Colin Moynihan

In a charge filed on Thursday with the National Labor Relations Board, the organizers wrote that the foundation “has illegally discriminated against its employees by laying off employees en masse and/or closing its facility.”

The charge, filed by District Council 36 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, asked that the foundation be required to reinstate the employees, recognize and bargain with the union and reopen the museum, which was closed this week.

A spokesman for the foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The dispute between the union and the foundation began on Nov. 1 when District Council 36 filed a petition with the NLRB seeking to represent about 70 visitor services associates and other employees at the foundation, which has a heralded collection created by Paul and Maurice Marciano, two brothers who helped build the Guess jeans empire.

The visitors services associates, whose pay was tied to Los Angeles’ minimum rate of $14.25 an hour, said they wanted to form a union in part to ask for a raise. Their duties included assisting with ticketing and other services and discussing artworks and exhibitions with visitors.

Just days after the announcement of the unionization effort, employees at the museum were informed in writing by the foundation that “due to low attendance the past few weeks” it was closing the current exhibition early and that “effective Thursday Nov. 7 we will be laying off all the Visitor Services associates.”

A statement on the foundation’s website on Friday said it “will remain closed to the public until further notice.”

Employers are generally allowed to dismiss workers as part of a business decision. But according to federal law employers cannot “discharge, constructively discharge, suspend, lock out, lay off, fail to recall from layoff” or otherwise take adverse action against employees because they support a union or take part in union activities.

The Marciano Art Foundation, housed in a 90,000-square foot former Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard, opened in 2017 as a showcase for artworks by artists including David Hammons, Damien Hirst and Cindy Sherman collected by the two Marciano brothers.

This article originally appeared in

Marciano Art Foundation Is Accused of Unfair Labor Practices

Labor organizers in Los Angeles have accused the Marciano Art Foundation, a private museum, of violating federal law by dismissing dozens of employees after they announced that they wanted to form a union.

“As an organization, we are supportive of all recommendations to improve the workplace experience,” the museum’s statement went on to say, adding that it anticipated “discussions.”

Instead, workers who had sought unionization received an email from the foundation Tuesday evening that said, “Effective Thursday Nov. 7, we will be laying off all of the Visitors Services Associates.”

The foundation, a private museum with a heralded collection that was opened by two of the brothers who started the Guess clothing empire, cited “low attendance the past few weeks” in the email and said it would close “the current exhibition” Wednesday. The museum also said it would pay the affected workers for up to two weeks’ scheduled time “upon receiving a signed separation agreement.”

The move, which was reported first by the Los Angeles Times, caused ripples in that city, where the museum was widely seen as an ambitious project.

Union officials, who filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board Friday seeking to represent about 70 employees, called the dismissals “clearly retaliatory.” An employee who lost his job said that the decision was reminiscent of how Guess reacted to unionization efforts 20 years ago.

The organizing at the foundation was the latest in a series of such efforts at museums across the country, including the New Museum and the Guggenheim in New York, and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.

The creators, Maurice and Paul Marciano, started Guess in 1981 with two other brothers, then became known as art collectors. Maurice served for several years on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He is now chair emeritus. In 2017, the two opened their private institution in a former Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard that their foundation bought for $8 million. The collection includes about 1,500 works by artists including Cindy Sherman, David Hammons and Damien Hirst, and the museum has put on shows by Jim Shaw and Ai Weiwei.

On Wednesday, the museum’s website said: “The foundation will remain closed to the public until further notice.” Two shows, by artists Donna Huanca and Anna Uddenberg, that had initially been scheduled to run until Dec. 1 were listed as having ended Monday.

Only people with titles that would have been covered by the union lost their jobs, said Lylwyn Esangga, organizing director with District Council 36 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which filed the NLRB petition.

The union asked to represent employees including docents and visitors services associates, who talk with visitors about exhibits and help with ticketing, among other tasks.

The administrative staff members, supervisors and directors did not appear to be affected, said Esangga, adding that although attendance at the museum had been low, it had not been presented as tied to employment.

She said the union was talking with its lawyers about filing a complaint with the NLRB alleging that the museum had engaged in unfair labor practices, calling its move “an anti-union tactic.”

