THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Monday, Feb. 15, the
46th day of 2021. There are 319
days left in the year. This is Presi-
dents Day.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Feb. 15, 1989, the Soviet
Union announced that the last
of its troops had left Afghani-
stan, after more than nine years
of military intervention.
In 1564, Italian astronomer Gali-
leo Galilei was born in Pisa.
In 1764, the site of present-day St.
Louis was established by Pierre
Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.
In 1798, a feud between two
members of the U.S. House of
Representatives (meeting in
Philadelphia) boiled over as
Roger Griswold of Connecticut
used a cane to attack Vermont’s
Matthew Lyon, who defended
himself with a set of tongs.
In 1879, President Rutherford
B. Hayes signed a bill allowing
female attorneys to argue cases
before the Supreme Court.
In 1898, the U.S. battleship
Maine mysteriously blew up
in Havana Harbor, killing more
than 260 crew members and
bringing the United States closer
to war with Spain.
In 1933, President-elect Franklin
D. Roosevelt escaped an assas-
sination attempt in Miami that
mortally wounded Chicago
Mayor Anton J. Cermak.
In 1944, Allied bombers de-
stroyed the monastery atop
Monte Cassino in Italy.
In 1961, 73 people, including an
18-member U.S. figure skating
team en route to the World Cham-
pionships in Czechoslovakia, were
killed in the crash of a Sabena Air-
lines Boeing 707 in Belgium.
In 1992, a Milwaukee jury found
that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane
when he killed and mutilated 15
men and boys.
In 2004, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won
the Daytona 500 on the same
track where his father was killed
three years earlier.
In 2005, defrocked priest Paul
Shanley was sentenced in Bos-
ton to 12 to 15 years in prison on
child rape charges.
In 2018, the last of the bodies of
the 17 victims of a school shoot-
ing in Florida were removed
from the building after author-
ities analyzed the crime scene;
13 wounded survivors were still
hospitalized.
Ten years ago: Protesters
swarmed Wisconsin’s capitol af-
ter Gov. Scott Walker proposed
cutbacks in benefits and abol-
ishing bargaining rights for most
public employees. Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi was
ordered to stand trial on charges
he’d paid a 17-year-old Moroc-
can girl for sex and then used his
influence to cover it up.
Five years ago: President
Barack Obama opened a meet-
ing in Rancho Mirage, California,
of leaders from the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations,
calling the landmark gathering
on U.S. soil a reflection of his
personal commitment to an
enduring partnership with the
diverse group of countries.
One year ago: The U.S. govern-
ment said Americans who were
on board a cruise ship under
quarantine in Japan because of
the coronavirus would be flown
back home on a chartered flight,
but that they would face anoth-
er two-week quarantine; about
380 Americans were aboard the
Diamond Princess.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Claire
Bloom is 90. Author Susan
Brownmiller is 86. Songwriter
Brian Holland is 80. Rock musician
Mick Avory (The Kinks) is 77. Jazz
musician Henry Threadgill is 77.
Actor-model Marisa Berenson
is 74. Actor Jane Seymour is 70.
Singer Melissa Manchester is 70.
Actor Lynn Whitfield is 68. “Simp-
sons” creator Matt Groening is
67. Model Janice Dickinson is 66.
Actor Christopher McDonald is
66. Reggae singer Ali Campbell is
62. Actor Joseph R. Gannascoli is
62. Musician Mikey Craig (Culture
Club) is 61. College and Pro Foot-
ball Hall of Famer Darrell Green
is 61. Actor-comedian Steven
Michael Quezada is 58. Actor
Michael Easton is 54. Latin singer
Gloria Trevi is 53. Rock musician
Stevie Benton (Drowning Pool) is
50. Actor Alex Borstein is 50. Actor
Renee O’Connor is 50. Actor Sarah
Wynter is 48. Olympic gold medal
swimmer Amy Van Dyken-Rouen
is 48. Actor-director Miranda July
is 47. Rock singer Brandon Boyd
(Incubus) is 45. Rock musician
Ronnie Vannucci (The Killers) is
45. Rock singer/guitarist Adam
Granduciel (The War on Drugs) is
42. Singer-songwriter-musician
Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) is 41.
Actor Ashley Lyn Cafagna is 38.
Blues-rock musician Gary Clark Jr.
is 37. Actor Natalie Morales is 36.
