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lets-talk-about-politics · 7 years ago

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I Attended the Boston Counter-Protest. This is What I Saw.

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” -James Baldwin

1. “I’m Shipping up to Boston”

There was a nervousness in my stomach as I drove with my fiancée towards Waltham. We were meeting a couple friends at the Brandeis/Roberts commuter rail, taking it to the red line at Porter Square, taking that to the stop at Park Street, which sits at the northeastern corner of the Boston Common. We were going to a counter-protest against an alt-right “free speech” rally featuring speakers like Joe Biggs of Infowars fame and Kyle Chapman, an alt-right figure lauded for his use of violence on an Antifa activist. Needless to say, “free speech” wasn’t really what this was all about.

This was also all happening exactly one week after the chaos in Charlottesville, where a white supremacist rally was met with a strong counter-protest force, both sides clashing in a chaotic mess of violence and fury. Shields and clubs were swung around and brought down on bodies. Those that fell to the ground were stomped on. Isolated counter-protesters were mercilessly beaten by angry mobs of white supremacists. And, at the end of it all, after both sides had dispersed, James Fields rammed a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more in a gruesome display of white supremacist terrorism. After Trump’s comments, where he blamed both sides for the murder and said that some at the white supremacist rally were good people, the entire nation was on edge. It was noted that white supremacists were emboldened and were planning more rallies across the country. Things were getting worse.

My fiancée and I both knew this, but we both also knew that there was a duty involved with standing up for those with marginalized identities who are threatened by white supremacy. That was the feeling that we held as we drove towards Waltham: nervousness and duty.

2. “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”

The train ride there was uneventful, but occasionally the voices of counter-protesters would fill the train car. Two girls behind me, couldn’t have been older than 18 or 19, were laughing as they decided what to put on their sign. They seemed lighthearted, carefree, like they thought they were invulnerable, but maybe I was getting them wrong. Maybe they were nervous, terrified, needed some humor to mask the fear. I didn’t blame them either way. You have to forget about the risk to do something like protest a hate group, especially after the events at Charlottesville.

The group that was putting on the rally, Boston Free Speech, isn’t really a hate group, but it collects a lot of people who are more explicit in their hatred. John Medlar, the 23-year-old man who runs the organization, started the group of students in response to the events at colleges such as Evergreen State and Berkeley, where protesters pushed for far-right speakers to cancel their appearances. He says that the organization is steadfast in its defense of the First Amendment. Really, Boston Free Speech, a group full of 17-23-year-old kids, is likely a bunch of kids softly radicalized by the internet, kids who watch bad YouTube videos where people like Sargon of Akkad, Armoured Skeptic, and Stefan Molyneux make bad arguments that are oddly persuasive to the uninformed. They’re not neo-Nazis. They’re not arguing for a white ethno-state. But they’re fools that believe that leftist mobs and antifa warriors are trying to destroy free speech, and they likely believe it because some other fool on the internet told them so.

It all sounds rather benign, until you see the kind of people that associate themselves with Medlar and his group. There were KKK members that said that they would attend the rally. Augustus Invictus, a far-right libertarian who said that he would lead a second Civil War, was slated to speak at the rally until recently. If freedom of speech was the defining characteristic of Boston Free Speech, you would think that you would get a broad collection of left and right political ideologies. Instead, freedom of speech is just an excuse to elevate the voices of radical right-wing extremists that have no place in polite society. It’s bullshit piled on top of more bullshit.

With KKK members and “Alt Knights” and ex-Infowars writers comes a group of white supremacists, people that hold similar ideologies to the ones that showed up in fatigues with semi-automatic assault rifles at Charlottesville, people that hold similar ideologies to the man who drove his car into a group of protesters. It was entirely possible that violence would break out, that someone with a gun sneaks into the Common, someone with a couple knives that could just start swinging. How many people could be killed by a man wielding two knives before the police took him down? 10? 15? 20? What if the man planted a bomb, or just walked into a crowd with a bomb strapped to him? Maybe 100 would be killed in the blast? Who knows?

I thought about that when I sat on the train, listening to the two girls behind me laughing about their sign. What are the chances that one of them could die today, that her mother and father would lose a child, that her brother or sister could lose a sibling, that her boyfriend or girlfriend could lose a partner? I knew that what I was thinking was just the effect of the terrorist attack last week, but I couldn’t help but think it. It was the same thought that went through my head the night before, when I wanted to duck out of going to the counter-protest, when I snapped at my fiancée when she wasn’t acting nervous enough or when she talked about writing her mother’s phone number on her arm in case she was grievously injured and needed an emergency contact to be called.

I knew that Charlottesville was only the beginning. More would die. I just hoped that wouldn’t be today.