A museum spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Samuel Estreicher, a labor expert at New York University School of Law, said that as a general practice, employers are allowed to lay off employees as a part of a business decision but cannot discriminate against people for trying to start a union.

“It’s a motive issue,” he said, adding that a determination on whether the action violated labor law would likely depend in part on what had been in the works at the museum.

Eli Petzold, who lost his job, said that he and other visitors services associates had been shocked. Speaking of the brothers behind the foundation, he added: “I think they think they can treat their art museum like it’s Guess.”

Guess was widely criticized for its labor practices in the 1990s. In 1992, The company agreed to self-policing to help settle a federal investigation that found large-scale wage and child-labor violations by its contractors. It was later placed on probation from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trendsetter list, an honor roll of apparel makers that were considered sweatshop-free.

Under pressure from the NLRB, Guess agreed in 1997 to reinstate 20 workers who said they had been fired because of union activities, the Los Angeles Times reported. The company acknowledged no wrongdoing and said it did not do anything to oppose the union. That year, the company also moved most of its manufacturing to Mexico.

Marciano Art Foundation Lays Off Employees Trying to Unionize

Last week, after employees at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles announced that they were taking steps to form a union, the museum issued a statement saying it looked forward to “engaging with them to learn more about their requests.”

The defendants, Maxwell Hare and John Kinsman, were among 10 men who prosecutors said attacked four people protesting a speech at the Metropolitan Republican Club by the Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes.

The masked protesters, who did not cooperate with the police, were believed to be self-described anti-fascists.

In the sentencing, Justice Mark Dwyer said the punishment was meant in part to deter others who seek to turn political differences into partisan street brawls.

“I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the ‘30s,” he said.

The violence in October last year was captured in photographs and video, generating outrage and prompting condemnation from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, among others.

The brawl, which took place on East 82nd Street near Park Avenue, was seen by many as mirroring similar clashes between right and left in places like Berkeley, California, Portland, Oregon, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Both defendants were convicted in August of attempted gang assault, attempted assault and riot. Seven others charged in the incident pleaded guilty.

In court Tuesday, a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass recommended that Dwyer sentence Hare and Kinsman to five years in prison, saying “violence meant to intimidate and silence” should have no place in society.

He cited a history of conflict between the Proud Boys — who are generally supporters of President Donald Trump and disdain liberals, feminists and Islam — and antifa, a loose affiliation of left-leaning activists who advocate using physical force against people they see as fascists.

“In cities across America these two groups have repeatedly engaged in violence against one another,” he added. “It became clear during this trial that violence is very much ingrained in the Proud Boys ethos.”

The defendants apologized for their actions. Hare, 27, who initiated the attack last October, said: “I made a mistake that night.”

Kinsman, 40, whom a prosecutor had called “the single most vicious of all the attackers,” said: “I regret the entire incident.”

Dwyer also appeared to lay some of the blame for the violence at the feet of McInnes, a co-founder of Vice Magazine who created the Proud Boys in 2016 and who was not involved in the court proceedings. Though he did not mention McInnes by name, the judge referred to the leadership of the group.

“It’s a shame when some people jump up and down on a platform,” the judge said, “and their followers, their soldiers, get in trouble.”

2 Proud Boys Sentenced to 4 Years in Brawl With Anti-Fascists at Republican Club

NEW YORK — Two members of the far-right Proud Boys were each sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday by a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan who criticized their participation in a “political street fight” last year on the Upper East Side.

The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez and who is also known as 6ix9ine, broke an unspoken code of silence among gang members and described what he called “robberies, assaults, drugs, stuff of that nature” in testimony against two of his former associates.

And on Thursday, jurors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan found those two Nine Trey members guilty of racketeering conspiracy and other offenses, marking an important victory for prosecutors who have now secured guilty pleas from or convicted several members of the gang, which was started decades ago on Rikers Island.

The verdict was also a vindication of sorts for the platinum-selling Hernandez, whose sensational and meteoric career made him at one point one of the most popular rappers in the country.

His unlikely cameo as a government cooperator testifying against the same gang that gave him street credibility with hip-hop fans and helped boost him to stardom provided prosecutors with a compelling narrative. But it also prompted fellow rappers and others to label him a turncoat and a fraud.

