Save Anchorage Handlers Beat Hive Ahead of Tonight’s Assembly Meeting
Members of the far-right shadowy Save Anchorage operation have been encouraged by the group's handlers to testify this evening in opposition to AO-117. This proposed ordinance would put additional rules for meeting procedures into the municipal code.
The ordinance would codify additional rules of procedure for the Assembly and the Chair.
Some of the proposed changes would allow the Assembly Chair to prohibit members of the public from bringing dangerous or distracting items to Assembly premises or require an item to be removed from Assembly premises if it is being used to create an actual disturbance. The Chair would also have the right to order a person to be removed from a meeting for creating an actual disturbance to the meeting.
Save Anchorage is a group now listed in the Insurrection Index, and some members have threatened public officials. The group has been fed a stream of narratives about the proposed ordinance by far-right Eagle River Assembly member Jamie Allard.
Yesterday, Allard, in what appears to have been an attempt at generating outrage over the proposed ordinance, wrote that AO-117 violated members' 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and used her influence to order members of the group to vote for Bronson loyalist and Save Anchorage member Liz Vazquez who is running against Assembly Member Kameron-Perez-Verdia.
As is generally the case when Allard posts to the group, she did not explain how AO-117 might violate the constitutional rights of Anchorage residents, and it's not entirely clear what on earth Allard was droning on about in her post.
In a post made to the group, a frequent Assembly testifier and Save Anchorage member called the proposed ordinance the "gag ordinance" and asked members to email the Assembly and attend tonight's meeting.
The Reclaim Midtown Facebook page, whose responsible party is listed as the Arctic Liberation Coalition, owned by civic activist Russell Biggs owns, posted a dissertation about the proposed ordinance to the group, which used keywords such as "divert, sued, rewrote, lied, improper, rewriting," and of course alleged the Assembly was rewriting the rules again in an attempt to "rig the system."
Pro-Bronson supporters have repeatedly interrupted Assembly meetings over the past year, forcing the Assembly Chair to take unscheduled breaks and remove people from meetings. Assembly members have also been the recipients of death threats and anti-gay slurs. Concerning posts and comments made by members of Save Anchorage have even been sent to the Anchorage Police Department for review.
On September 29, 2021, an Anchorage resident was photographed having a handgun removed from his person by APD officers at that evening's Assembly meeting. That same evening, four members of the public were arrested, and the meeting was continually interrupted by those concerned that they might have to wear masks in public spaces to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the city. Many others wore antisemitic holocaust imagery.
Today, a video was released of Bronson administration legislative director and Save Anchorage member Terrance Shanigan caught in a hot mic call that was recorded during last evening's Roger Park Community Council meeting. In the video, Shanigan says, "I figured they needed a little slapping around."
According to Matt Buxton of the Midnight Sun, who released the video of Shanigan's hot mic moment, Shanigan made his comments after popping into the meeting to talk about how the city's testing is fine, that there are plenty of locations with low wait times and about how some number of additional home tests are on the way to the city for supposed distribution.
Vice-Chair Christopher Constant said of the proposed ordinance that it had become clear that "what is customary is no longer accepted by some folks, and so we have to encode that which has been our practice."
In any event, the proposed ordinance that would put additional rules for meeting procedures into the municipal code seems like a well-reasoned and long-overdue move on the part of the Assembly in light of the inability of pro-Bronson supporters to act like adult human beings.
You can read the proposed ordinance here and, as always, have the right to reach out to the Assembly if you choose.