3. “No Trump. No KKK. No Fascist USA.”

We exited the train at Park Street and made our way into the common, past the concrete barricades and garbage trucks that haunted the perimeter, making it so that no driver would repeat the tragedy at Charlottesville the week before.

Boston had taken precautions. Mayor Walsh and the Boston Police Department said that there were no weapons of any sort allowed, that anybody was subject to a bag check, that there would be clear points of entry into the Common. Undercover cops would patrol the crowds. Small cameras went up all over the Common the day before. Metal barricades would separate the counter-protesters from the rally-goers, and dozens of police would patrol the 20-25-yard no-man’s-land that would separate the massive crowd of counter-protesters from the few at Parkman Bandstand. On Facebook, maybe 300 were RSVP’d for the rally. Over 12,000 were RSVP’d for the counter-protest. And that was just one of the organized counter-protests.

The four of us were early; we had gotten to the Common at 10:30 when the rally was supposed to start at noon, so we first walked to a rally point for counter-protesters. A dozen men and women in their twenties stood equidistant from one another, wearing neon green safety vests, forming a perimeter around the rally point. I don’t know what they were planning to do if a violent group were to try to breach their perimeter, but they did make me feel more at ease. At least the thought was on their minds. There was an interesting array of counter-protesters there; some had signs that said “Black Lives Matter”, others with witty phrases like “The only wall I support is a wall of death” (if you like metal music, you’ll get that one), and others had more explicit phrases like “Fuck Trump” or violent memes where cartoon characters beat Nazis. One counter-protester was dressed in a wolf costume and held a sign about showing respect for furries.

The violent signs were unnerving at first, but I was pulled in two different directions the more I thought about it. The first issue of Captain America had the hero punching Hitler in the face. Punching Nazis is patriotic; hell, we killed thousands upon thousands of them during the Second World War. But there’s also an alarming looseness to which some use the term “Nazi”. I heard many saying that we were protesting a Nazi rally, when the rally-goers certainly weren’t Nazis. Calling people Nazis also makes political violence more acceptable. Who would be called a Nazi today and deemed worthy of violence?

We all chatted for a while about school (everybody in my group but me was in grad school at Brandeis), and with that there was a certain mundanity to the day. We were just hanging out, waiting to see what would happen next. We chanted “Black Lives Matter” when it started up. We chanted “No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA”. These were the popular ones. But I looked over towards the bandstand, saw the crowd begin to form, and I pulled everybody that way.

4. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”

We reached the bandstand around 11:00, where a thick cluster of counter-protesters had already completely enveloped the perimeter.

The counter-protesters were wildly diverse in age, in gender, in race. There were old married couples carrying “No hate in Mass” signs, young kids in black clothing with red bandanas over their faces, black men carrying around Bluetooth speakers, blasting A Tribe Called Quest, queer women with the rainbow flag across their backs.

Everybody was hot, sweaty, the sun was out and the humidity was high, but they all seemed to be in high spirits. There were a couple guys who had set up a speaker system maybe 10 yards from the barricade, blasting Rise Against and Dead Kennedys, screaming “NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF” and jumping in the air. They later switched genres, where a couple women joined them in dance, along with an old man with a scruffy white beard and a worn US Marine Corps t-shirt. One man in a loose purple button-up danced for hours, his eyes closed, shaking something, making noise. There was a sort of beauty to the unity of the dance; everybody was smiling, laughing, dancing like fools and loving every second of it. I kind of wished that the whole counter-protest would be like that: dancing, singing, laughing, showing that we feel love and that’s enough to stop them. There was a lot of that at the counter-protest, a lot of “Love Trumps Hate”, a lot of people talking to strangers about why they’re there, why they care, who they care about. Lots of smiling. A man with a “Free Hugs” sign walking by, embracing those who needed some comfort.

A large group of antifacists marched past, all of them in black, with patches pinned to their vests and red or black bandanas over their faces. Their eyes were squinted as if focused, as if on a mission, as if nothing else mattered. They carried with them a flag, their signature red and black dual flags forming a seal in the center, and a banner with “Antifascist Action” scrawled on it. Everybody cheered as they walked by; they said nothing and marched resolutely towards a destination of which I did not know. I was shocked by the homogeneity of the group. Many were white, many were men. It made sense: the ones least likely to be harmed for being visible in their resistance were the ones most likely to step forward and be visible. I commended the one or two black men that walked with them, the one white woman, as I knew they would be the most heavily targeted.