Both defendants, Anthony Ellison and Aljermiah Mack, were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy. Mack was also found guilty of conspiring to distribute narcotics, and Ellison of kidnapping Hernandez. The two were acquitted on other charges.

The central testimony in the trial came from Hernandez and another former gang member turned government witness, Kristian Cruz. Cruz told jurors he once held the rank of “five-star general” in the gang and had sold millions of dollars of narcotics.

Their statements, along with recorded phone calls, text messages and social media posts, provided crucial insight into Nine Trey’s structure, operations and “violence against rival gangs and each other” in Brooklyn and Manhattan, a prosecutor, Jacob Edwin Warren, said last week during closing arguments.

“Daniel Hernandez and Kristian Cruz took you inside Nine Trey,” Warren said.

Defense lawyers countered by casting doubt on the men’s testimony, suggesting that they could be embellishing their accounts to try to curry favor with the government.

Ellison’s lawyer, Deveraux L. Cannick, told jurors during closing arguments that Hernandez faced a minimum sentence of 47 years in prison that could only be lessened if prosecutors wrote a letter saying the rapper had provided valuable assistance to the government.

“You don’t think he would do whatever he needs to do to go home?” Cannick asked. “There’s a motive to lie here.”

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Nine Trey as a violent criminal enterprise that reaped profits through robberies and by trafficking large amounts of narcotics, including heroin and fentanyl.

One of the principal dealers, they said, was Cruz, who in his testimony named leaders and identified factions within the gang.

But the most striking moments of the trial involved Hernandez, a flamboyant figure known for rainbow-dyed hair, facial tattoos and a history of profane provocations, including social media videos taunting rival rappers.

Hernandez joined Nine Trey in 2017, but left less than a year later as the group descended into infighting. By that time Ellison, described as an old-school gangster purist, had withdrawn his protection from Hernandez and mocked him as a wannabe.

On the stand, Hernandez shed his public persona and acknowledged that he had joined the gang for credibility and protection, and as a way to boost his music career. He attributed the viral success of some of his YouTube videos to the fact that they were filled with Nine Trey members wearing red bandannas and brandishing pistols as they posed on the streets of Brooklyn.

But his initial posing with gang members soon turned into real criminal activity, as Hernandez sought to use his association with Nine Trey to intimidate rivals. He told the jury that a member of his entourage had shot at the rapper Casanova at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

He also admitted on the stand to having paid a Nine Trey member to shoot at the rapper Chief Keef in the summer of 2018 when he was staying at a hotel in Times Square.

A month later, Hernandez testified, Ellison and another man kidnapped and robbed him in Brooklyn. Hernandez described the experience in harrowing detail. Ellison, he said, forced him to say three times that he was not part of Nine Trey, while the second abductor punched him repeatedly in the head. After that, he said, the second man urged Ellison to kill him.

Hernandez told jurors that he bargained for his life, giving his captors $365,000 worth of jewelry, then sprinting through the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant when they released him, eventually throwing himself into a stranger’s car and begging for a ride to a police precinct.

Defense lawyers sought to undermine the credibility of both Hernandez and Cruz, suggesting to jurors that the men were unreliable and inconsistent witnesses whose words should not be trusted.

Cannick, Ellison’s lawyer, cross-examined Hernandez about his account of being kidnapped and robbed. Cannick referred to that episode several times as “supposed” and suggested to jurors it could have been a hoax to promote a song Hernandez had recorded with rapper Nicki Minaj.

During closing arguments, Warren told jurors that they did not have to look far to figure out what might have motivated Ellison to abduct and rob Hernandez.

“Ellison thought Hernandez was a poser,” the prosecutor said, “not a real member of Nine Trey.”

Tekashi69's Testimony Leads to Convictions for 2 Gang Members

NEW YORK — During his three days as a star witness in a racketeering trial, the rapper Tekashi69 portrayed the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods as a ruthless enterprise whose members used intimidation and violence to coerce enemies and commit crimes.

For her work, Babic, 37, earns $175. She doesn’t get health insurance, doesn’t get overtime and her teaching slots are not guaranteed.

So when teachers at YogaWorks, where she teaches six classes a week, began talking about forming a union, Babic was interested.

