"Not A Paramilitary." Inside A Washington Militia's Efforts To Go Mainstream
On a recent morning, Matt Marshall sat at a back table in Jim Bob's Chuck Wagon, a café in an old timber town about a half-hour outside of Seattle.
It was the eve of a political rally Marshall had spent months planning. He scribbled last-minute notes in a homemade booklet, a Christmas present from his daughter. On the front, in black marker, she'd drawn the logo of the Washington Three Percent, the name of her dad's militia. Although that's not the word he uses.
"We're absolutely not a paramilitary," he said. "We're a nonprofit corporation."
To Marshall, "militia" conjures images of wannabes in the woods with guns – all bluster, no action. He said that's why he's grown frustrated with the national leadership of the Three Percent, which is named for the) belief that only 3% of colonists fought in the American Revolution.
