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Pastor Russell Johnson is pushing back at Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s suggestion that Christian worshipers were to blame for the violence they faced at a weekend event at Cal Anderson Park. Police arrested 23 counter-protesters on charges ranging from malicious mischief to assault.

“The mayor is full of crap and City Hall is freaking out because, finally, people have had enough and are willing to call him on his intellectual dishonesty and bold-faced lie,” Johnson explained exclusively on “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

Organizers, including Johnson, held Mayday USA at Cal Anderson Park, in the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the most prominent gay neighborhood. Harrell, in a statement, called it a “far-right rally… held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city鈥檚 values.”

He said he would direct “the Parks Department to review all of the circumstances of this application to understand whether there were legal location alternatives or other adjustments that could have been pursued.”

鈥淲hile there are broad First Amendment requirements around permitting events under free speech protections,” Harrell said in a statement.聽 “I am directing the Parks Department to review all of the circumstances of this application to understand whether there were legal location alternatives or other adjustments that could have been pursued.鈥�

But it was the city of Seattle that originally proposed Cal Anderson Park. Johnson said organizers repeatedly sought a Pike Place Market location.

How did a Christian worship event end up at Cal Anderson Park? The city of Seattle suggested it

According to an email Johnson provided to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH, organizers of the Mayday USA event were told by the Office of Economic Development that the space didn’t “match up appropriately to successfully facilitate what’s been proposed.”

Instead, a department staffer suggested organizers ask for a Seattle Parks and Recreation Department permit.

“I would also suggest considering other Seattle Parks locations – when I connected with the Parks Department last, Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill and South Lake Union Park on the sound side of South Lake Union were both available,” the staffer wrote in the email.

Johnson said given the circumstances, he thinks the mayor acted in bad faith in releasing a statement criticizing Christian worshippers.

“That was the idea that came from City Hall, and we followed their advice in an attempt to show a good faith effort to work with the city,” Johnson explained. “And that’s how we ended up at Cal Anderson and, of course, the mayor knows all of that. This is his team. These are his employees. And so, then when he releases a statement on Saturday evening, blaming the church, well, you and I both know Jason, nobody from the church was arrested on Saturday evening for violence. But 23 radical leftist Antifa members were.”

A second event, via different organizers, is scheduled at Cal Anderson Park in August.

Assaults and chaos

Johnson notes that the radical activists who came to disrupt the event were singularly responsible for the chaos.

“People in the crowd who had come to our worship event were physically assaulted. They had members there doing lewd sex acts in front of children. They were throwing water balloons filled with urine, you know, all sorts of things. And the police know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and so does City Hall,” Johnson explained.

The pastor says Harrell is providing cover “for his militant leftist friends that he is so desperately trying to protect.”

“He thought he could throw the church under the bus. Well, he picked the wrong church, and he picked the wrong pastor because we’re not going to stand for that,” Johnson explained.

Johnson is hosting a rally Tuesday at 5 p.m. calling on Mayor Harrell to resign or apologize.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show聽on聽weekday afternoons from 3 p.m.-7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the聽podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on聽,听,听, and聽.