As the multibillion-dollar yoga industry continues to expand, instructors guiding students toward serenity from the front of the studios are beginning to speak out — demanding more pay, benefits and job security. Some are also criticizing what they see as too much emphasis on physical fitness over spiritualism.

On Monday, union officials and teachers at the New York locations of YogaWorks, a popular nationwide chain controlled by a private equity firm, asked the company to recognize a union that would appear to be the first in the United States to include yoga instructors.

In response, a YogaWorks official sent an email addressed to the New York teachers and trainers, painting the union as an untrustworthy group looking to collect dues from workers.

The email, from Heather Eary, a regional vice president for YogaWorks, ended in all capital letters: “DON’T SIGN A CARD.” The line was referring to cards being circulated by teachers and by the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, saying the signatory would want the group to represent them

“YogaWorks does not believe that employees joining — and paying dues to — a union is in the best interest of YogaWorks, our employees or our students,” the message said. “We are surprised that the Machinists union would ask us to help them possibly take away your right to decide whether you want join them.”

“Our offer to work in collaboration with the company still stands,” said David DiMaria, an organizer with the union. “Hopefully they see past their original reaction.”

Carla Gatza, the head of human resources for YogaWorks, said in an email that management respects the right of teachers and trainers to “engage in, or refrain from, union organizing” but “believes that our company, our employees, and our students are best served when YogaWorks and its employees work together without the interference of a third party union.”

Yoga has traditionally sought to unite the mind, body and spirit in an effort to achieve a feeling of serenity and a connection to oneself and the world. But during the past decade or so, many teachers say, studios have become increasingly commercialized.

YogaWorks, which began as a single studio in Southern California in the 1980s and is now one of the largest yoga chains in the country with around 60 locations, is seen by some teachers as emblematic of that shift.

In certain ways teaching yoga may seem like a dream job — a way to earn money while staying healthy and helping others. But yoga teachers say that their work can be filled with the type of stress that the practice is meant to alleviate.

Many, experts say, are participants in the so-called gig economy, where companies employ nonpermanent workers and do not have to contribute to unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation, or heed minimum-wage and overtime laws.

Most YogaWorks teachers are something of a hybrid, classified as employees but given only part-time work with little or no job security, organizers said. And many of those teachers also do “gig work” as independent contractors for other employers. The effect, multiple instructors said, can be exhausting, with teachers constantly scrambling to make ends meet, competing for work and spending unpaid hours preparing for sessions.

Still, several teachers said, they stick with their classes because they enjoy their jobs and they believe in the ability of yoga to improve lives.

“I love when people have some kind of realization, or feel a part of their body they weren’t able to feel before, when something just clicks,” Markella Los, a YogaWorks instructor and an early union organizer, said.

The aim of forming a union, several teachers said, is to negotiate over making pay rates transparent, creating standards for raises, obtaining benefits and job security, and asking that teachers have a voice in ensuring that classes preserve values intrinsic to yoga.

“They often say the yoga teachers are the center of this business,” Tamar Samir, who has taken part in the unionization effort, said of the company’s leaders. “But then somehow the way that teachers are supported in terms of pay and benefits and job security doesn’t match that.”

The union that the teachers are trying to form with the Machinists would include about 100 instructors said to work regularly at the company’s four New York locations.

Teachers and union officials said they want the organizing in New York to serve as a model for efforts at studios throughout the country, including at YogaWorks’ other locations in Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

An instructor at CorePower, the country’s largest yoga studio chain with 200 locations in more than 20 states, previously advocated for starting a union there and earlier this year introduced some YogaWorks teachers to Machinists union officials.

The unionization effort comes as the number of people in the United States who practice yoga has been growing. A study by the Yoga Journal and the Yoga Alliance said that the number of yoga practitioners in the country has risen to 36 million in 2016, from 20.4 million in 2012, and spending — on clothes, equipment, classes — has also increased, to $16 billion from $10 billion over the same period.

The study also said there were two teacher trainees for every existing teacher.

Teachers at YogaWorks said that has given employers leverage and often put workers in the position of taking on whatever classes they can get or working for low wages or no pay at all to get a foot in the door at a studio.

Those issues are not restricted to any one studio. CorePower has faced federal labor lawsuits. More than 1,500 teachers have said in a recent suit that the company pays them less than minimum wage because of the amount of off-the-clock work they are required to do.