Actor Amber Riley is 35. Rapper
Megan Thee Stallion is 26. Actor
Zach Gordon is 23.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
Ammon Bundy, veteran of armed standoffs,
builds militia network on pandemic backlash
BY RICHARD READ
Los Angeles Times
EMMETT, Idaho — The
two dozen demonstrators
pressed against the emergency
room doors, screaming to be
let in.
“Show us the law!” they
chanted.
“Let Grandma out!” one
shouted.
They had descended on
Legacy Salmon Creek Medical
Center in Vancouver, Washing-
ton, the evening of Jan. 29 to
protest the quarantine of Gayle
Meyer, a 74-year-old patient
who had refused to take a test
for the coronavirus.
Police in riot gear guarded
entrances as the activists —
who authorities said were
armed — insisted that Meyer
was being held against her will,
a claim the hospital denied.
Meyer’s 49-year-old daugh-
ter, Satin, an anti-mask activist
licensed as her caregiver, had
summoned the demonstra-
tors, foot soldiers in a rapidly
expanding network called
People’s Rights. With the tap
of a thumb on a smartphone,
members can call a militia like
they’d call an Uber and stage a
protest within minutes.
Behind the organization is a
familiar name: Ammon Bundy.
He is best known as the
leader of the 2016 occupation
of the Malheur National Wild-
life Refuge south of Burns — a
deadly 41-day standoff be-
tween federal agents and mil-
itants who rejected the federal
government’s authority over
public lands across the West.
Now Bundy has seized on
the backlash against coronavi-
rus restrictions as an opportu-
nity to start a new movement.
Since March, when he
launched People’s Rights —
which he describes as “neigh-
borhood watch on steroids” —
the organization has attracted
tens of thousands of members
and sponsored more than 50
demonstrations across the
country, dispatching gun-tot-
ing activists to the homes of
politicians, health agency man-
agers and even a police officer
who had arrested a protester.
Experts who track extrem-
ists say that the network has
significant overlap with white
supremacist groups and other
far-right organizations and that
it has whipped up paranoia
and rage, risking lives of hos-
pital workers, health officers,
politicians and others in the
crosshairs.
“We have the potential for
multiple Malheurs in multiple
states, in that at any moment
they could bring hardened
far-right activists, often heav-
ily armed, into any one event,”
said Devin Burghart, executive
director of the Institute for Re-
search & Education on Human
Rights.
In October, the Seattle-based
organization and the Mon-
tana Human Rights Network
published an investigation that
found that Bundy had rap-
idly expanded People’s Rights
by fusing his core of far-right
paramilitary supporters with “a
mass base of new activists radi-
calized in protest” of coronavi-
rus restrictions.
Group leaders envision a
form of “neighborhood nation-
alism,” in which the “righteous”
stand against the “wicked,” the
report said.
Investigators found that the
network had 20,000 members
in 16 states. In an interview
with the Los Angeles Times
Richard Read/Los Angeles Times
Ammon Bundy, who led the armed occupation of the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge in 2016, stands in front of a restaurant Jan. 27 in Em-
mett, Idaho.
late last month near his home
in Idaho, Bundy claimed it had
grown to almost 50,000 people
in 35 states.
Last fall, Facebook removed
an undisclosed number of
People’s Rights pages from its
platform after deeming the
network a militarized social
movement.
Bundy said his sole cause
was defending the freedoms
guaranteed under the Con-
stitution — even for LGBTQ
people and Black Lives Matter
activists whose views he may
oppose.
He said he never supported
President Donald Trump and
didn’t vote in the last two pres-
idential elections. In 2016, he
was in prison awaiting trial,
and this past November he
didn’t see a point. Contend-
ing that the COVID-19 death
toll is massively exaggerated,
he said that Trump should
have worked harder to keep
churches and businesses open.
Nonetheless, he encouraged
his followers to go to Washing-
ton for the now-infamous Jan.
6 rally to distribute leaflets and
display People’s Rights banners
to recruit more members. He
said he condemned the siege
on the Capitol.
Bundy, 45, is carrying on a
family tradition.
The fourth of 14 children
in a Mormon family, he grew
up on a Nevada ranch. His
74-year-old father, Cliven, be-
came a hero to extreme liber-
tarians in the West when he
stopped paying grazing fees in
1993, claiming that his family
had ancestral rights to run its
cattle on public land and that
the government’s ownership
claims violated the Constitu-
tion.
