With all the cautions issued by the Mayor of Boston and the police commissioner, I wasn’t sure if I would attend the counter protest in Boston on Saturday, August 19. So I threw it all to fate and decided that if woke up early enough to catch the second commuter rail train out of the Lakeville/Middleborough station, I would go.
There may have been a subconscious desire to actually go as I am a man of a certain age who has to get up at least once during the night.
So I ended up taking my sign and heading for the train.
The sign I chose was the one I used at my one-man anti-Trump sitting in a lawn chair in front of the federal building waving at people in New Bedford as they drove by demonstration that consisted of two panels, one with the words, “Mr, Trump, GLBT people will not be erased”, and on the other a cartoon of a man in a rainbow shirt being erased. It dealt with the actions the president had taken to erase hard fought for GLBT rights, rights that should not have had to be fought for to begin with.
When I arrived on Boston Common it was a good two hours early, thanks to the train schedule, and found a nice little wall to sit on and hold my sign while watching the activity as people assembled.
There was a community atmosphere as we were all of like mind and, therefore, friends in a way, and having a colorful political cartoon sign brings people over for pictures and conversations. I met people from all over and with many concerns.
The ANTIFA people showed up, about 12 of them, but in spite of their repeated attempts to be the central figures in a huge rally, at 12 out of 40,000 or .0003% of the counter protesters, and even with the media running after them whenever they started some sort of quick movement in the hopes of seeing something spectacular, they just seemed desperate to get attention.
The fact that they were wearing full face covering came across to people with whom I spoke as people hoping to cause trouble while being able to melt into the crowd and let others deal with it.
At my age, having attended four decades of rallies, strikes, and demonstrations for workers’ rights, Civil Rights, and GLBT rights and being totally visible while doing so, one time facing getting fired for doing political cartoons for my teacher union and another facing dismissal from my teaching job for advocating for the safety of GLBT students in a large school district, I personally have no respect for people who hide while acting tough, and who, like an arsonist who torches a building and then mixes in with the spectators pretending to be just one of the on lookers, start trouble, but then melt away.
One of the ANTIFA people with his face totally covered introduced himself as a Gay person who agreed with my sign and then talked tough about the battle for Gay Rights that his revealed age showed he had never been part of. He delivered one of those “If I had been there” speeches. He was wearing a hoody, a piece of black cloth covering his whole face, and dark sunglasses over his eye holes, while I was there bare faced so that when our conversation ended he knew who he had been talking to while I had no idea with whom I had just had a conversation.
The crowd was fluid, and at one point I found myself standing by the path to the barricaded area around the band stand to which those we assumed were in the free speech group were going to be marching.
The police had zip-tied the barricade gate closed to prevent anyone entering who was not part of the group with the permit, and one of the free speech people who arrived alone began a screed about the fascist police who were preventing his exercise of his First Amendment rights by barring his entrance, a screed that lost any effectiveness when a police officer that he had not noticed came over and snipped the tie so he could get in.
The parade of the free speech people never materialized, and their entrance to their rally came in the form of individuals showing up. A contingent of Black Lives Matter people were on the pathway, and with each arrival, they moved like the parting Red Sea, and allowed the entrants to pass unmolested.
They did not have to do that that often, though, as it turned out.
Although the organizers of the Free Speech Rally claimed it was not about white supremacy, this claim was belied somewhat by the man who arrived wearing a t-shirt with the words “Stop White Genocide”, while ignoring the cleared pathway and preferring to walk through the crowd with his arms in the Nixonian double vee hands up gesture and yelling at the crowd.
This made it difficult for the two police officers at the gate, and when one of them turned to their supervisor to point out the man was complicating things, he assessed the situation and just advised, “F**k him then”.
As noon approached and the rally was supposed to begin, there was a lot of confusion as nothing seemed to be happening, and the few people on the band stand seemed to be just milling around waiting for something.
I ended up at the front of the counter protesters who formed a semi-circle along the police barrier, and leaning on it, I had a good view of the band stand.
Inside the barrier there was a line of bicycle officers just as confused as we were, and looking back at the 40,000 people facing them, they had to be nervous about the possibility of all those people surging forward.
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The anticipated white supremacist march never materialized, and forty five minutes into the rally scheduled for two hours, the people on the bandstand began to filter away.
It was a real poor rendition of “So Long, Farewell” from the Sound of Music as one by one the speakers left.
Someone yelled to a nearby police officer asking if it was over.
He shrugged.
He didn’t know.
Then, after everyone had left the band stand, two police officers climbed the steps, took down the various flags that had been hung on the railing, folded them, put them in a neat stack, and descended the steps signaling the most anti-climactic ending to a rally I had ever seen.
As the realization dawned that the rally that never really began was cut short, the majority of people began to flow off the Common, but not before those closest to the barriers gave the police a round of applause. Theirs was not an easy job as everything was an unknown.
Some people started an impromptu parade along the paths on the Common, but most saw the opportunity to leave and have lunch, or, perhaps, get to the T before the larger crowd headed that way.
I would be naive if I thought that every one of the 40,000 people were the nicest people in the world. I did see people, besides the ANTIFA few, who seemed intent on causing a little excitement, and kept modifying their tactics as each was shown to be a failure.
One person started yelling anti-police statements, but was shouted down. Some were walking around pushing people without any discernible reason. One person chased a woman who had an American flag, and, while grabbing it knocked her down. Other counter protesters went to her aid with one bringing her to someone they knew who was some sort of medic.
One young kid donned a MAGA hat and started yelling at the crowd, but the police took him away as the Commissioner had said before the event that stupidity would not be tolerated.
Each time someone did something that could cause a problem, the police moved in with very little interference. In my experience, no matter how properly people behaved at a rally, there was always those few who were unreasonable, or who intended to have their own fun by causing problems.
It was only after most people had left that any actual problems came up that resulted in 33 arrests. But considering they took place not only on Tremont Street but at Down Town Crossing, whether those who were involved were actually from the counter protest crowd is hard to determine.
And when you consider 33 out of 40,000, or .0008% of those in attendance, this is not a measure of the participants or the nature of the counter demonstrators.
I walked to South Station to take the train back, intending to take 3:20 as the rally would have ended too late to get the 2:10, but upon arriving I saw by the big clock that it was only 1:05 which meant that the rally had really disbanded early as it is a decent walk from the Common to South Station.
While I had been leaning on the barrier to watch the rally, I had turned to find that I was standing next to someone I knew from Ne Bedford. It was quite a coincidence that I would be near someone from my city in such a big crowd, and I rode with others from New Bedford on the train home.
I had been asked by a reporter what I thought the counter demonstration’s effect would be, and I told him that if those against racism were in numbers so noticeably greater than those who were there supporting it, those looking at us on television around the world would see that racists do not represent the majority of Americans.
With a ratio of 40,000:12, I think that point was made.
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