by Yves Smith notes on the Boston rally this Saturday: Thanks to a huge and well-organized police presence, as well as strict limits imposed on the participants, follow-up to the “Unite the Right” white supremacist event in Charlottesville, the “Boston Free Speech” rally on Saturday demonstrated that the community wasn’t about to cut extreme right wing agitators much slack: “We probably had 40,000 people out here standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city, and that’s a good feeling,” [Boston Police] Commissioner [William] Evans said. The permit covered only 100 people. The city prohibited anyone carrying weapons, bats or other potential bludgeons, such as sticks to carry posters, glass containers and cans, sharp objects, and shields from coming to
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Yves Smith notes on the Boston rally this Saturday:
Thanks to a huge and well-organized police presence, as well as strict limits imposed on the participants, follow-up to the “Unite the Right” white supremacist event in Charlottesville, the “Boston Free Speech” rally on Saturday demonstrated that the community wasn’t about to cut extreme right wing agitators much slack:
“We probably had 40,000 people out here standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city, and that’s a good feeling,” [Boston Police] Commissioner [William] Evans said.
The permit covered only 100 people. The city prohibited anyone carrying weapons, bats or other potential bludgeons, such as sticks to carry posters, glass containers and cans, sharp objects, and shields from coming to Boston Common. There were some small scale skirmishes and the police arrested 33, mainly for disorderly conduct.
The far right participants did not get to finish their agenda. The event broke up early as, per the Wall Street Journal, “a huge throng of counterprotesters approached Boston Common.”
…
Even though one of the six organizers, John Medlar, said he was a libertarian and denounced hate groups, at a minimum, scheduling this event as a follow-up to Charlottesville wasn’t consistent with that branding. Even the people planning protests on a clearly unrelated issue, the firing of Google’s James Damore, postponed demonstrations that were also originally set for this weekend to distance them from Charlottesville.
And it looks like the “Boston Free Speech” leaders, whether intentionally or not, were trying to have it both ways. From Boston.com last week:
John Medlar, who says he is an organizer for Boston Free Speech, the group behind the rally, told Boston.com that his group is not associated with the white supremacists who marched with tiki torches in Charlottesville last weekend. But the group has said in comments on a Facebook post that there would be “overlap” in attendance between the two rallies….
Boston Free Speech posted an updated list Friday of the rally’s speakers, which includes Joe Biggs, who worked until recently for Infowars, the website founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; and Kyle Chapman, known on the internet as “Based Stickman” and founder of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “new Alt-Right group of street fighters.”…
Some speakers initially billed for the rally, such as Gavin McInnes, a former Vice Media co-founder and founder of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, dropped out following a Monday press conference by Boston officials condemning the event.