Brawls break out at Republican rally arranged by Jan. 6 rioter, resulting in arrest
Decked in a kilt and wielding cardboard signs against Trump, George Slivka short-circuited tight security at the “American Restoration Tour” in Beverly Hills Garden Park, despite their concentrated efforts to remove all counterprotesters. The 26-year-old anti-Trumper seemed to be peaceably having it out with a few MAGATs, until a red-cap wearer repeated an infamous quote from President Donald Trump: “Grab ‘em by the pussy.”
Slivka immediately snarled and bellowed: “No!”
“Treat women with respect!” he screamed.
They began to shove at one another while Restoration Tourers yelled “Cuff him! Cuff him!” and “Enjoy the gulag, commie!” Eventually, security pinned Slivka to the ground. Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) officers on standby handcuffed him, detained him in Vehicle 073 and made an arrest for alleged assault with a deadly weapon.
Though this marked the climax of involvement from police and security, the Republican-themed rally in the park bearing the emblematic Beverly Hills sign followed a tight sqaureup between left and right-wing protesters in West Hollywood, at which the ideologues seldom hesitated to get handsy.
The rally’s magistrates were no strangers to law enforcement. The “American Restoration Tour,” which made its Los Angeles stop on April 27, is a product of the #WalkAway campaign, a political action committee founded by Brandon Straka, a gay man, hairstylist and conservative social media personality from New York City. The group is dedicated to excommunicating as many people as possible from the Democratic Party, and ideally, redirecting them to the Right.
“Our message is simply that we have the ability now to restore America, restore freedom, restore our values, restore our borders. It’s time to restore American greatness,” said Straka. “That’s what this is all about.”
Straka spoke at the rally alongside Matt Gaetz, former representative for Florida’s first congressional district; and Shiva Bagheri, local conservative celebrity who threw weekly MAGA parties in that very park in 2020 to protest pandemic policies.
“We just love Donald Trump. We love Elon Musk,” Bagheri said to the crowd. “I’m so thankful for Brandon and how many people he’s gotten to walk away from that nihilistic, horrible political party.”
“They are the movement that allowed this great state to burn,” said Gaetz, wearing a baseball cap that read “Be Offended.” “We are not just walking away from the Left; we are walking towards something. We are building a vision and a country.”
“You know what?” he yelled to the ring of counterprotesters, stationed about 20 feet away. “If you come to our side, we will welcome you with a patriotic embrace.”
Bagheri was charged repeatedly in 2020 and 2021 for holding unpermitted gatherings in the city.
A House Ethics Committee report released last December, one month after Gaetz resigned from Congress, displayed evidence of Gaetz committing statuatory rape. And Straka was convicted of misdemeanor disorderly conduct in 2022 as a result of his participation in the attacks on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
On that January afternoon, as U.S. Congress was in session officializing electoral votes that confirmed President Joe Biden’s office, an estimated 2,000 people, including members of the Proud Boys, gained entry to the Capitol by smashing windows, and proceeded to loot and vandalize the interior until they were cleared out within four hours.
The idea had been popularized and spread through online group chats.
“Obviously, we knew immediately the day after the election, it was stolen… We were very angry, but we didn’t really have a plan or anything. We started seeing the Stop the Steal process coming up in DC with Antifa and Proud Boys fighting each other. So we wanted to get involved,” said Edward Badalian, Jan. 6 rioter who attended “American Restoration.”
Among the estimated 140 police officers who were criminally assaulted by the attackers, two committed suicide and one perished from strokes after hospitalization. The lives of three rioters were taken as well — one shot by police, one due to heart attack, and one stampeded to death.
The House of Representatives levied blame onto Trump himself, who had labored to spread the claim that the 2020 presidential elections were fraudulent, even declaring himself the winner on the next day. A week after the Capitol attacks, Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection, and subsequently acquitted by the Senate.
In the years that followed, the largest criminal probe in U.S. history ensued, and around 1,500 people were charged with crimes related to the riots, 85% of them convicted. And on the date of Trump’s second inauguration, he pardoned or granted clemency to every single defendant, a move that the Associated Press recorded was opposed by 6 in 10 Americans.
This included Straka as well as Badalian, who spent a year in prison on counts of conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, and remaining in a restricted building.
But the rally in Beverly Hills Garden Park, said Badalian, was finally a step in the right direction for the city.
“I think I’m still kind of in the same mentality that I was the day after (Jan. 6), which was like, damn, we need, like, a thousand more of these,” he said. “Because it’s just one big thing. And then it gave the other side one event to focus on to make a big deal out of.”
“I think we need a sustained effort of protesting, like this (one), and it needs to grow, and not shrink,” he said. “I don’t feel like we can rest now that we’ve won. We have to keep going.”
Unlike Badalian, Straka shirked from addressing Jan. 6.
“I’m not going to waste more than 30 seconds talking about that stupid day that happened four years ago that completely changed the outcome of my life, okay?” he said. “But if there’s any message or any lesson I want you to walk away with, from what happened to me … it’s that you … stand up, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get the hell back on the battlefield.”
The #WalkAway movement, founded by Straka on social media in 2018, encourages Democrats to depart the Left and consider other political opportunities.
“The main issue is to have people understand that they’re not alone,” said Roxanne Hoge, chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County (LAGOP). “Everything in every elected office, everything in L.A. is run mostly by Democrats. And so it’s just a chance for people to get together and go, oh, wait a second, there’s options.”
“I’m an immigrant from Jamaica. I know that when I came here, I was like, well, it feels like there’s only one option for me. Right?” said Hoge. “No. The American political system is open to everybody. Everybody can choose what side to be on. And so his (Straka’s) point is, don’t think that there’s only one side.”
