Jon Del Arroz Says He Won’t Be at His August 18 Rally

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Jon Del Arroz announced on his blog he is “Leaving The Area For The Weekend” [Internet Archive link]. However, he says his protest event at the San Jose Convention Center outside Worldcon 76 “is still on.”

Unfortunately, due to family health reasons, I’ll be unable to attend further Worldcon related events this weekend. I have to leave the area because of the heavy smoke and bad air quality. Health takes priority.

The protest against pedophilia is still on, and will be happening from 1-4 PM tomorrow (Saturday) and there’s expected to be a sizeable turnout. They have my full support…

JDA tweeted this morning:

Erin Sith’s Twitter account has no reaction and the announcement of tomorrow’s event is still a pinned Tweet. Indeed, just half an hour ago the “San Jose National March Against Far-Left Violence” added a Facebook comment to its event to encourage people to turn out.

The counter-protest, “No Hate in San Jose,” also posted on Facebook this afternoon, a FAQ about their reasons for being present tomorrow

(For more information, see “Worldcon 76 Response to Protests Planned Outside SJCC on August 18”)

Update: Corrected to show JDA’s tweet from this morning.

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38 thoughts on “Jon Del Arroz Says He Won’t Be at His August 18 Rally”

  2. I’m glad I’m not there. That part of the convention center sounds like it’s going to be an excellent area to avoid.

  3. Thanks Mark! Don’t understand how I missed that — I had scrolled back through all his tweets to the last one I read yesterday.

  6. I’m in the area and there is a little bit of smoke, but it’s not exactly Spokane Worldcon out here. It’s fine inside the buildings, which… I guess would be a problem for JdA.

  7. Darn – and our hotel room has such a fine view of the “protest” site.

    (Del Arroz may be referring to the air quality where he lives, closer to some of the fires – it all depends on how the winds are blowing)

  8. @P J Evans: My understanding is this probably small bit of street theatre will be in a plaza right in the middle of the north face of McEnery Convention Center, which is the least useful and least used access route, the approximately five other ways in and out being both much more useful and greatly more trafficked — and far from the plaza.

    @NickPheas: No, there’s not heavy smoke in this area. There’s more than the usual summer haze over the hills adjoining the east and west sides of Santa Clara Valley. (My dad, a commercial airline pilot, pointed out to me when I was a lad that California has a natural haze in the late summer and autumn.) There’s currently enough smoke wafting in from far distant parts of California, such as Mendocino County in the far north, that there’s a ‘spare the air alert’ for tomorrow (and, IIRC, today) — but, for anyone who was in Spokane for the Worldcon, this isn’t a hundredth of that, not even the tiniest bit. Still, I’m sure some people with respiratory problems are adversely affected — and they of course have my sympathies.

    Mr. Del Arroz lives in the San Ramon Valley, north and east from Santa Clara Valley where this year’s Worldcon is being held. I’m not sure how the air quality there is at the moment, but it’s further from the ocean and thus from offshore winds that can and do help.

    (At the time of the Berkeley Hills Fire of 1991, I was at my mother’s house in the town of Moraga, north of where Mr. Del Arroz lives. We were able to see flames on the hilltops, but fortunately the wind was blowing from the east, away from Moraga, otherwise we all might have needed to evacuate in a hurry. Anyway, the entire town and, for that matter, region, smelled strongly of burnt toast, something I’ll long remember. And there, any people with respiratory issues had big problems.)

  9. To add to what OGH and Muccamukk said, the smoke levels here in the South Bay have also improved greatly compared to the previous couple weeks, as most of the fires have gotten mostly contained and there haven’t been any big new ones.

    That being said, it’s still early in California fire season and I wouldn’t blame anybody with health issues for getting out of town.

  10. (My original comment got caught in moderation because I am tired and entered the wrong e-mail.)

    I can’t speak for the San Ramon Valley specifically, but when I went hiking near Tahoe a few weeks ago the smoke went from “tolerable” to “yikes” very quickly when I drove further inland. (It wasn’t quite as “yikes” when I drove through last weekend.)

  11. @Mike Glyer: Just to put in perspective that article from the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat: It talks about poor air quality in Sonoma County (where Santa Rosa is) and in adjoining Lake County to the northeast. The relevance is that the Ranch Fire, the largest wildfire in California history, is primarily in Lake County even though the press coverage talks about it as if it were mostly in Mendocino County. (Why? Because it’s primarily in Mendocino National Forest, which is mostly in Lake County where Clear Lake is.)

    So, the paper is talking about a historically huge fire basically in the next county over.

    By contrast, San Jose (Santa Clara County) is about 220 km (130 miles) south — helped out by breezes predominantly blowing eastwards from the ocean, and with multiple sets of hills intervening.

