Cheers and Jeers

What to do when an extremist group decides to gather at your local bar? Inside a cultural and constitutional quagmire

JASON HORN

Make Westing, a popular bar in Oakland, California, has a front patio that some patrons refer to as the city’s front porch. “We have a huge crowd, and it’s everything — it’s black, it’s white, it’s old, it’s young,” says a representative of the bar, who asked not to be named. Imagine their surprise last summer when an assistant manager saw a Reddit post claiming that a local chapter of the Proud Boys would be meeting there. The bar had a choice to make: Let the group in or kick them out. “We were between a rock and a hard place,” the rep says. “If we said, ‘Fine, come,’ we’d get destroyed in a liberal city like Oakland. And if we didn’t let them come, the alt-right would come after…

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Playboy Australia (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2019

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