‘IDIOTS SPEWING IDIOTIC NONSENSE’
Blue Lives Matter activists, protesters trade barbs outside BPD headquarters
Curses and chants brimming with contempt filled the air outside Boston Police headquarters Saturday as a flock of counterprotesters gathered to oppose a Blue Lives Matter rally, organized by the same group behind the controversial Straight Pride Parade.
“They’re just idiots spewing idiotic nonsense over and over again, disregarding the fact that people within their group sport Nazi tattoos and wave Nazi flags,” said Roderick Webber, one of the counterprotesters who was arrested for disorderly conduct at the parade last August. “I’m here to speak truth to power and stand up for what is right.”
Around a hundred people congregated at the station for several hours to stand on either side of a police barrier — the majority of whom opposed the Blue Lives Matter activists — and pronounce their disapproval of each other’s stances and beliefs.
John Hugo, president of Super Happy Fun America, the right-wing group that organized the event, said they were inspired to proclaim their support for the police after Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office dropped charges earlier this week against two defendants accused of assaulting cops in the parade.
The news came months after Rollins’ office dropped charges against dozens of other arrested protesters, including Webber.
“We think that’s just facilitating leftist violence,” Hugo said. “We believe in law and order, we believe in the thin blue line and we’re here to show that we support the Boston Police.”
Boston resident Phoebe Whitwell said she protested the Straight Pride Parade last year and when she saw a Facebook post about Saturday’s rally from Solidarity Against Hate, a self-identifying anti-fascist group, she felt compelled to stand up to a group that she believes promotes white supremacy and genocide.
“These folks show up for straight pride, Blue Lives Matter, gun rights, antiabortion, and they try to bring in conservatives who might agree with them on those issues to then get them to further agree with them on the deeper issues of white supremacy and genocide,” Whitwell said. “Black and brown people deserve to live and feel safe in their communities, without threat of violence from the state or the police.”
However, Hugo said the anti-fascists who showed up for Saturday’s rally with the antifa groups are the real source of violence in the U.S and deserve to be labeled domestic terrorists.
“Police brutality is not true. If they really cared, especially the Black Lives Matter movement, they would look at black on black crime,” Hugo said. “Police are not out there hunting people and hurting people. Of course there are bad eggs in any profession, but 99% of them are good.”
Unlike last year’s controversial parade, which police said resulted in 36 arrests and four injured officers, no physical violence broke out between the two sides and Boston Police said that no one was arrested.