Council candidate John Skansi stood with armed men opposite BLM protest last year
Gig Harbor City Council candidate John Skansi stood with armed men opposite young people who were expressing support for Black Lives Matter during a demonstration last June, photographs show.
Skansi was among several men who attempted to harass demonstrators, a video posted on social media at the time charged. The young person who took the video said the 61-year-old man had also been swearing at kids.
The demonstration took place on June 3, 2020 on Point Fosdick Drive bordering the Uptown Gig Harbor shopping center. About 200 people, mostly high-school aged students, stood together in protest of police shootings of Black Americans. They carried signs and chanted slogans in a peaceful demonstration.
In several photos and a video reviewed by The Gateway, Skansi is seen opposing the young demonstrators. He is wearing a yellow hooded sweatshirt that reads “Fight For Old D.C.” and a hat for the Washington football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. In a series of interviews, several people identified the man as Skansi.
In the video, Skansi is seen holding a campaign sign for former president Trump that he uses to attempt to block a young person in front of him, appearing to taunt the person while saying, “Don’t block free speech.”
Multiple attempts to reach Skansi about that day over email and phone went unanswered.
Skansi filed as a candidate for Gig Harbor mayor in May but withdrew after The Gateway reported he had been banned from substitute teaching in four Seattle schools over questions about his conduct toward students. Instead, he filed for a vacant City Council position.
‘It’s very clear it’s him’
Kara Aley said she helped to put together the demonstration. Aley previously worked for the campaign of Carrie Hesch, a challenger to state Rep. Jesse Young, R-Gig Harbor, who was also at the demonstration, carrying a sign warning against looting.
“I was aware at the event that John Skansi was standing next to (Young),” Aley said. “People who know him pointed that out at the event.
“I mean, you can look at the video and it’s very clear that it’s him.”
Luellen Lucid, who also was there that day, said the event was meant to be a vigil for George Floyd, a Black man killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin has been convicted of murder in Floyd’s death.
“It was meant to recognize and to bring people’s attention to the murder of George Floyd,” Lucid said. “A whole bunch of young people had wanted to do a vigil at the same site, so we all joined together once we were down there.”
Lucid is the Precinct Committee Officer chair for the 26th District Democrats. She said the demonstration was meant to be peaceful.
“We were going there, totally peaceful. Totally above board. Just wanting to do this quiet vigil,” Lucid said.
Lucid said she was caught off guard by the presence of armed men and the sign from Young telling people not to loot businesses.
“Like we were going to! A bunch of people over 60 and a bunch of young people,” Lucid said.
Young later distanced himself from the armed men and claimed that he had been told by Gig Harbor mayor Kit Kuhn and Police Chief Kelly Busey that “antifa was coming” to the event. Both Busey and Kuhn denied that anything like that happened.
Alarmed by armed men
Lucid said that she identified Skansi as being among the group that was “taunting our young people, which we do not appreciate.”
Aley said she didn’t think anything of it at the time, though remembered his presence later.
“All the people that were standing around Jesse had a tendency to engage in what I would call inappropriately with the young people around them,” Aley said.
Lucid said it was alarming to see Skansi and the armed men gathered opposite their vigil.
“I’m just very upset that there are elements in our community that are so off the rails,” Lucid said. “I was horrified and frightened because I’m not used to being around people with those kinds of guns, first of all. Secondly, their disrespect to people who were there for a very legitimate reason. These were all good, upstanding people. There was no reason to be spreading rumors that we were going to do anything other than to do what we said we were going to do, which was hold a vigil.”
Aley said the conduct of the older men reached the point where she began periodically walking around to make sure the young people were safe.
“He’s a leader in this community, his family has been in this community for a long time,” Aley said. “ It just felt like this whole situation with Jesse and all the guys with the guns was a coordinated effort to intimidate young people. That’s my whole concern with [Skansi] being there.”
Swearing at students
Ally Davidson, 17, took the video of Skansi when he was confronting others with a Trump sign.
Davidson, a graduate of Gig Harbor High School who is attending San Diego University in the fall, told The Gateway in a phone interview what she saw.
Skansi “wasn’t physically harmful, but he was harmful with his words,” she said. “He made sure to put all of the signs in front of kids’ faces so that our voices couldn’t be heard.”
When Skansi placed a sign in front of a demonstrator’s face, he was asked to stop, Davidison said.
The person “turned around and said, ‘This is very disrespectful, please stop doing this,’” Davidson said. “Then [Skansi] kept doing it.”
Davidson said she “tried to stay out of it” but observed the way Skansi treated the young people and swore at them.
“There was a lot of cussing at kids,” Davidson said. “The F-word, the A-word.”
‘Voters will decide’
Roger Henderson is one of Skansi’s two opponents for the Position 2 seat on the City Council.
A former civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and current Gig Harbor Parks commissioner, Henderson said it will be up to the voters to decide whether Skansi’s conduct was appropriate.
“I don’t agree with the things he says, but I do believe the First Amendment allows him that right to peaceably assemble. The operative word here is ‘peaceably’ assemble,” Henderson said. “If he did things there that the residents and voters of Gig Harbor don’t like, then they have that opportunity on Aug. 3 to make their voices known.”
The other candidate for the position is David Ozier, a former teacher in the Peninsula School District who said he wasn’t very familiar with Skansi until he met him at a Republican breakfast.
“I decided to run at the last minute. I was encouraged to, quite frankly. I had gotten information from other people who were previously councilmen and so forth. They said that John’s last name is well known, but also his antics are additionally well known,” Ozier said. “That’s the only background information I have, and I can’t state anymore. I’m not really running a negative campaign towards anyone frankly, and I’m a very positive person and I’ve been here for 40 years.”
Ozier did say his previous work as a teacher made him interested in past reporting about Skansi.
“Of course, I read about the situation about him being prohibited from teaching at four different schools,” Ozier said. “As a retired school teacher myself, those kinds of things do interest me.”
Skansi is scheduled to take part in multilple debates with his opponents this week, one for the League of Women Voters of Tacoma-Pierce County at 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, July 14 and another at a Chamber of Commerce forum at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, July 15. Both will take questions and be held over Zoom.
This story was originally published July 12, 2021 at 5:30 AM.
