‘Free Speech’ folks take an empty stand in Cradle of Liberty
The “Make America Great Again” folks who had the brainless idea that Boston would be a great place to follow up on what happened in Charlottesville last weekend discovered the hard way that this city is not called the Cradle of Liberty for nothing.
These self-titled purveyors of “Free Speech” were indeed given their permit to rally at the bandstand on the Common yesterday.
And they even did some speechifying for about 30 minutes, according to Boston police Commissioner Bill Evans.
But thanks to the 40,000 Bostonians who exercised their constitutional right to offer a loud, boisterous and impassioned opposition, those words uttered by a few self-proclaimed disciples of “free speech” wound up lost in a human tidal wave of outrage.
What the Trumpians and so called “alt-right” leaners seemed to have forgotten is that we, in Boston, have not only been seasoned by the original Tea Party, we have weathered the tyranny of 21st century terrorism. And if that wasn’t enough, we watched what happened in Charlottesville.
“That was not going to happen here,” Bill Evans said. “We sat down with the group who applied for the permit as well as other groups. We told them what we expected and how things were going to be laid out.”
And though there were a few bottles of urine tossed at police by the knuckleheads who are always factored into such scenes, the Boston police plan to separate neo-Nazis and protesters worked perfectly.
The Common was a sea of homemade banners and signs that read “Silence is Compliance,” and “The Last Time We Stayed Silent, Six Million People Died.”
Among the only people I saw on the Common who went silent yesterday was one shellshocked young man in a red “Make America Great Again” hat who had been surrounded at the backstop of a softball diamond by a crowd yelling “Bleep Trump!” over and over.
He was safely hustled down Charles Street by Boston cops, who spent most of their time “extracting” a few traumatized free speech disciples off the Common. Boston police used their wagons yesterday to safely chauffeur those stray and forlorn neo-Nazis to safety.
Former state Sen. Warren Tollman was among the faces in that sea of opposition.
“My son, who is in New York, asked me if I was going to be here today,” Tollman said, “and I told him I had to be. It’s impressive to see people come out like this and stand up for what’s right. ... Unfortunately, we don’t have a president these days — we have a guy who plays president.”
Had Charlottesville never happened last week, truth is Boston would have been prepared anyway. But the senseless death of Heather Heyer and the ugliness that played out in a lovely college town a week ago all but guaranteed that those scenes would not be repeated in our city.
And indeed they weren’t.