Former All-American swimmer turned women’s sports activist, Riley Gaines, discussed in a Wednesday interview the terrifying situation which occurred at San Francisco State University (SFSU) last week which has been chronicled in these pages.
At the event, a mob of pro-transgender ideology protestors stormed the event space after Gaines had just completed a speaking engagement, which resulted in Gaines allegedly being struck by a male protestor before she was held in a separate room by campus police, unable to leave until the protests died down.
Riley Gaines via OutKick YouTube
Gaines spoke with Dan Dakich on his OutKick program “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich” to provide more details about what she experienced during the protest at SFSU.
She described the situation, which was already tense given the topic she was there to speak about: protecting the integrity of women’s sports from biological male competitors. Things became terrifying once it appeared that the police did not have control once the protestors moved in.
“I give my speech and, of course, there’s many protesters in the room. But I welcome protesters. I welcome people with different perspectives,” Gaines told Dakich. “That’s why I choose to go somewhere like San Francisco. I know a lot of them won’t agree with me but that’s who I want to get in front of. That’s who I want to change their minds to see from my perspective. So there was lots of protesters and it was relatively civil. There was some heckling. But it was good.”
“After the event,” she continued, “almost as soon as it finished, it was as if the floodgates opened and I was rushed. People from outside the classroom rushed in. They flickered the lights off. They stormed the podium and they were pushing and shoving and hitting.”
She then revealed, “And I was supposed to meet with the head of campus police a half an hour before the event to discuss an exit strategy if this happened but the police never showed up to meet me. And so, I had no idea there was even police in the room. So at this moment I feared for my life.”
SFSU protestors at Riley Gaines’ TPUSA event via KTVU Fox 2 San Francisco YouTube
Gaines further explained that at that moment she felt like her safety was truly in danger.
“It’s so chilling to know what these people want to do to you and what they’re willing to do to you. At this point, an undercover police [officer] grabbed me, which I truly didn’t want to follower her at the time because I didn’t really believe she was the police, but she was saying, ‘Comes with me, come with me’ and I didn’t have much of an option.
“She’s pushing me along. We exit the classroom into the hallway to where it was filled with more protestors — I’m talking hundreds. We could not exit the building. We were on the third floor and the stairways were packed. We had to resort to going into another classroom along that hallway where I was barricaded in for three hours.”
Riley Gaines via Kentucky Wildcats TV YouTube
Some of the harrowing video of the mob scene was featured by Fox 2 out of Oakland. Watch for yourself:
Gaines felt at that point that the police had otherwise allowed the protestors to control the situation, leaving her in fear as to whether they’d be able to protect her should the protestors find her.
“And in these three hours, these protestors they sat outside, they banged on walls, they stomped on the floor, they screamed terrible, violent, awful things to both myself and the campus police who were there. I missed my flight home because I was stuck in this room. They were negotiating money with the dean of students if I wanted to make it home safely,” she said.
“They claimed if I got paid by the university to be there. It’s only fair that they get paid if I get to make it home safely, which first of all I didn’t get paid by the university to be there. That was a misconception. It just felt like the police weren’t doing their job adequately because they were terrified. They didn’t want to be accused of anything. They didn’t want to be assertive in any way that they could make it look like they were anything other than an ally to this community.”
Riley Gaines via KTVU Fox 2 San Francisco YouTube
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Gaines didn’t lay all the blame at the feet of the students, though. Where were the “adults in the room” at this university?
“The dean of students, the administration, the university — they handled this poorly. Extremely poorly. And since then, they released statements saying they are so proud of their brave students for handling such a controversial situation so well and being so peaceful. And they actually said the police force was excessive and uncalled for and that I was the one spreading violence.”
“It just shows you how universities and how administrations in the direction they’re going. And it is not a positive direction,” she asserted. “These are the people who are teaching the next generation but they’re not teaching them to be willing to be in a situation where you can have open dialogue and hear different perspectives. They’re teaching that if you disagree with someone, it’s OK to be violent. It’s OK to not want to listen and do everything you can to suppress their speech.”
Anyone who has been paying attention knows Gaines hits the nail on the head there. There are two sets of rules, and they are based entirely on the subject’s political persuasion.
Riley Gaines via Huckabee on TBN YouTube
“I feared for my life in that moment,” Gaines reiterated. “Yet [Jamillah More, Vice President for student affairs and enrollment management who sent the email] is gonna call it peaceful? Like we’re negotiating ransom if I wanted to make it home safely and she’s gonna call it peaceful? We must have totally different definitions of peaceful because that is not peaceful to me.”
“The protestors who were in the room initially that had orchestrated a sit-in… I knew it was going to happen. I knew there was gonna be this sit-in. I had gotten word of it before I got there. And I’m totally fine with the sit-in. I’m totally fine if people want to come and express their views. I open it up for questions at the end, to which I answered all of their questions. There were some individuals I had great dialogue with. That is peaceful protests for the most part. Again, there was some heckling. There were some things that probably could’ve been avoided but I’m totally cool with that,” she relayed.
“But being rushed. Being physically and verbally assaulted. That is not peaceful by any means,” she declared. “Truthfully, I think this backfired on the protestors because this only really increased my social media following. It only increased people’s eyes being open to seeing how unhinged these people can be in the disguise of being kind, and inclusive, and tolerant. This was not done out of tolerance or love and compassion. Vengeful is what it is. They were yelling in the hallway — ‘Trans rights are under attack. What do we do? We fight back.’ That’s not peaceful.”
Riley Gaines via Crain and Company YouTube
Gaines stated firmly that this situation would not deter her from her efforts to speak out on behalf of female athletes.
“I would take a right hook from Mike Tyson if it meant defending girls’ rights in spaces,” she said. “This doesn’t deter me. This doesn’t make me want to be quiet. It doesn’t make me want to hide.”
Please don’t take a right hook from Iron Mike, Riley.