it has more Armenians than any city outside of Armenia itself, and some estimates show that the city’s population is 40 percent Armenian. Many Armenians have traditional values and don’t take kindly to having progressivism shoved down their throats. Here’s a tweet from my wife Roxanne last month:
A friend of RedState who is at the protest said at 6:55 pm PST:
Yes it’s fine with a little side skirmish but there are still hundreds of people here they have dispersed us from the parking lot but we are basically circling the perimeter on the public sidewalk marching and such
We have been disbursed indoor marching to City Hall now.
The alphabet mob may have just found that they don’t want to mess with the Armenian-American community.