A civil discussion where some expected rioting

I know there’s a gulf between me and the president’s supporters.

Still, I’d like to get to know some of them so I can understand how they can support a bigot who has an adversarial relationship with the truth. That’s why I went to Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley to see how they’d rally after Ann Coulter backed out of delivering her hate speech at UC Berkeley.

I found that I was able to spend most of Thursday afternoon having genial conversations with the president’s supporters. And we were able to cut through the us versus them narrative.

Unlike anarchists, who have tried to knock my notebook and phone from my hand at previous protests, the flag-draped and helmet-wearing people I talked with at Civic Center Park didn’t attempt to rough me up.

Some, like Tyler Fisher, didn’t come to fight but came prepared just in case anarchists showed up for one. They didn’t. And he got to return to his Redding home as he’d hoped to: unscathed.

“I got a family to get back home to,” said Fisher, the 27year-old father of two young daughters.

Then why come knowing that violence could break out? I appreciate their right to exercise free speech, but why Berkeley, a progressive city where the fight for free speech decades ago united people from diverse backgrounds? Today’s free speech crowd, often parroting the president, seems bent on further splitting a divided country.

“Free speech is under attack,” Fisher said. “This is the birthplace of free speech. You got to take a stand somewhere.”

Fisher’s gear included a round, homemade plywood shield with “Anti-Communist Action” painted on the front. I asked if he was a white supremacist.

“They think we’re all Nazis,” Fisher said. “Yeah, there were some white supremacists at the last rally, but that’s not all of us. That’s just like a small minority.”

Get this: Fisher doesn’t even support the president. He was really there, he said, to support free speech. But by standing with others in goggles, helmets and gas masks who were ready to battle, I wondered if he thought this free speech message was getting lost.

“Yeah, I would suppose so,” he said. “We need to de-escalate the violence. But as long as they want to keep coming and being violent, we can’t really not do anything.”

As we chatted, David Tomes of Petaluma interrupted to give Fisher a hug. He gave me one, too.

“I love you man,” Tomes said to both of us.

Tomes wore a baseball helmet and a shirt with an American flag printed on it. I didn’t even have to ask a question to get his rant started.

“We’re just hardworking Americans, bro. That’s all we are,” Tomes said. “We’re here because they’re shutting down free speech that’s conservative. I don’t need to go on no tangent about this, that or the other thing.”

But that’s just what Tomes did when I asked him if he understood why Coulter’s hatefilled comments about the “browning of America” could be seen as offensive to a brown or black person like me.

I asked Tomes about the images of the white power salutes from the rally earlier this month that turned into a brawl. Yes, white nationalists can infiltrate a peaceful rally, he said. But he also believes the anarchists send undercover operatives into the group who pretend to be white nationalists. That could be true, but couldn’t the president’s supporters pose as anarchists?

“But we don’t do that. Dude, I’m not a Nazi,” Tomes said. “Take a look around. There’s blacks here. I’m talking to you decently.”

Like several others, Jessica Runfola, who came to Berkeley from Orange County, wore an American flag like a superhero cape.

“The flag looks nice on me,” said Runfola, 27, who also had a utility belt around her waist. “In rainy weather, I’ve used it as a shawl.”

Suddenly a woman ran past us, shouting: “They’re here, they’re here!”

There were gleeful yelps from the troops bored from standing around under a glorious sun. A mass of armored men and women surged toward the street, expecting to meet their enemy. But they weren’t anarchists — they were students coming out of Berkeley High School, across from the park.

Guess who pushed the hordes of costumed right-wing soldiers back into the park? No, it wasn’t the police. It was Kyle Chapman, a Daly City resident known as Based Stickman, a nickname he got for smacking an anarchist over the head with a stick at a rally in March. Chapman, who has become a fringe celebrity since the video of him swinging the stick went viral, rushed to the sidewalk and yelled through a megaphone: “Back in the park. They’re just kids.”

The crowd stopped their march, if only for the chance to take photos with Chapman, who posed with his right hand raised in a fist.