Protesters Flood Streets, and Trump Offers a Measure of Praise
“We didn’t want them at each other’s throats.”
The free speech rally, which had been scheduled to run from noon until 2 p.m., concluded by about 12:50 p.m. Mr. Evans, who said the event ended early by mutual agreement between the authorities and the event’s organizers, said the police had helped the demonstrators get into police wagons as part of a prearranged “exit strategy.” It was then, he said,
that “we had some kids block the street, it got a little confrontational, but they were given every opportunity to move.”
“We had to do a little pushing and shoving there,” said Mr. Evans, whose department reported
that some people pelted officers with rocks and that some demonstrators threw bottles of urine at officers.
The demonstrations — which drew 40,000 people in Boston alone, according to police estimates — came one week after a 32-year-old woman died amid clashes between white nationalists
and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., and they unfolded as the nation was again confronting questions about race, violence and the standing of Confederate symbols.
The leaflets, which other counterprotesters appeared to have prepared, urged people to “learn to identify these symbols
and let anyone displaying them know that they are not welcome in our city!”
“Charlottesville is what forced me out here,” said Rose Fowler, 68, a retired teacher who is black
and was among the people who had gathered to march from Roxbury toward the Common, about two miles away.