CorePower has said it believes that lawsuit is “without merit.”

Pay within YogaWorks can vary from about $35 to $100 or more to teach classes of 45-90 minutes, teachers said, with no apparent correlation between pay and class duration. It is not clear how to qualify for a raise or ask for one, they said, adding that it is also unclear how classes are allocated.

“Some people get raises and some people don’t, some people get new classes on the schedule and some people don’t,” said Jess Blake, who has been teaching at YogaWorks for more than eight years. “There’s no transparency so we’re just left to guess at what the process is.”

Some teachers also said they would like more of a say in how classes are structured to ensure an emphasis on mindfulness or what one teacher, Nora Heilmann, called its “core values.”

Lucie Kim, a student leaving YogaWorks’ Soho location on Monday, said she thought a union would give the teachers a greater voice and in turn give a greater voice to students.

“They are more interested in us than the studio or the corporation behind it,” Kim said.

Jay Smirnov, who said he was a regular at the YogaWorks location on the Upper East Side, said Tuesday that if he began to feel the company was exploiting its instructors, he would stop going.

He said he knew instructors who had quit their previous jobs “only to find out when you become a yoga instructor you’re barely making 20 dollars an hour, and you’re really scavenging to do it.”

“It hasn’t turned into a career, it’s more turned into a side gig,” Smirnov said, “because you can’t put food on the table.”

Yoga for the Masses. Unions for the Instructors?

NEW YORK — Natasa Babic often teaches three yoga classes on Thursdays at three different locations for three different employers. Her day starts at 6 a.m. and ends after 9 p.m. In between, she is teaching, going back and forth on the subway, preparing classes and researching techniques.

But Monday, jurors in state Supreme Court in Manhattan rejected claims by two members of the group, who had said they had been acting in self-defense last fall on the Upper East Side when they took part in the beating of four people described by police as anti-fascists connected to a loose-knit group called Antifa.

The two defendants, Maxwell Hare and John Kinsman, were convicted on charges of attempted gang assault, attempted assault and riot for their part in a melee after an appearance by the founder of the Proud Boys at the Metropolitan Republican Club on East 83rd Street.

That brawl mirrored clashes in other cities that had pitted far-right groups, calling for “free speech” or chanting nationalist and racist slogans, against leftists, including Antifa, who have physically confronted those they deem to be fascists or Nazis.

Although members of the male-only Proud Boys have battled leftists across the country, the trial in Manhattan appeared to mark the first time people connected to the group had been before a jury in connection to these incidents.

The jury deliberated for 1 1/2 days before delivering its verdict. Hare was found guilty of attempted gang assault, riot and three counts of attempted assault. Kinsman was found guilty of attempted gang assault, riot and two counts of attempted assault. The jury also found that Kinsman’s actions were “justified” with respect to the lowest counts of attempted assault.

Kinsman was heard saying “wow” in a low voice as the verdict was read. Soon after, he walked into a courtroom hallway, holding a book in front of his face to shield himself from photographers, and declined to comment. Hare did not respond to a request for comment as he left the courtroom.

Much of the trial focused on video of the incident from several sources, which showed the minute-long brawl from various angles.

None of the victims took the stand.

The four apparent Antifa members who were involved in the brawl — referred to in an indictment as Shaved Head, Ponytail, Khaki and Spike Belt — refused to speak with a police officer who approached them after the incident. Ultimately, prosecutors were only able to charge the defendants with attempted assault, which requires evidence of intent to cause injury, rather than assault, which requires evidence of injury.

Even after determining that the supposed Antifa members were subject to arrest because of their role in the fighting, investigators were never able to learn their identities.

That fact was cited repeatedly by defense lawyers, who sought to put Antifa on trial in absentia. They presented the decentralized group as a collection of ruthless Terminator-like hooligans and “maniacs” who terrorize conservatives while wielding bricks, crowbars and other weapons.

The defense suggested several times that prosecutors were politically motivated or that the case was built on police incompetence. Kinsman’s lawyer, Jack Goldberg, theorized that “the Antifa” and prosecutors were in cahoots.

“These people aren’t the New York County District Attorney’s Office,” he said, indicating prosecutors during his summation. “They are the New York County district Antifa office.”