The crowd started to fill out, so we backed up, stood in the shade on a nearby hill. There must have been four, five thousand counter-protesters outside the barricade surrounding the bandstand, while the bandstand itself only had a few dozen rally-goers. They were holding up some miscellaneous flags, the Tea Party’s signature yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, a US flag, a Canadian flag (weird), a Betsy Ross flag, and a flag I couldn’t recognize. The rally-goers were inside the bandstand; there were so few of them that they didn’t need to leave it.

As it got closer to noon, I saw a short man holding up a Trump/Pence flag, screaming something incoherent. Nobody seemed to care for a while, it was as if he was invisible. But eventually one person saw him, stormed over. It was like a spotlight had been flashed on him; a dozen more stormed over. Cameras descended upon the man, taking pictures, taking video, waiting to see what would happen. I heard him continue to scream, and I could feel my stomach drop as he was engulfed in the crowd of counter-protesters.

I ran over to see what was happening. He was by himself in the middle of this circle, yelling about Hillary Clinton and her emails, yelling about North Korea and their nuclear weapons, yelling about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. It was nonsense, and I rolled my eyes at it, because who cares what some Trump supporter had to say about Bill Clinton. But one man stepped into the circle, black t-shirt, black shorts, didn’t read as antifa, and started chanting “This guy’s a Nazi” over and over again, getting closer with every step. He was at least a foot taller than the man with the Trump/Pence flag, who just shook his head, quietly said no, I’m not a Nazi. I started to say “He’s not a Nazi, please stop”, but nobody could hear me. Another man stepped forward, grabbed the flag, yelled “Anybody have a lighter”, at which point everybody cheered, the man the flag frozen in the middle, didn’t know what to do. It looked like another person was going to step in, but a policeman came over, escorted the man with the flag away, who knows why. Everybody just kind of stood there for a moment and then walked away, went back to what they were doing before they were about to light this man’s flag on fire, push him around.

It was 11:45. The rally hadn’t even started yet.

5. “Don't Take the Bait”

Another chant broke out, “Don’t take the bait”, “Don’t take the bait”. It was 12:20, the rally had been going on for 20 minutes, and the number of outside agitators had vastly grown.

A man in a blue t-shirt was slowly strolling through the sea of counter-protesters, a red MAGA hat like a beacon in the crowd. He was grinning, muttering at a large man who was screaming in his face, loving every second of it. He wanted to be hit, spat on, punched in the face, screamed at, anything to make him look like the civil one and the counter-protester look like the lunatic. For a group of people that talk endlessly about liberals being victims, he wanted so badly to be a victim.

Outside agitators didn’t have to do much to agitate. Donald Trump had already done their work for them. All he had to do was put on the MAGA hat and every Muslim could think of the travel ban, Latinx people could think of the wall, black people could think of the inner city American carnage, women could think of sexual assault and rape. It was so easy, people took the bait every time, and it was tough to blame them for it. Even so, with all of the finger-pointing and screaming, there was a shocking amount of restraint. Nobody pushed him. Nobody punched him. Nobody beat him with a weapon. He made it through the crowd in one piece.

Counter-protest groups are very cognizant of the possibility of violence when emotions are high. Black Lives Matter hosted de-escalation workshops prior to their march and counter-protest. There was a man dressed up in a gingerbread man costume, who would dance when a fight broke out near him. Fights rarely broke out near the music and the dancing. Safety marshals and medics were scattered throughout the counter-protest to make sure that people weren’t getting sick, weren’t getting hurt. Black Lives Matter made a lot of this happen; they know that if violence breaks out then people of color will be targeted, so they work unbelievably hard to make sure that a riot doesn’t break out, that agitators are safely ushered out of the crowd.

For the most part, all protesting was relatively peaceful. We couldn’t hear the rally at all because, well, there were only a few dozen of them and the counter-protesters had grown to over 10,000 strong. The Black Lives Matter march, which was supposed to be easily that big, hadn’t even arrived yet. There were some jeering chants, “Where’s your rally?”, “We can’t hear you”, “Go home”, “Boston hates you”, all of which ended with a cheer and applause. The rally-goers held signs and were speaking, but they had formed a circle inside of the bandstand, as if they were only speaking to each other.

There were a couple agitators that were quickly ushered through the crowd, screamed at for their MAGA hats or their Trump t-shirts. One had his hat flipped off of his head, thrown into the crowd. A water bottle hit him in the face, soaking his shirt. Silly string got caught in his hair. The police always ushered them through slowly, but if bottles were flying, if people were reaching in at him, they sped up and got him out of there. Protesters, for the most part, were really happy that the police were there. They would walk up to them, shake their hands, thank them, take pictures with them.

If antifa was responsible for some of the unrest at the protest, I wasn’t aware of it. I rarely saw them except for when they walked as a group through the crowd. Whenever an agitator was harassed, it was typically an average-looking white guy ready to start a fight. For all of the shit that antifa gets, they weren’t throwing trash cans or beating agitators.

