| Boston Police officers and counter protesters clash outside of the Boston Commons and the Boston Free Speech Rally |
As many as 40,000 people took to the streets of Boston on Saturday to protest against a right-wing free speech rally consisting of around 50 people, resulting later in some clashes between far-left Antifa members and police that led to 27 arrests.
A week after a woman was killed during a Charlottesville white-supremacist demonstration, police were out in force after being told during the previous march to stand down, a move that led to violent clashes and the death of a woman when a white supremacist ploughed his car into the counterprotesters.
Boston Police Commissioner William B Evans said the crowd could be broken into three groups: those attending the free speech rally, those protesting against that rally, and “unfortunately we did have people who came here to cause problems.”
During Saturday’s march, police confined the small number of free speech activists to a small area of the park where organisers denounced the white supremacist message and violence of Charlottesville, Reuters reported.
Republican Shiva Ayyadurai, who is campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat that Democrat Elizabeth Warren holds, spoke at the rally, surrounded by supporters holding signs saying “Black Lives Do Matter”, and “No to GMOs. Stop Monsanto”.
“We have a full spectrum of people here,” Ayyadurai said in a video of his speech posted on Twitter. “We have people from the Green Party here, we have Bernie (Sanders) supporters here, we’ve got people who believe in nationalism.”
Along with a photo of rally participants and their signs, he tweeted “To all FAKE NEWS, this was the ‘White Supremacist’ FREE SPEECH RALLY I just spoke at”.
When they were leaving, the free speech activists were surrounded by a group of counterprotesters, who said they were there to protest against hate speech, shouting “shame”, “go home” and “F**k Trump” at them and occasionally throwing plastic water bottles, according to agency reports. Police escorted several rally participants through the crowds, sometimes struggling against counterprotesters who tried to stop them.
The counterprotesters, some dressed in black and with covered faces – the uniform of Antifa “Black Bloc’ members – several times swarmed rally attendees, including two men wearing the “Make America Great Again” caps from President Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters said.
The same protesters also threw rocks and bottles of urine at police dressed in riot gear and several scuffles ensued with officers, according to a Reuters photographer who saw police taking a number – later said to be 27 – of the counterprotesters into custody. The vast majority of counterprotesters were peaceful.
Karla Venegas, a 22-year-old who recently moved to Boston from California, said she was not surprised that the free speech rally petered out so quickly.
“They were probably scared away by the large crowd,” Venegas told Reuters. “We will not stand for discrimination, racism and Nazis.”
According to Reuters, city officials had spent a week planning security for the event, mobilizing 500 police officers, including many on bikes, and placing barricades and large white dump trucks on streets along the park, the nation’s oldest. They also banned sticks, including flagpoles, bats and all weapons.