“My sense is that it’s mostly national activists. Members say they don’t know where exactly the threats are coming from, since most are anonymous, but Council President Doug Shipman said some groups have reached out to him to say the violent rhetoric is not coming from them - and that it’s crossed a line. Opposition is now coming from environmentalists, social justice activists, voting rights groups, and more. But the mostly violent rhetoric only intensified. Winston and others said they understood many of the concerns raised locally and added amendments to the legislation funding the center increase transparency and oversight for the future facility. The two lanes of opposition merged into a single shouting protest that left council members struggling to separate the local activists from the national opportunists. What began as local concerns over environmental impacts and policing ballooned and became a rallying cry for some left-wing activists to not just defund the police, but eliminate police and government altogether. The council’s decision on Tuesday morning followed months of building controversy over the center. While he expected to hear some booing and cheering Tuesday morning based on the final outcome, “I did not expect there to be threats of violence, people yelling in our face, trying to jump over the dais to actually physically attack us.” “Just there’s this element of violence that has come out of all of this.”
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