Bagheri reiterated her sentiment as a fellow immigrant.
“I’m an immigrant from Iran. And we fled Iran because of what radical Islam did to Iran. It destroyed it,” she said. “And we came to this country and you’ll never see me waving an Iranian flag. You see me waving an American flag, right? An American flag. Because I am an American.”
Straka named the two key principles he wants conservatives to embrace in order to reinstate and militarize their movement.
“Number one, every year is an election year. There is no such thing as an off-year anymore… The other thing, every election is a national election,” he said.
Under these guidelines, he said, “we can turn California red. And I mean that.”
Earlier that day, the #WalkAway people were joined by a left-wing counterprotesting coalition in West Hollywood’s so-called Rainbow District, packed onto a tiny streetcorner as they bickered and leered. Some signs read, “#WalkAway from the Left.” Another read, “Matt Gaetz, #WalkAway from minors.”
When Straka arrived in WeHo, he was immediately mobbed by fans seeking photos as well as left-wingers looking to accost and douse him in rainbow and transgender flags. Straka, somewhat of a face for gay conservatism, once said, “I’m gay, and Pride Month is torture.”
The choice of a conservative alliance to set up shop in a gay neighborhood, said 19-year WeHo resident Michelle R., was intentionally malicious.
“That’s just pure hate and hatred towards the LGBTQIA community,” said Michelle, who withheld her surname due to fear of doxxing. “It’s pure hatred. That’s all it is. That’s why they chose West Hollywood.”
If there was bitterness from that side, as she noted, it was certainly reciprocated. Hundreds of left-wingers from Protect Trans Youth LA as well as unaffiliated individuals were assembled and militantly vigilant in dispelling the #WalkAway crowd from their stirs. One protester grabbed a Trump supporter’s neck; others shoved at each other and knocked poster boards from their hands.
And whenever a modicum of distance between the ideological factions was achieved, an infernal cacophony rang out in arrhythmia. Trumpers yelled “USA! USA! USA!” while the Left espoused a classic chant: “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!”
Under these conditions, said Michelle, “nobody’s listening to each other.”
“There’s no conversation between either side, to be honest. I think it’s a little ugly on both sides,” she said. “But I think it’s also warranted for some people who have been targeted by the right.”
This was especially important to defend in WeHo, she said, “a progressive city that’s largely out and proud in a variety of ways. So I came to stand up to them.”
Anticipating controversy, the city of West Hollywood released a preemptive statement on April 24, upholding the #WalkAway group’s constitutional right to assemble while “denouncing words and actions that may seek to devalue, divide, or diminish us.”
The skirmishes in WeHo were the first of their kind for Jessica Bosse, a Santa Monica College (SMC) student studying microbiology. Usually, she said, she witnessed protesters and counterprotesters acting separately, in their own orbits.
“I wasn’t expecting them to be intermingling,” Bosse said.
Eventually, the quadrants migrated to the sidewalk, setting out for Beverly Hills. The two groups marched in the same direction, separated by speed, until the cadres reached the WeHo city limits and the Trumpers broke off, ambling for the park.
“Bye bye, Nazis!” the liberal protesters called as they slipped out of view.
But along the isolated route through the park, Alex Davis, a self-proclaimed counterprotester, found himself finally able to engage some Trump supporters in earnest dialogue.
“I was walking and talking with a number of the pro-Trump protesters,” said Davis. “We talked through tariffs and how, you know, they’re not actually going to re-industrialize America, because we’re tariffing all the things that companies need to buy in order to begin manufacturing things again. We talked about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”
“I was trying to sort of break through a little and see, like, where are they coming from,” he said. “They are contingent supporters… And their support is based on restoring American manufacturing, a thing that Trump can’t do.”
“When it becomes clear that Trump can’t actually deliver the things that he’s promised, I think some of those people will peel off, and as you can see from my big, beautiful chart, it’s already happening,” Davis said.
Davis wielded a poster board charting Trump’s approval ratings over his second term, bearing a cartoonishly sloped decline.
His buddying up with a Trump supporter allowed him through #WalkAway’s metal barricades and into the rally at first. Soon, though, he was asked to leave, and relegated to the park’s perimeters, along with a steady bandwagon of about a dozen remaining liberal counterprotesters. This group continued to make comments and shout as the rally’s speaking engagements ensued.
The legion of left-wing resistance consisted of multiple students from SMC, including Bosse. Bosse had resolved to get involved in city politics, but didn’t know where to start until a classmate suggested she attend the Hands Off! rally earlier this month.
The Democratic Party, she said, is not a viable alternative to protest. She agreed with the #WalkAway movement as much.
“When people are feeling bad, they need somewhere to go to. The Democratic Party, largely, has not been very good at that,” she said.
The solution, she said, lies not in Trumpism, but in left-wing populism. “As far as right-wing populism versus left-wing populism, right-wing populism ultimately benefits the owning class,” Bosse said.
Hence, her sign: a black-and-white image of the right-wing populism poster child, Donald Trump, sharing a cheeky glance with Jeffrey Epstein. The words: “This Your Guy?”
Bosse still felt a unique kind of solidarity with the right-wing rallyers, inspiring her to stay, hoist her signs and debate passerby conservatives for the event’s duration.
“I’d say, fundamentally, I agree with them on a lot of things, but they just ended up landing on a different side. You know, they saw things that were happening with corporate ownership of media or just the effects of late-stage capitalism, and the people who got to them first happened to be Republicans,” Bosse said.
Young adults in particular should note the effects of Democratic policy, Hoge said. To college students, “look around and see who screwed you out of the normal high school and college experience. And it was local politicians, right?… In L.A. County, they are overwhelmingly on the Left, and they overwhelmingly screwed everyone out of life.”