Seattle closed a park ahead of a planned prayer rally but didn’t extend the same treatment to a park that became a “staging area” for “anti-cop extremists.”
The Parks and Recreation Department put fences around Gas Works Park, and social distancing ambassadors and park rangers were deployed to prevent gatherings in the area.
“Seattle Parks and Recreation does not allow unpermitted public events to take place in Seattle parks and asks the public continue to adhere to current public health guidelines so that we can keep our parks open,” Seattle parks officials told local news outlet Q13 Fox.
King County, where Seattle is located, is in phase 2 of Washington’s COVID-19 reopening plan, and outdoor events of more than five people are not permitted.
Seattle police cleared Cal Anderson Park on July 1 after two people were killed near the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Officers found hatchets, machetes, spike strips, an unexploded mortar, and dozens of wooden shields with fists painted on them in the area.
Local radio host Jason Rantz said the park remains “occupied by anti-cop extremists who previously housed a weapons cache to use to target the nearby East Precinct” and that other widely used parks were not staffed with social distancing monitors.
Following the closure of Gas Works Park, the prayer rally was moved to a nearby location, and hundreds attended to hear Sean Feucht, the organizer of several similar rallies across the West Coast, speak against coronavirus lockdown measures.
Feucht said that the closure was “blatant discrimination against Christians,” adding that questions about masks and social distancing were not asked of protesters.
On Twitter, Feucht wrote that no politician can “stop the Church of Christ from worshipping the One True God,” and he said that the group was calling it a “worship protest” so the city wouldn’t shut down the event.
We’re calling tonight a “Worship Protest” for legal reasons. ?
See ya in the streets next to GasWorks Park!
Live on Facebook at 6pm!
Already so many people here next to this bulldozer. Tonight could get a little wild ????#LetUsWorship pic.twitter.com/VvqmAh3VyS
— Sean Feucht (@seanfeucht) September 7, 2020
Rantz said the city “isn’t hiding their anti-religious bigotry.”
“By not enforcing their rules in any semblance of a consistent fashion, I pray they’re opening themselves up to legal challenges,” he wrote. “Either religious rallies and social justice rallies are permitted, or none at all. [Mayor Jenny Durkan] doesn’t get to pick and choose which expression she’ll permit, an ironic concept given she spends downtime ignoring attempts to murder cops so she can call President Donald Trump a dictator.”
The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department said in a statement to the Washington Examiner “that the organizer of the planned event had previously held an event in a Seattle park that violated multiple public health standards in Washington State — participants were unmasked, in large numbers, and in close proximity.” The decision to close the park “was unrelated to the nature of the planned event, and was consistent with other parks closures and modified hours for several parks across the system for the same reasons.”
The office of the mayor did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
