Police stand guard near the rally site in Charlottesville, Virginia, the United States, Aug. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)(File photo)
by Peter Mertz
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Law enforcement in America's fifth largest city are bracing themselves for next week's Donald Trump rally, that could be potentially more explosive than last week's turmoil in Charlottesville of Virginia.
Friday, several restaurants and bars near the Phoenix Convention Center announced they would close for the Tuesday rally, with the Valley Bar posting a notice on Facebook saying, "Peace cannot be kept by force... it can only be achieved by understanding."
On Saturday, police reported that anti-Trump vandalism - black spray-painted words saying: "Trump=Satan," were discovered along an Arizona highway.
All week long, Phoenix law enforcement have been reassuring residents that "your city is working hard to ensure another safe event," but many others, including the city mayor Greg Stanton, fear the Trump rally may inflame and ensure participation of hate groups, who have used social media to champion the president for his tacit support of their followers in Charlottesville.
According to a 2016 study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, only California in the West has more hate groups than Arizona, with 19 of the state's 22 groups operating in the populous areas around Tucson and Phoenix.
Stanton's warning to Trump to "stay away" from his city of 1.6 million is unprecedented in American history, the Washington Post's Fred Barbash said Friday.
With thousands expected to attend the rally and the counter protest, local law enforcement will team with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and Arizona counter terrorism officials to monitor possible hate group activity to ensure public safety, the Phoenix Police Department said in the latest statement on the rally.
However local residents' opposition rally could be out of control as well.
Tucson Democrat U.S. Congressman Raul Grijalva announced Friday he will lead the opposition rally in Phoenix next Tuesday, and called for Trump to be removed from office while speaking on the Bill Buckmaster radio show.
"There's an accumulation of issues that bring into question this man's ability to lead," Grijalva said, citing the 25th Amendment that allows Congress to remove a president.
Trump's reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last weekend was the final straw, Grijalva said.
"The president doesn't realize is that a vast majority of Arizona's white, young, educated millennials and of course Latino voters, want nothing to do with his divisive, angry tactics," said former Phoenix property manager Lou Cardona.
Cardona, a second generation immigrant and former Phoenix property manager, contended that uneducated, angry, white voters, including hate group members, were the ones who enabled Trump to win the state in last year's presidential election by a mere four points.
"If these people show up en masse to the rally...it could be worse than Charlottesville," Cardona told Xinhua Friday.
Cardona's father Luis came from Puerto Rico to New York City in 1958. The Cardona family line dates back to southern Spain and the Castle Cardona and their ancestors were the ruling gentry of 17th century Spain.
Cardona is worried that educated millennials and Latinos, who are informed about the KKK's history and motivations will protest, and with hate group presence, the encounter could be volatile.
"Arizona is a concealed carry state," Cardona told Xinhua, meaning that Arizona law allows citizens to carry handguns in their pockets if they have a permit.
"That means anybody can be packing (caring a gun) at any time. This is very different than the East Coast," said Cardona.
"My two sons live in Phoenix," Cardona told Xinhua, "They are both 6-foot-5 young men with lots of like friends, and if the KKK tries their garbage in that area, they better watch out."
"There are thousands of young men like my sons in Phoenix who have no tolerance for that level of primordial stupidity," Cardona said. "They have obviously been living under a rock because the world, and America, have changed for the better. "
David B. Richardson, a Seattle attorney agreed with Cardona that people should not give any room to white supremacists who triggered the uproar in Charlottesville.
"Thankfully the majority of Americans are well past any tolerance for this sort of extreme ignorance," he said.
Richardson was the vice-president of People Against the Klan (PAK), a grass-roots group in rural Maryland that staged counter-rallies to KKK marches in the 1980s.
"White nationalist neo-Nazis do themselves no favors by making people think about them... because the feeling is mainly one of revulsion," Richardson told Xinhua, who thinks "it's a good idea when bad ideas are exposed."
"It moves the bad politics away from them and leads to moral clarity and growth," Richardson said.
The resurgence of hate groups across America was stimulated after Trump became the president, Richardson asserts.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups have jumped from 457 in 1999 to 917 in 2016.
"The SPLC has documented an explosive rise in the number of hate groups since the turn of the century, driven in part by anger over Latino immigration and demographic projections," the Center said in a statement.
"Studies showing that whites will no longer hold majority status in the country by around 2040 triggered this - and the rise accelerated in 2009, the year President Obama took office."