Around 12:40, I heard somebody next to me telling people to look towards the bandstand. Two men in white were being ushered out of the bandstand, towards police escort vehicles. Whispers of excitement rose up around me, “Is it over?”, “Are they done?”, and then everybody inside the bandstand just left at once, got into police vans and drove off. The bandstand was empty. And everybody erupted in cheers and applause.

6. “We Gon' Be Alright”

If there’s one part of the counter-protest that won’t be covered, it’s what happened after the white supremacists left.

Everybody was louder, laughing, more excited than before. The Black Lives Matter march started to make their way into the Common, and everybody was on their feet applauding, screaming, embracing one another. The music was bumping, a group dancing and jumping to Migos’s Bad and Boujee. Every now and then, I would look over at the bandstand, empty, and think: “we all did this”. They wanted to use “free speech” as an excuse to elevate white supremacist voices, and we stopped them.

It was like this throughout the city. Later on, when we stopped at Sal’s Pizza on Tremont, we looked at a television that was playing local coverage of the counter-protest. Police in riot gear were pulling people away from each other, it was absolute chaos. I rolled my eyes; yet another portrayal of a peaceful protest as embodying its worst characteristics, as being only the fringe that started fights. A couple of women next to me saw me roll my eyes, told me that they were so happy with the protest, they it was calm and peaceful, that it was beautiful to see so many people come together. One woman told me that she was proud today to be an American; I told her I was proud as well.

That was a common feeling among the counter-protesters: pride. Black people, brown people, queer people, disabled people, women, white men were all proud of something, whether it was their identity and their experiences or their participation in the protest. They came out to the protest for more than a sense of community and an affirmation of identity. They came because they believed themselves to be on the right side of history, because they knew that they could look back in 50, 60 years and be able to tell their grandchildren that, during the Trump years, they fought back against the white supremacists. There’s a reason that Boston Free Speech stayed huddled inside of that bandstand, and it wasn’t because they were in danger.

As the Black Lives Matter march continued to pour into the Common, as Bad and Boujee came to a close, Kendrick Lamar’s Alright came on next, and the crowd in front of me erupted. Everybody crowded around the speakers, rapping along, all of the lyrics memorized. They bounced up and down, black people, white people, brown people, men, women, an old man, some kids, everybody was bouncing up and down, singing, over and over again, “we gon’ be alright”, “we gon’ be alright”.

7. “This Was Real People”

When I think of protests and rallies, I think about ideas.

People protest ideas, not people. Even protests against Trump aren’t really about the man but about what the man believes, what he preaches. People will protest Trump hiding his tax returns, but they’re really protesting corruption in politics, the ability for powerful men to commit crimes with impunity. People will protest Trump signing his travel ban, but they’re really protesting how Islamophobia is gaining more and more traction in America, how Muslims are treated as if they’re second-class citizens. Or look in the other direction. The white supremacists at Charlottesville were protesting liberals and the removal of a Confederate statue, but they were really protesting how inclusive politics is giving more political power to marginalized folks.

But protests and rallies aren’t just made up of ideas. They’re made up of people. Behind a Black Lives Matter banner are people with husbands, wives, children, careers, hopes, dreams, loves, desires. And the same is true of those on the side of white supremacy. They also have those who care about them, have trajectories that they would like their lives to take. It’s the only true way that we can look at them as equivalent, as the same. They’re all people with lives, and when we see a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand of them, we forget the value of an individual life. We’re more likely to look at each other with anger, distaste, malice, murderous convictions. We’re more likely to commit violence against one another.

Here’s the thing though. In this fight, there’s one group that, at its core, understands that this is about people, and another group that doesn’t care.

Those that argued that this was for free speech, that they want to hear out the extremists, are full of shit. Go to John Medlar’s Facebook page, where he exaggerates about a “frenzied mob” that wanted to kill him, where he talks about the “alt left” that is threatening America. It’s clear that he is just regurgitating the nonsense he’s heard elsewhere, probably on the internet. He believes that he’s a paragon of justice, defending the constitution, but there’s a reason that counter-protesters were talking about a wide array of social justice causes. It’s because people like John Medlar are using the cause of “free speech” to elevate voices who are radical and dangerous, voices that embolden the people at Charlottesville. And it’s because people like John Medlar know that and play dumb to maintain some semblance of plausible deniability for those that would use him to deepen their own radicalization or those that would call him out for radicalizing others.

