Jake Hamlin lives within earshot of a group of protesters who have set up on the main street in downtown Guerneville, California, for the past several weeks. They probably park themselves outside Smart Pizza for the central location and because of the rainbow flag draped in front of the restaurant.
“We can’t get away from it. We can hear them in our living rooms!” he said, adding that they repeat the same chants. “‘This town is gonna burn! There’s more sin here than in San Francisco!’” He said the town will occasionally draw small groups of anti-gay protesters who set up tables with pamphlets, and generally behave politely. But these protesters are different. “The group is very active,” he said.
So locals like him are also taking a different approach to counter-protest, and appear to have succeeded in driving the protesters out.
As the protesters descended from out of town, always on Wednesdays, harassed passersby, and told locals not to eat at Smart Pizza or other LGBTQ+-friendly businesses, according to Hamlin and fellow townspeople Suzy Kuhr and Dax Berg, they have been met by the self-named Pizza Box Brigade. The Brigade is made up of 30 or so locals who organized via group text and greet the protesters with messages including “Hate is toxic” and “Jesus loves me and my boyfriend” painted on pizza boxes. » | Peter-Astrid Kane | Saturday, April 16, 2022
