A Christian mother from Portland, Oregon, is rebuking the media for failing to tell the full story about antifa.
Jamee Anatello, a mother of eight, is speaking out after her 8-month-old daughter was nearly hit in the face with a flash bomb set off by antifa agitators, The Christian Post reported.
The incident occurred, she told the outlet, during an Aug. 7 prayer rally for Artur Pawlowski, a Canadian pastor who has garnered international attention for his dustups with law enforcement officials, whom he has accused of targeting churches with restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anatello attended the event with five of her children, telling The Post she “never” imagined antifa rioters would show up at the prayer rally, which was held at Tom McCall Park along the Portland waterfront.
Nevertheless, she said, rioters outnumbered Christians.
Most of the media attention, Anatello noted, was on the the far-right group the Proud Boys, which has been described as a white supremacist group. Its leader, Enrique Tarrio, an Afro-Cuban man, was sentenced Monday to more than five months in prison for burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church in Washington, D.C., as well as carrying two high-capacity magazines when he was later arrested.
Anatello’s husband, known for hosting “The Black Conservative Preacher” show on Facebook and YouTube, started recording a video after the flash bomb nearly hit their infant daughter. Subsequent footage showed “a flash grenade explosion that Antifa threw or rolled toward men, women, and children of all nationalities and ages.”
The Portland mother said news outlets have declined to tell her story.
“No local media has taken my story,” she said. “I spoke with two different stations and they rejected it. I believe that the reason they have not taken my story is because the narrative around here is that the Proud Boys are white supremacists when they’re not. And people around here just refuse to name antifa as dangerous.”
Anatello went on to say the violence that unfolded earlier this month sent her 7-year-old child “into a state of shock” and left her 9-year-old “covered in pepper gas, and he touched his eye and it began burning and he was crying in a panic, not knowing what to do.”
“My husband was standing in front of me and our children,” she recalled. “And he was actually trying to catch some of the eggs and other things they were throwing to stop them from hitting us. And in the video, I show that we are dead center to the place they were directing their projectiles, whatever they were throwing. They were throwing several different things — eggs, paint, bottles filled with feces and explosives.”
Anatello is not the only one who has spoken out against the violence committed by antifa members during the prayer event.
One woman described antifa as “ruthless,” according to CBN News, saying they “just rolled in like an angry mob” and “started throwing flash bombs at everybody, macing everybody.”
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