When James Fields drove his car into that crowd of protesters at Charlottesville, killing Heather and injuring over a dozen others, I doubt he was thinking about Heather’s family, about the job she had, about the coworkers that wouldn’t see her ever again, about her mother, who had this to say on CNN:

“This wasn't a video game, buddy," she said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. "This was real people. There are real consequences to what you did. I'm sorry you've chosen to do that. You have ruined your life and you've disturbed mine, but you took my child from me.”

We live with a news media that loves to draw equivalencies between two sides. The antifa, Black Lives Matter, the counter-protesters are just as bad as the white supremacists, right? But white supremacists want violence. They crave it. After Heather Heyer was murdered, many white supremacists celebrated her death. Many white supremacists said that it was likely that many more would die before all of this is over. Compare that to the Black Lives Matter protesters that de-escalated fights, that kept riots from breaking out. Compare that to the mothers that brought their babies to the counter-protest because they wanted to build a better future for their children. Compare that to the young kids holding up “Black Lives Matter” signs, “Love Trumps Hate” signs. There was anger, there was rage, but there was also love, there was joy. We were all there because we wanted something better for this world, something that would help everybody live their lives as fully as they could.

The Boston counter-protest was 40,000 people of all ages, races, genders, backgrounds, coming together to fight back against a growing force in American politics that seeks to destroy those who are vulnerable. It was a wild success.

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doculicious · 7 years ago

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Boston Common August 19, 2017

FYI #whitemales if you organize an event and only invite other white males to make speeches it is a #whitesupremacyrally. No one is fooled by the claim it is a #freespeechrally.

This event occured on #bostoncommon the oldest #publicpark in America almost #400yearsold. It is home to the oldest #undergroundsubwaystations in #northamerica that were shut down for the day #parkstreetgreenline and #boylstonstreetgreenline. #chinatownorangeline became the closest subway station to the common. The #swanboats in the public garden next door were canceled too! Boston Common used to hold #slaveauctions because #presentdaybostonchinatown used to be a marshy port where slave ships came in. Poet #phylliswheatley came to Boston from #africa as a child on a #slaveship. She was renamed after the ship she came on and her eventual #slaveowner.

#bostonpolicedepartment successfully supported white male racists and set the stage for another free speech rally in the future in Boston. BDP told organizers to spread the word to all #prowhitemale attendees to leave their #racistclothes and #racistflags at home. So the #counterprotestors did not get to see the #kukluxklanmembers from #springfieldmassachusetts in their robes and hoods. Nor did they get to see #neonazi outfits. Nor did they get to see their #handgestures. The counter protesters did not run the racists out of Boston. It was preplanned that if the organizers did what Boston Police told them to do they would get #policewagons to drive them to their connecting private transportation. That is where the bulk of the police presence was on Boylston and Tremont streets because counter protesters were upset that these men were getting the red carpet treatment by the police. In no other city in the USA has police escorted the racists to and from the rally area. Just in #bostonmassachusetts.

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rabbitcruiser · 2 years ago

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At nine o’clock on the morning on May 28, 1863, the 54th’s 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers gathered in the Boston Common and prepared to head to the battlefields of the South. That evening, the 54th Infantry boarded a transport ship bound for Charleston.

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 8 years ago

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Honoring Dr. King, getting ready for May Day

April 4 actions across the U.S. celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to end the “three evils of society” — racism, militarism and capitalism — while building for May Day 2017.

In Boston there was a spirited rally by Fast Food Workers in Mass Fight For 15, Restaurant Opportunities Center Boston-ROC Boston Organization, Raise Up Massachusetts, Jobs with Justice, housing rights groups, members of Boston’s Chinese community, Veterans For Peace, Service Employees 32BJ, 1199SEIU, SEIU 888, Food and Commercial Workers, the Jewish Labor Committee, representatives of other unions and religious leaders.

The rally at the Parkman Bandstand in the freezing cold and pouring rain commemorated civil rights and social justice leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while in Memphis to support striking Black sanitation workers. The rally took place at the site where in 1965 Dr. King addressed people on the Boston Common.

In Detroit hundreds of low-wage workers and supporters marched April 4 into the Michigan State Office Building in Cadillac Place in the New Center area. This location was chosen to pressure Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to raise the minimum wage. The demonstration was called by D15, the Detroit Fight for Fifteen group, to demand $15 an hour and a union.

After being confronted by the state police, the crowd of mostly youthful workers moved outside for a rally in front of the structure, which included a picket line and speak-out.

Chicago coalition unites for May Day

The coalition planning a giant march and rally for Chicago on May Day held a press conference April 5 to lay out the broad array of issues to be taken on by dozens of participating organizations. Chaired by Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez, the panel included speakers from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Black Youth Project 100 and the Service Employees Union. All pledged to work together to resist the Trump administration’s attacks against workers, in particular immigrants, Black and Brown communities, women and LGBTQ people.