Prosecutors often referenced Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, whom they called a “hatemonger,” telling jurors that violence was an innate part of the group and that its members relished the chance to brawl with Antifa.

“Their attack was vicious, disproportionate and most important, unnecessary,” a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, said of the defendants during closing arguments.

The atmosphere was tense Oct. 12, when McInnes, a co-founder of Vice magazine, appeared at the Republican club and, wielding a plastic sword, staged a reenactment of the 1960 murder of a Japanese socialist leader by a teenage ultranationalist.

Outside, people had gathered chanting “No Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA.” The night before, hooded figures had broken windows at the club, sprayed anarchist symbols on its doors and promised future attacks in leaflets that also denounced McInnes as a “hipster-fascist clown.”

McInnes departed the club brandishing his plastic sword. Shortly after, 10 members and associates of the Proud Boys punched, kicked and stomped four people wearing black clothes and masks, who police said had circled the block to intercept them.

Later, McInnes said Antifa members had ambushed the Proud Boys. But security camera footage obtained by The New York Times showed that a Proud Boys member initiated the encounter by charging at protesters.

Within days, a group called New York City Antifa circulated on social media the names of the Proud Boys who participated in the attack. A police detective testified that the department used some material that had been posted online in its investigation.

Investigators ultimately arrested 10 men connected to the Proud Boys. Seven have pleaded guilty to charges including riot, disorderly conduct and attempted assault. An eighth is awaiting trial.

Video footage showed Hare yelling, “Proud Boys, you ready?” and running at four black-clad figures, one of whom then threw a plastic water bottle that sailed past him. Hare was shown punching Ponytail, then swinging and kicking at Shaved Head. Kinsman was shown barreling into Spike Belt then punching, kicking and stomping him and kicking Shaved Head.

Both defendants testified that their actions on that night were justified because they felt they were being attacked.

Kinsman told jurors that he did not see how the fighting had begun. He had rushed to help his friends, he said, partly because he had learned from YouTube videos that Antifa had a reputation for being violent.

Hare testified that “a row” of Antifa members had gotten within 30 feet of the Proud Boys before he went toward them. He had not immediately punched Ponytail, he said, but had tried to remove his mask.

“They were going to hurt us,” he said.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Hare had actually gone about 100 feet rather than 30 to get to the black-clad figures.

They also told jurors that Hare had punched someone a week earlier during a similar brawl in Providence, Rhode Island, and had posted a picture of himself on Facebook holding an AR-15 rifle and a defaced Antifa flag.

Steinglass pointed to video from before and after the clash while making the case to jurors that Hare and Kinsman had been eager to fight.

As he left the club that night, Kinsman had taunted protesters with a straight-arm salute and by making punching motions, video showed. After the fighting, video captured him saying that he had “stomped” someone.

Hare had also reprised the fight with other Proud Boys afterward, exulting and exchanging a hand clasp, then shouting that he had “ripped” one protester’s mask off and “hit him right in the head.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/nyregion/proud-boys-verdict-trial.html" id="30f76544-881e-3337-ae3c-e8b12e96366e">The New York Times</a>.

Two Members of Proud Boys Convicted in Brawl Near Republican Club

NEW YORK — Since their founding in New York City in 2016, the far-right Proud Boys have cultivated a rough and ready image, often declaring: “We don’t start fights. We finish them.”

Wasn’t it true, the prosecutor asked the witness, Maxwell Hare, that he had been onstage with McInnes in 2018 when he spoke about assaulting people? Did he remember McInnes saying another time that there is “not enough violence” these days?

And was Hare familiar with McInnes’ belief that one is not a man until, among other things, he has beaten someone up and been beaten up?

On Wednesday, during closing arguments, a prosecutor was even more direct: “Gavin McInnes is not a harmless satirist. He is a hatemonger.”

McInnes, a co-founder of Vice Magazine, was not charged in connection with the brawl last October near the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side, when 10 of his followers attacked a handful of masked left-wing protesters.

But during the trial of Hare and another member of the Proud Boys, John Kinsman, who are both charged with attempted assault and riot, Manhattan prosecutors have suggested some of the blame for the violence should land on McInnes.

During closing arguments on Wednesday, the defense said that McInnes was being “demonized.”