  12. If his son already has a lung condition, he doesn’t need conditions to be remotely like what Spokane was, to need to get out. I have my own personal gloss for the meaning of air quality ratings. Breathing really does take priority.

  13. The only thing that surprises me is that he is acting like he didn’t know the air would be bad. Not to suspicious of JDA, but this sounds very much like a way to avoid being there when his protest fails miserably.

  14. Honestly, what a complete buffoon. I’ll be astonished if his “protest” manages to get attendance in the single digits.

  15. I hope the little one is okay. Air quality is important and too often ignored – looking at you UK government – in the hope it won’t matter.

    But I like to point out, that due to title cropping, I saw “Jon Del Arroz Says He Won” at the top of my page.

  16. If any attending Worldcon members would like someone to walk with them this afternoon along accessible routes that avoid the north plaza, you can call 443-694-1057 or look for anyone in a pink t-shirt that says I AM HERE TO HELP. If you see any images online with an area code 445 phone number, please disregard, as that is wrong. We’re only human.

    Rick Moen, if you see this, please look for us around noon. I think we may have a spare shirt.

  17. I’m glad he’s taking care of his son. I hope he recovers quickly.

    I’m baffled as to why JDA thought it was a good idea to bring the kid along in the first place. Especially given how he’s been going on about how scared he is that his enemies are going to attack him.

  20. Is pedophilia becoming the ultimate neofascist slur when they can’t make anything else stick? (I’m remembering the claim of a pedophile ring in DC that led to its alleged HQ, a pizza parlor, getting shot up by a … credulous person.) Does it actually bypass enough people’s cerebra and drop straight down to their lizard brains to be effective — or does “effective” require only a few believers to bump their numbers (e.g., from the pitiful total in DC last week)? I don’t have the stomach to follow much of their garbage, so I don’t know whether the accusation is getting more common (again, after the 1980’s hysteria) or this is an isolated instance.

  21. @Chip: Everything about this protest is so disingenuous, I don’t think the “protest against pedophilia” is anything more than a fig leaf, or another cheap accusation they can hurl (“Can you believe Worldcon banned us for protesting against pedophiles???”). I don’t think anybody in the picture is even pretending otherwise – “a protest against pedophilia and oh also against this one author having been banned from this one convention,” indeed.

  22. It’s not. I’ve seen the case of Allison Mack bandied around as proof of left wing Hollywood affiliated pedophile conspiracies because she and her cult made a surface pretense of liberal affiliation. The fact that Senator Gilibrand’s father was once hired as a lobbyist briefly by the NVIXM group (and later sued by them) before it was known to be a cult is waved around as proof that Sen. Gilibrand and the whole Democratic party are in on the Pizzagatish conspiracy. (The actual cases of Moore , Jordan, and the multiple instances of abuse in immigrant detention camps are considered false flags, I suppose.)

  23. Jim C Hines: As someone said he need not have brought his son along for California smoke to be an issue as it’s likely worse where they live. But where they live they can stay indoors.

  24. @Chip: Pretty much. There’s a long history of the right in America – which usually tries to paint itself as standing for moral decency – going for the most outrageous accusations possible when that moral standing is challenged. Your leaders are shown to be owned by corrupt moneyed interests? Accuse your adversaries of being Communists. People are starting to realize that you’re the primary support structure for white supremacy? Distract everyone by accusing your rivals of being baby-killers. Your current movement leader turns out to be utterly corrupt and incompetent? Accuse all his opponents of being pedophiles. Evidence and reason not required – it’s all an emotional argument anyway. The outrage must flow.

    Not that the American right is alone in this, of course – it’s a common move in any kind of sustained propaganda campaign – but it is kind of striking how often you see it in American “conservative” discourse. It’s one reason why I detached myself from the “conservative” movement a long time ago. I got tired of the people who claimed to be on my side treating me like an imbecile.

  25. @Chip Hitchcock

    Is pedophilia becoming the ultimate neofascist slur when they can’t make anything else stick?

    It’s been like that for a while now. The far right have been hurling pedophilia accusations (usually, but not always unfounded) at their opponents for several years, if not decades now. What is more, whenever anybody vaguely on the left is found to have engaged in sexual misconduct of some kind (need not be pedophilia, sexual harrassment works as well), everybody vaguely in the same political camp is immediately assumed to be guilty and of course aware as well. Hence the constant demands from our canine friends to distance ourselves from Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen, even though both have been dead for a long time. Or Phantom (remember him?) accusing everybody on the left of colluding with Harvey Weinstein and being of course aware that he was a serial harrasser and worse. Never mind that I had zero ideas of Harvey Weinstein’s political affiliations and merely knew him as the producer of movies I did not like. Or how somehow the entire Democratic Party is responsible for the fact that Bill Clinton may have inappropriately touched a woman twenty-five years ago. Or in Germany, how everybody who ever voted for the Green Party is somehow responsible for some problematic remarks about abolishing the age of consent made by future Green Party politicians fourty years ago.