#May Day #MLK #Boston #Detroit #Chicago #labor #unions #workers #solidarity #protest #Donald Trump #Global May Day Strike

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propositivity-blog · 7 years ago

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Propositivity supports pirates and super heros so long as they stay positive! Once again would like to say thank you to everyone who came out last Saturday. We will be reaching out to schools to see if we can host events for college and high school students to help show them that help is out there and they are #NotAlone #propositivity #positivity #notalone #keepfighting #nevergiveup #thursdaythoughts #superman #captainjack #love #mentalhealthawareness (at Parkman Bandstand)

#nevergiveup #captainjack #love #propositivity #mentalhealthawareness #notalone #keepfighting #thursdaythoughts #positivity #superman

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injectionmoldchina · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://www.injectionmouldchina.com/memories-of-bristols-grand-spa-ballroom/

Memories of Bristol's Grand Spa Ballroom

Some cool plastic molded part images:

Memories of Bristol’s Grand Spa Ballroom Image by brizzle born and bred Dancing Through Time

The Spa in Clifton opened to great acclaim but is now derelict

MANY rising stars of the 1950s, such as Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark and Peter Sellers, appeared at Clifton’s Grand Spa Ballroom. And thousands of Bristolians enjoyed the sounds of big bands here, at a dance hall which has been locked up for more than three decades.

But this was no ordinary dance hall. Situated at the foot of a steep staircase leading off Sion Hill, it had originally been built as the Pump Room of the Clifton Grand Spa and Hydro, an upmarket hotel which opened near the suspension bridge in 1894.

Often entertainment was laid on here for the personnel of Navy ships, such as at the time of the visit of various warships in 1898. It was described as a hall of admirable proportions, 100 feet by 57 feet, ceiling height 27 feet, elegant and light with an uninterrupted view from the windows of Leigh Woods, the Suspension Bridge and Nightingale Valley. In the centre was a fountain of white marble with a raised fluted basin. All doors, window frames, panelling and floor were made of oak.

In 1898 it was reported that the Pump Room, being part of the Spa and Hydro, had not only been redecorated but also a passenger elevator had been installed to give access to all the floors of the hotel.

This had been financed by wealthy publisher, entrepreneur and one-time MP Sir George Newnes, who was also the promoter of the adjoining Clifton Rocks Railway. Seven hundred influential Bristolians were invited to the opening dinner. After a sumptuous meal followed by the obligatory speeches, they were entertained by the Band of the Life Guards and singing from Madame Strathearn.

The directors of the Clifton Grand Spa and Hydro boasted that its grand Pump Room was the “most highly decorated and finest in the kingdom”.

However, by 1922, the popularity of the Pump Room and Spa had waned and it was turned into a cinema. Six years later, it became a ballroom, and by the 1950s and 1960s it was one of Bristol’s most popular dance halls.

Long-serving entertainments director Reg Williams, who had his own top band at the Park Row Coliseum in the 1930s, developed a cabaret policy featuring many youngsters destined to be stars.

The 15-piece Grand Spa band was the first to introduce Latin American rhythms to the city.

The musicians played from a bandstand in an alcove, a place from which visitors once took the spa waters pumped up from 250ft below, through the rocks from Hotwells. Dennis Mann, who ran the Grand Spa Orchestra for 10 years from 1960, remembers the ballroom with much affection.

“It was such a wonderful ballroom,” he recalled.

“As a musician, I’d toured all over the country, but this was something different.”

“People danced between ornate pillars. At the bottom of the staircase there were marble steps leading into the ballroom.

“I remember that the women were well-dressed. Up north, they danced wearing headscarves, but at the Grand Spa they were beautifully dressed. And the men wore suits and ties.”

The singer for Dennis’s band was his wife, the late Shirley Jackson.

“We were working in different parts of the country,” he recalled, “and I thought the only way we could see each other was by forming my own band, with Shirley in the nine-piece set up. We broadcast for the BBC’s old Light Programme from the Spa, and we once played with the singer Janie Marden for a live radio outside broadcast.”

“The ballroom was open six nights a week. We called Thursdays ‘reps night’.

That’s when ﬁrms’ representatives who were in Bristol for the week turned up for a night out before going back home the next day,” said Dennis.

“Friday nights was always kept for private functions. We used to play at lots of dances for ﬁrms like Rolls-Royce, police balls and press balls. Old Bristol ﬁrms, like the engineers Strachan and Henshaw, used to have their dances at the Spa.

