On New Year’s Eve the local chapter of the Proud Boys organized a public bar meetup of new old and washed up members. As a response we organized several actions such as doxx pieces, flyer-campaigns along the streets and bars they have been seen or located, video propaganda, and a “Community Watch” the day of their meetup.

A social media flyer advertising “January Is Coming” was posted to an Instagram Account belonging to “Matthew Walter” a member of the local chapter.

On December 31st a small group of locals met at an undisclosed location for a brief meeting about how to operate for the night. Being unaware of exactly how many Proud Boys where headed into the city, the overall goal of the watch was to gather as much information as possible to get whoever showed up in town fired from their jobs.

The initial plan for the watch was to have people form “survey teams” and be on standby in case of any violence. This plan was almost instantly scrapped after reports of FOX News host Tomi Lahren  being in a nearby bar. Given the Proud Boys allegiance to the 45th President of the United States it was undoubtedly clear that they would want to go associate with fellow xenophobes. A Tweet from Matthew Walter also confirmed their interest.

Our group searched town for Wildhorse Saloon and staged outside the bar. We sent in an independent journalist to take pictures and search for any members that were featured in our doxx. After about an hour or so, no reports of any Proud Boy uniforms were spotted in the bar. The situation slowly began to seem more like a false flag and big talk with no action. That was until a screenshot of a Tweet by Twitter troll “@ProudGrittyBoy” was sent to us that indicated 5 Proud Boys were headed inbound to Wildhorse Saloon.

Given that our group had been on the grounds for almost 2 hours now, most of the community watch had dispersed and was enjoying New Years. However an Anti Fascist spotted Proud Boy Jimi Long driving a Sliver Van pulling off the street that Wildhorse Saloon was on. Later a post by user @ProudGrittyBoy on twitter stated that a group of about 5 Proud Boys was dropped off at Wildhorse Saloon. Given the hashtags, location, and timing of the Tweet we were able to confirm that @ProudGrittyBoy on Twitter was actually Jimi Long. And he had been running a fake account used to harass Anti Fascists on social media. This revelation confirmed several suspicions our group had about the Proud Boys membership in Nashville. Such as where they organize, about how many are active in the city, and what their sock puppet accounts are. This gave us all the information that we needed for the night.

The following day after the “Community Watch” Matthew Walter  publicly declared that he was no longer involved with the group after discovering that his Chapter was tracked the entire night. This is just one of the many outcomes that we wanted to manifest and not turn into a massive street brawl. We were able to get members to quit before becoming highly active, without any injuries, arrests, or false news propaganda being spread in the process. Our very first “Community Watch” was successful and is just the beginning of the work that will be done in Nashville in 2019.