Video from the October incident shows that Hare and Kinsman, along with eight others, surrounded and beat four people believed to have been part of Antifa, a group of self-described anti-fascists whose members have fought far-right groups.

During the trial, which began in late July, Hare and Kinsman have said their actions were justified. Seven other defendants connected to the Proud Boys have pleaded guilty in the case; an eighth is awaiting trial.

McInnes, who started the Proud Boys in 2016, was not present during the fighting but the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has still painted an unfavorable portrait of him.

Again and again, prosecutors have turned to his words to convince jurors that the Proud Boys, who describe themselves as patriots and “Western chauvinists” who reject political correctness, are prone to violence and tolerant of misogynistic, racist and xenophobic sentiments.

By repeatedly citing McInnes, prosecutors have also tied him to an organization that he has recently sought to distance himself from.

Last November, McInnes said he was reluctantly quitting the Proud Boys “in all capacities, forever,” because his lawyers had told him the gesture might help members who had been arrested after his talk.

At the time, McInnes said the Proud Boys were not extremists and had no ties to white nationalists, though he added, “This whole idea of white nationalists and white supremacy is a crock” and “such people don’t exist.”

Responding to an email on Monday, McInnes said he had only ever advocated self-defense. “I never suggested random acts of violence,” he wrote.

McInnes said his jokes and parodies of racism had been misconstrued. He added that many statements made about him during the trial by prosecutors had been inaccurate or misleading. That included the prosecution’s assertion that he had once referred to President Barack Obama as a “monkey,” which McInnes said was “100 percent false.”

“The left scrutinizes jokes and denies they’re jokes in order to crowbar some kind of malicious agenda within the joke,” he said in the email.

McInnes has not entirely abandoned all right-wing activism. In July, he appeared at a rally in Washington, described fighting Antifa and told the crowd — which appeared to include some members of the Proud Boys — “The truth is we don’t start fights. We finish them.”

The street violence on the Upper East Side took place on Oct. 12, after McInnes had appeared inside the Republican club and had reenacted the 1960 murder of a Japanese socialist leader by a teenage ultranationalist.

People had gathered outside to protest. The night before, hooded figures had broken windows at the club, sprayed anarchist symbols on its doors and promised future attacks in leaflets that also denounced McInnes as a “hipster-fascist clown.”

After his appearance, McInnes departed the club brandishing what he later said was a plastic sword. Later that night, members and associates of the Proud Boys ran at and attacked four people wearing black clothes and masks, who police said had circled the block to intercept them.

The first witness in the trial, Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, challenged the notion that the Proud Boys fight only in self-defense. He listed incidents in Berkeley, California, and elsewhere where they were said to have attacked others.

He said McInnes had made violence one of the “core tenets” of the Proud Boys, promoting and glorifying the concept of attacking enemies, and himself punching a protester in Washington the night before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017.

Beyond that, Segal said, McInnes had referred to actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who is black, as a “monkey” and referred to the United States as a “white country.”

Although McInnes has often said his comments were satirical, Segal said that such remarks appeared to be tactically couched, adding that hate “is easier to digest, particularly for young people online,” when it is combined with humor.

Testimony by three members of the Proud Boys, including both defendants, opened the door during the trial to an examination of remarks attributed to McInnes.

Hare acknowledged he had heard some of the potentially inflammatory statements the prosecution cited but maintained he had not heard McInnes incite violence. He said McInnes’ comments that there is “not enough violence” and “fighting solves everything” were phrases related to “boxing.”

On Tuesday, the final defense witness, Kinsman, said McInnes was “just a regular conservative dude.”

When the lead prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, asked Kinsman’s opinion of negative remarks McInnes allegedly had made about gay people, Jews, Muslims, women and others, Kinsman said he thought they were presented out of context.

“I don’t agree with those quotes,” he said. “But when I hear Gavin defend it, it makes sense.”

Another Proud Boy who testified for the defense, Christopher Wright, had used his phone to record some of the fighting on Oct. 12 and celebrations afterward by Hare and others. He testified that he considered McInnes a “comedian” engaged in “political commentary.”

Responding to a question from Steinglass, Wright said he thought it could be funny, depending on context, when McInnes used slurs to refer to gay people and Asians.

Steinglass then asked whether it was funny for McInnes to call Obama “his favorite monkey.”