“We used to get 800 people and more into the ballroom. On New Year’s Eve, it would probably be nearer 1,000. I remember that during the interval the band would jump into their cars and go around to the nearby Coronation Tap for a couple of pints of cider.”

After Dennis left the Grand Spa, he joined the QE2 as bandmaster for six months.

“I was on board when the SAS were winched onto the ship from a helicopter during a bomb scare,” he recalled.

The Grand Spa sparked countless romances, as couples danced between the splendid marble pillars. A popular feature was a machine in the ladies’ toilets, girls who put in sixpence got a spray of perfume.

Delphine Lydall, who lives opposite the old ballroom, remembered: “It was very ornate, very Victorian. I met my husband there on a Monday night. Monday was the under-21 club night. It was all run very properly, and it finished at 10.30pm.”

There were blue and green upholstered wooden-framed chairs, and built in red leather settees that lined the room. The huge 1920s lights were retained, but were dimmed, and used in combination with wrought-iron lantern holders, screwed into the oak plinths of the marble columns to make the place more intimate. The raised platform on the North West side that was installed in the 1922 cinema, covering one fifth of the total floor area, was retained. A second new raised platform was introduced in the alcove, where the stone fountain once stood, which served as a jazz band stand. At the time, it was described as a three-level rostrum with a shell-back for the orchestra. The Music Gallery was turned into a buffet and additional bar for refreshments, the main bar was off the hotel end of the ballroom (underneath the marble staircase).

In the 1960s and 70s, the hotel ballroom was converted to a disco. The original retiring room between the Clifton Rocks Railway and the disco had been fitted out as a make-shift kitchen. Against one wall was a laminated worktop lined with a few 1970s floral wall tiles, with a kettle and a couple of hot rings to make teas, coffees and soup. The Music Gallery was bricked up, and plastic padding put between the bricks and the moulded plaster capitals of the pilasters on either side of the archway, to protect them, in the hope that one day it would be restored. By the middle of the 1970s, all the original decoration had been painted black or dark green and covered by a suspended hessian ceiling; wooden frames were constructed round the marble columns, which were covered in hessian, and lights were replaced with disco lighting.

The Grand Spa changed its name to the Avon Gorge Hotel some 30 years ago, and ever since then the ballroom has been standing derelict. Robert Peel, the hotel’s new owner, has submitted a £10 million scheme to redevelop the whole site, including the terraces spilling down the cliff.

He would like to restore the ballroom, but says this can only be done if permission is granted for the whole complex.

“To restore it would be a great feat, but restoring it on its own would not be financially economical,” he said.

The Grand Spa wasn’t the only post-war dance venue in the city. The Mecca organisation bought the small ballroom known as The Glen, situated in an old quarry off Durdham Down. This became so popular that they built a new one, The Locarno. The site is now the Bupa hospital car park.

The Victoria Rooms was another hugely popular dance hall. The big band of Ken Lewis, who later became a full-time official of the Musicians’ Union in Bristol, often played there.

A couple of hundred yards down Queens Road, opposite the university’s Wills Memorial Building, was the Berkeley Cafe, owned by the Cadena group, which advertised itself as the “largest and most up-to-date cafe in Bristol”.

With seating for 1,200 people, the Berkeley Orchestra played three sessions each day.

The popular “tea dances” held in the cafe’s Queen’s Hall every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon attracted crowds of dancers from all over. The building, which retains its original name, is now a pub.

Clem Gardiner and Arthur Parkman, each with their own bands and their own following, were familiar faces at the Grand Hotel in Broad Street and the Royal Hotel on College Green.

Across the river, band leader Eric Winstone moved his musicians into the Bristol South swimming pool in Dean Lane in the 1960s when it closed for the winter. Boards were put over the pool to accommodate the dancers.

Do you have any photos tucked away somewhere of the Grand Spa ballroom, or of people enjoying themselves there, in its 1960s heyday? If so, we’d love to see them, and perhaps publish them on Flickr, so that others can see just what it was like.

2016 – Once-popular Bristol ballroom left derelict for decades could be brought back into use.

For decades, the once-popular Grand Spa Ballroom below the Avon Gorge Hotel in Clifton, has stood empty and neglected, a relic of bygone days.

Now however, there appears to be plans to bring the former venue back into use by the Hotel du Vin, the new owners of the Avon Gorge Hotel.

