PHOTOS: Erika Kirk’s Visit to Seattle Was Tame

Photography by Ryder Collins

On July 24, Erika Kirk’s Make Heaven Crowded tour stopped in the Pacific Northwest, at the Kirkland branch of the Pursuit NW church.

You’ve heard us talk about Pursuit before. They’re part of a Christian supremacist movement in the US, with strong ties to the Trump White House, and a mission to make it look like they’re fighting a spiritual war in blue cities.

Last weekend, they tried to do exactly that. A small group of pro-LGBTQ and anti-Trump protesters—maybe a couple dozen—showed up on the sidewalk outside the church, waving flags and signs at cars as they turned into the parking lot. The King County Sheriff Dialogue team observed the protest, and Kirkland PD dispatched bike cops. And sprinkled throughout the scene were nearly every major local right-wing influencer, including Jonathan Choe and Katie Daviscourt, who both attended Trump’s Antifa Roundtable.

All of the right-wing influencers have robust live-streaming setups, with selfie sticks and external microphones. They challenged the protesters to “ideological” conversations like “How do you define a woman?” and “What’s your definition of gay?”—a cheap knockoff of the already-cheap debate style that Charlie Kirk used to use during his TPUSA college tours.

The result was a bunch of video clips that tried to make the protest look like a genuine conflict. Daviscourt accused the Legal Observers of being “Antifa’s legal arm.” Choe posted an AI photo of himself in tactical gear. Photographer Ryder Collins captured what they actually were doing that day—click through the slideshow to see.

The post PHOTOS: Erika Kirk’s Visit to Seattle Was Tame appeared first on The Stranger.