Counter-Protest Promoter Says “Operation Backyard” Was Social Experiment

LOCK HAVEN – Andrew Powell, the Lock Haven area man who called for a counter-protest to a Friday Black Lives Matter demonstration in downtown Lock Haven, said afterwards his “Operation Backyard” call was a “social experiment” and claimed he had successfully “trolled” the local BLM movement and “the political left.”

Asked for comments on the BLM event and the counter-protest he had announced earlier in the week, Powell provided therecord-online with an extended response, one in which he attacked the 50 to 60 people who participated in the Black Lives Matter demonstration and also his former employer, the Lock Haven Express. Despite promoting the counter-demonstration prior to Friday night, he said, “It was never about a counter-protest; we just wanted to cause a stir in Lock Haven and put the political left out of whack, which we were successful in doing.”

While Powell and another 10 or so observers stayed on the south side of E. Main Street, the Black Lives Matter group conducted its fourth peaceful call for social justice demonstration across the street. Policemen from multiple area forces had been called in and stood nearby as the evening unfolded.

Later, in prefacing his comments, Powell said, “I hope that my side of the story gets published with the wild amount of disinformation out there.” It is reprinted here:

My fiance and I are investigative journalists and we wanted to conduct a social experiment, specifically, in small town America.

To relaunch my outlet, The Powell Times, we thought we would start out with a bang, and that’s exactly what we accomplished.

It was never about a counter-protest, we just wanted to cause a stir in Lock Haven and put the political left out of whack, which we were successful in doing.

The aim was to experience firsthand what happens when you challenge any kind of Marxist social justice group, be it Black Lives Matter or Antifa, for example.

We had already been acquainted with the local group at a previous protest of theirs. The day after, vicious online rumors, innuendo and personal attacks began to circulate against me on social media. We were called racist, dangerous, Klansmen, Nazi, Alt-right extremists, had our employment threatened, and were personally attacked in every way.

This was where the idea for our social experiment came from. We wanted to expose the blatant bully tactics that members and supporters of BLM engage in against their fellow Americans — in the name of Marxism.

I want to be very clear, our aim has nothing at all to do with race. BLM is a Marxist group, It’s very clear they are a political movement and that movement is not conducive to the American way of life. We want to show people how the political left likes to bully citizens out of their rights. Specifically, their First Amendment rights.

I spoke to several people privately and they were supportive of my movement, but unable to participate in the prop counter-protest as they were afraid that they would lose their jobs and livelihoods if they publicly opposed BLM. This is what we’re trying to expose.

Why are Americans afraid to have their say? For fear of retribution? It seems that way.

The Lock Haven Express wrote an atrocious article in which they incorrectly named my event as “Operation Blackyard,” of course this was only ever going to get one type of reaction. How exactly they manage to call themselves journalists is beyond me.

What we experienced from the moment we first announced a “counter-protest” was hate and more vicious rumors. We were prepared for it, because we have a lot of experience dealing with the political left, so nothing surprised us. We have all of our conversations and all actions recorded, filmed and filed away in screenshots. It’s interesting what people will talk about publicly when they believe they are above reproach.

Also, unsurprisingly, when we got to today’s protest, the BLM protestors tried to intimidate us as we filmed them, screaming expletives across the street while holding rifles. No one had spoken to us from that side, yet they screamed through their megaphone that we “hate” them, trying to taunt me by repeatedly saying my name “Andrew” over and over again — which I got a nice chuckle off of.

If they had bothered to talk to us, they would realize that we don’t have any problem with people exercising their First Amendment rights. If people want to protest for equality, that’s fine, though FBI and DOJ statistics aren’t necessarily aligning with their arguments. But if you’re going to fight against this inequality that they think exists so much, do it under a different name, because BLM is a Marxist movement and if that is the brand you are protesting under, then you associate yourself with said Marxism. Marxism, as I said before, is not conducive with American freedom.

As far as their protest today, we stood there for an hour, and to be quite honest, we got bored, legitimately bored. There was no “backing down” as a source told me The Lock Haven Express falsely claimed in an apparent “hit piece” towards me. But does more lies coming from a failing organization like The Lock Haven Express really surprise anyone, a fake news outlet that Clinton County has complained about for years now, with a publisher who can’t lead himself out of a paper bag let alone lead a newspaper. We showed up and an hour later, the BLM protestors walked down the street. What were we supposed to do? Chase them down?

That’s not how we conduct business as journalists, especially when we already had all of the content that we needed.

To be quite frank, The Lock Haven Express is fake news.

The protest was boring. It was very, very boring. There’s no way around that.

They have the same repetitive chants, literally over and over and over again the same chants, offer no solutions. I did, however, have some questions for them before they moved off to disrupt people eating their dinner.

What exactly are they trying to achieve here in Lock Haven?

Where is the evidence that police in Lock Haven are racist?

And most importantly, why does BLM never mention the leading cause of death in the black community? That, of course, being abortion.

And oh yeah, black-on-black violence is still a thing, with 97% of black deaths being caused by the hands of another black. Do those “Black Lives Matter”?

Those questions go unanswered though, because in all reality, they backed down by leaving the area that they originally marked as their spot.

The political right, which by the way a lot of these people came on their own regardless of our prop operation, were the last ones standing on the corner where the protest was originally planned.

So when you’re going by the facts, what happened and who actually walked off, it was Destiny Urena and BLM who were the ones who “backed down.”

But I’ll put it even better: Simply, BLM and Lock Haven’s political left got trolled.