Ammon Bundy left the
ranch as a young man, first
for Minnesota for two years of
Mormon mission service and
then to Southern Utah Univer-
sity. Later he moved to Phoe-
nix, where he ran a truck repair
business for 14 years.
In 2014, he stood with mili-
tias that rallied behind his fa-
ther’s cause when FBI agents
arrived at the Nevada ranch
with a court order to confiscate
the family’s cattle. The govern-
ment backed down to avoid
bloodshed, raising the family’s
stature in far-right circles.
The next year, Bundy, his
wife and their six children
moved to Emmett, Idaho, a
farming town turned bedroom
community outside Boise.
But he said that God soon
called him to support Dwight
Hammond Jr. and his son, Ste-
ven — Oregon ranchers sen-
tenced to prison for setting
fires on federal lands. In Janu-
ary 2016, Bundy led an armed
group that seized the head-
quarters of the Malheur refuge,
demanding that the govern-
ment relinquish ownership and
free the Hammonds.
Bundy was arrested during
a traffic stop outside the refuge
and eventually tried on weap-
ons and conspiracy charges. A
militant who fled the stop was
shot and killed.
In a startling verdict in Oc-
tober of 2016, Bundy and other
defendants were acquitted by
jurors who found that federal
prosecutors had failed to make
their case.
The family’s aura of invinci-
bility only grew when a judge
declared a mistrial in a crim-
inal conspiracy case against
Bundy, his brother Ryan and
their father for the 2014 Ne-
vada ranch standoff, saying
government lawyers had sup-
pressed evidence.
The cattle outside Bunker-
ville, Nevada, continue to graze
on public land despite more
than $1 million in unpaid fees.
Bundy kept a low profile
back in Idaho, where he man-
aged rental properties and re-
stored vintage vehicles with his
children. But the pandemic —
and resistance to the govern-
ment telling people what to do
— set the stage for his return to
activism.
In March, he gathered sev-
eral dozen supporters in a
warehouse he owns in Emmett.
In its first public act, the
group defied Republican Gov.
Brad Little’s stay-at-home di-
rective and held an Easter ser-
vice for about 60 people.
The same month, police
arrested Sara Brady, an an-
ti-vaccine activist, for allegedly
trespassing during an an-
ti-lockdown protest at a Boi-
se-area playground closed due
to coronavirus restrictions.
Bundy publicized the ad-
dress of the officer who ar-
rested her and led about 40
people to protest outside his
home, a tactic that the gover-
nor called “disgusting.”
But People’s Rights con-
tinued to expand, establish-
ing hundreds of chapters that
Bundy organized with the aim
of being able to dispatch 10
protesters to a scene in 10 min-
utes, 100 in 100 minutes and
1,000 in 1,000 minutes. He in-
structed each chapter to launch
teams to train in secret for
paramilitary operations to de-
fend members from criminals
or government agents.
In July, he led demonstrators
to a public building in Cald-
well, Idaho, where they tried to
barge into a meeting of officials
who were discussing whether
to impose a local mask man-
date.
“This is not your building,”
Bundy shouted as he shoved
a man guarding the doorway,
video of the protest shows.
The meeting was canceled,
though the health board even-
tually decided to recommend
wearing masks in public.
The next month, Bundy and
some supporters forced their
way past state troopers into an
Idaho Statehouse gallery that
had been closed because of
the pandemic. Police arrested
Bundy twice in two days, fi-
nally wheeling him out of the
building in an office chair.
Charged with trespassing and
obstructing officers, he was
banned from the Capitol for
a year.
Last month at the hospital
protest in Vancouver, Washing-
ton, Kelli Stewart, the People’s
Rights coordinator for the area,
narrated a livestream video on
Bundy’s YouTube account that
ultimately attracted more than
70,000 views.
The video shows a protester
trying to pry open locked dou-
ble doors, and a deputy spray-
ing chemical irritant in his
face. The protesters cheered
when the hospital released
Meyer, whose tearful daughter
wheeled her out and helped
her into a van.
“Freedom!” a man yelled.
Stewart, a longtime Bundy
compatriot, berated law en-
forcement for siding with the
hospital instead of the protest-
ers. She said that right-wing
activists who joined “back the
blue” rallies last summer and
waved American flags with
blue lines had been duped.
“We’re starting to learn that
you’re actually the standing
army our founders warned us
against,” she said. “They’re just
dangerous tyrants. We’re hav-
ing a blue-line flag-burning
party tonight.”
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