    Meanwhile, the far right is fully willing to continue to support people like Ron Moore or Trump himself even after allegations of sexual misconduct and worse come to light.

  26. I’m watching from my hotel room: police seem to outnumber the demonstrators. They are rather loud.

    If you’re at the con, check out the historical display in the fan area (the items from the 1977(?) con – one of them is a fake demand from one Donald Trump demanding payment for use of various terms such as “Mundane” and “Filk”. ‘were we prescient or what?

  27. I saw some footage of this protest on Twitter and so far, the 19th birthday party going on in my neighbourhood tonight has a bigger turnout. Though I do feel sorry for the poor police officers who have to stand around in body armour in what looks like hot weather.

  28. What kind of 19th birthday parties do you have in your neighborhood, that require body-armored police?

  29. @cora: most of the cops are dressed normally, no visible armor, and are hanging around in the shade by the entrances to the convention center and the adjacent hotels. The protest seems to have moved underneath the roof overhangs while I was at lunch so I can’t get as good a view. There’s a lot of yelling going on but I can’t tell what or by whom, and I’m not going to bother going there to watch.

  30. @Cora

    Yeah, based on what’s popped up on the worldcon 76 hashtag it’s a total nothingburger. Say twenty people milling around in a fenced-off area and making some speeches, plus some counter-protesters kept well away from them.
    I’m sure people will want to be cautious and still avoid the area, but it’s all a bit meh.

  31. What kind of 19th birthday parties do you have in your neighborhood, that require body-armored police?

    I meant the cops I saw in the footage from San José. I felt sorry for those poor guys. No cops here at the birthday party, just a few teens standing around on the street and drinking.

  33. It is a tale bayed by a puppy / Full of (not much) sound and (mostly) fury, / Signifying nothing.

  34. I did meet up with Adam and friends, to join the ‘I’M HERE TO HELP’ shirt squad to help keep an eye on these clowns and escort / direct / advise and otherwise assist attendees and passers-by. (A high-schooler out on S. Market Street got harangued by a passing squad, leaving her quite mystified. She asked me and another member of the shirt crew; we did our best to explain the lunacy and let her know about the convention and the Hugos.)

    As I predicted, this amounted to a small clot interviewing each other and shouting intermittently for three hours, at the end of which SJPD just lifted the barricades and marched the small lot of lunatics out of the plaza, basically just pushing them out.

    @Chip Hitchcock: It appears to be as Cora and others said, and, if you’re in the mood for The Crazy, look up the QAnon stuff, which is all about a huge supposed paedophila conspiracy. But the phenomenon of far-right people and even nominally sane conservatives seriously accusing liberals of the very worst things imaginable on no evidence turns out to have a long history in USA politics, as a pair of recent articles pointed out. (It’s tactically useful, provided enough people utterly fail to stop and think, because it can be used to justify anything.)

  35. I happen to have an excuse (it’s a really, really busy weekend here), but I don’t actually need to one to admit I totally forgot that today was the day this guy scheduled for his public tantrum (or, rather, yet ANOTHER of his public tantrums) over experiencing consequences for his behavior.

    I gather from a previous Pixel Scroll that despite missing today due to a family emergency, he showed up at the doors of WorldCon a few days ago and videotaped himself having a tantrum about experiencing consequences. So, really, he’s got that base well-covered, despite being unable to attend today.

    Meanwhile, most people predicted that his “I Desperately Crave Attention” rally outside WorldCon today would be almost as thrilling as watching paint dry—and it now appears that, if anything, people generously overestimated the event.

  36. I too am sorry to hear about his son’s lung condition and hopes he recovers quickly.

    I can only comment on what I saw today because I was at WorldCon today. This is my first WorldCon btw. I was in Panels and getting books signed for most of the day so I only saw the, “Protest” crowd twice…from inside.

    I didn’t notice anything about the air quality but I saw the small crowd outside standing in front of Local Police. I also that they were trying to less protest and more seeking cover from the blazing sun in Summer California Heat on a Saturday. I am not a native Californian and I was sweating just after going back to the garage to drop off some books. Good luck protesting in this weather.

    The “Protest” from my POV was annoying more than anything else because there was an entrance/exit we couldn’t use but mostly the “Protest” just looked pathetic.

  37. Pingback: Alt-Right Rally Outside Worldcon 76 Draws About 40 | File 770

  38. FWIW the air quality in the south bay on August 17 and 18 was no cause for evacuation even for very sensitive people. It was “Moderate” which is only one step down from “good” and no actions are recommended.

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