“Do I find that particular joke funny, no,” Wright, who is black, replied. “There are a lot of jokes I don’t find funny.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/nyregion/proud-boys-trial-gavin-mcinnes.html" id="f4cb38f6-1bbc-3517-a3bc-d59e51c2964e">The New York Times</a>.

Far-Right Leader Is Not at Trial, but He Is Often Invoked by Prosecutors

NEW YORK — Soon after a member of the far-right Proud Boys, who is accused of attacking left-wing protesters last October, took the witness stand in his own defense last week, a prosecutor questioned him about the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes.

Ten members and associates of the Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a “hate group,” were arrested as a result of the altercation. And this week, two are going to trial in what appears to be the first time members of the group, which have clashed with left-wing opponents in other parts of the country, will appear before a jury to face charges stemming from an attack.

Jurors, however, are unlikely to hear from any of those who were beaten.

The four victims have not cooperated with the authorities, who do not even know their names. They are identified in an indictment only as Shaved Head, Ponytail, Khaki and Spiky Belt.

Phillip Walzak, the Police Department’s main spokesman, said footage from police body cameras showed that victims refused to talk with officers who sought statements after arriving on 82nd Street as the attacks were taking place.

As a result, prosecutors have been unable to pursue charges of assault, which requires evidence of injury. Instead, the defendants have been charged with riot and with attempted assault, which requires only evidence of intent to cause injury.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is expected to lean heavily on video from multiple sources that show the defendants — Maxwell Hare, who prosecutors said started the fighting, and John Kinsman, accused by prosecutors of being “the single most vicious of all the attackers”— punching and kicking protesters.

“The primary evidence before the grand jury — and the only evidence of how the physical altercation began — was video evidence,” a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, wrote in a court filing.

Daniel R. Alonso, a former federal prosecutor and former chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said that trying a criminal case without victim testimony may be somewhat unusual, but is hardly unheard-of.

“The law doesn’t specify any particular method by which the DA is required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

The trial is sure to be watched closely, in large part because it will explore events that fit into a broad pattern of violence defined by clashing ideologies.

“This case involves allegations of a violent clash between two opposing groups,” Justice Mark J. Dwyer of state Supreme Court in Manhattan told prospective jurors Monday.

Over the past few years, far-right groups, often denouncing communism or calling for “free speech,” have fought repeatedly with a loose-knit coalition of self-described anti-fascists known as Antifa, who say that the right-wing groups are a threat that should be countered physically.

Roiling conflicts — in places like Berkeley, California; Portland, Maine; and Providence, Rhode Island — have included the use of homemade shields, clubs, batons and pepper spray. In 2017, a participant in a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, drove a car into a crowd of protesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer. The driver, James Fields Jr., was sentenced to life in prison last month.

Members of the Proud Boys were at that rally and have shown up at other events attended by white supremacists or extremists. But leaders of the group — which includes nationalists and libertarians who oppose Islam, feminism and liberal politics — say they disavow racism and hate.

The Upper East Side incident took place after Gavin McInnes, a co-founder of Vice magazine who started the Proud Boys in New York City in 2016, appeared at the Metropolitan Republican Club on 83rd Street.

Afterward, police said, a small group of protesters circled the block attempting to intercept a large number of Proud Boys walking south on Park Avenue.

A video documentarian, Sandi Bachom, recorded part of the fighting on East 82nd Street. Footage from a man, Christopher Wright, who accompanied the Proud Boys that night, depicted some exulting afterward, and Hare shouting that he had “smashed” a victim’s head.

Public reaction was swift. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo condemned the Proud Boys. Its members were banned from Instagram and Facebook. In November, McInnes said he was quitting the group.

Before that, though, he insisted that Antifa members, including one who threw a plastic bottle, had ambushed the Proud Boys that night. Lawyers for several defendants made similar claims during their arraignments.

But security camera footage obtained by The New York Times showed that members of the Proud Boys initiated the encounter by charging at the protesters, who had halted about 100 feet from Park Avenue.

NEW YORK — The videos that emerged from an Upper East Side event in October showed a disturbing scene: about a dozen men connected to a far-right group called the Proud Boys surrounding and striking a smaller group of protesters, believed to be self-described anti-fascists.

Colin Moynihan

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