#Ballroom #Bristol's #Grand #Memories #Injection Mould

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digboston-blog · 7 years ago

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#Repost from ace DigBoston reporter @sweetadelinevt ・・・ Media finally allowed up to bandstand on Boston Common. Majority of media allowed in an hour after initially told. Spoke with over a dozen officers to be let in. For @digstagramboston #boston #pressfreedom (at Parkman Bandstand)

#repost #boston #pressfreedom

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djtrumpnetwork-blog · 7 years ago

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List: November 4 anti-trump rally locations revealed

Infowars List: November 4 anti-trump rally locations revealed The Refuse Fascism communist group has released a list of meeting places across the country where November 4 anti-Trump demonstrations will be held. If you live in any of these areas it may be a good idea to steer clear of these locations as past Antifa protests have seen violence aimed at patriotic Americans. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); https://youtu.be/nZvmjLBic3U Infowars encourages anyone wishing to attend to remain peaceful and to reject the left’s normalization of political violence. RELATED: FULL-PAGE NY TIMES AD DEMANDS ANTIFA REVOLUTION TO OVERTHROW TRUMP Tune in to Infowars’ coverage of the protests starting at 1pm Central Saturday at Infowars.com/show. https://youtu.be/ogYGQ8JSKdg

AKRON, NOVEMBER 4 4:00 PM

Gather in front of the Mitchell UFCW Building 1655 West Market Str. & North Hawkins Ave.

ATLANTA, NOVEMBER 4 6:00 PM

Euclid & Moreland Ave NE Little 5 Points/Findley Plaza, Atlanta Bring pots and pans, flashlights, glow sticks, lanterns, signs, banners, and everyone you know. The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Facebook Event

AUSTIN, NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

City Hall 301 West 2nd Street, Austin Facebook event page

BOSTON, NOVEMBER 4 4:00 PM

Due to permit negotiations, the November 4th demonstration “This Nightmare Must End” The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!” has been moved from Shoppers’ Plaza to the Parkman Bandstand in the Boston Commons. Facebook event page

CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

Federal Plaza, 219 S. Dearborn Facebook event page

CINCINNATI, NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

Piatt Park 100 Garfield Place

CLEVELAND, NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

Public Square Facebook event page

FALMOUTH, MA, NOVEMBER 4 10:30 AM

Move to Remove Falmouth Town Green, Falmouth, MA

HONOLULU, NOVEMBER 4 9:30 AM

9:30am: Gather at Ala Moana Park (across from Pi`ikoi St.) 11:00 am: Rally at Thomas Square Facebook event page

INDIANAPOLIS, NOVEMBER 4 11 AM & 1 PM

11:00 am at the CVS parking lot, 46th & Keystone 1:00 pm at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, 38th Street entrance

LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

Pershing Square 5th St. and Hill St ~ Downtown LA Facebook event page

MIAMI, NOVEMBER 4 12:00 PM

Gather at Bayfront Park Friendship Torch Facebook event page

MINNEAPOLIS, NOVEMBER 4 12:00 PM

Berger Fountain at Loring Park 1382 Willow Street Facebook Event

NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 4 2:00 PM

42nd Street & Broadway NYC Facebook event page

PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER 4 2:00 PM

Thomas Paine Plaza 1401 John F Kennedy Blvd, Philadelphia Facebook event page

PITTSFIELD, MA NOVEMBER 4 1:00 PM

Park Square 1 West Street Pittsfield MA Facebook event page

PORTLAND, OREGON NOVEMBER 4 2:00 PM

Jameson Square Fountain, Portland Oregon PDX Refuse Fascism! The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! RSVP and spread Facebook page

SALEM, OR, NOVEMBER 4 3:00 PM

Salem Capitol Facebook Event

SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 4 3:00 PM

Union Square, San Francisco Facebook Event

SEATTLE, NOVEMBER 4 12:00 PM

Gather at Seattle City Hall Plaza, 4th Avenue & James Street Facebook Event

TUCSON, NOVEMBER 4 2:00 PM

March begins at Tucson Comic Con / TCC 260 S. Church Avenue Meet @ NO! Banner near front entrance https://youtu.be/9WUS5DRspmo

Donald Trump Network

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#List: November 4 anti-trump rally locations revealed

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hiphoprepublicansworld · 7 years ago

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#MaPoli..Yilin Zheng, a junior at Emerson College, said she was waiting for the E train at the MBTA’s Boylston Station when a man ran right past her and into the tunnel. “It was so crazy, he was standing right next to me and saw someone coming and ran,” Zheng said. “I saw police coming down the stairs, so I pointed (into the tunnel). A whole bunch of police went after him.” BostonHerald.com -Three arrested in Common shooting Fled scene on mopeds after ambushing teen #Embargo #WhoGotShot The Faces of Gun Violence in America 2017. #BostonCommon Three people were in custody last night in connection with the brazen dusk shooting of a 19-year-old man near the Common’s Parkman Bandstand that sent visitors running for cover.Mayor Martin J. Walsh also stressed that the Common was safe but said he was rattled by the possibility that bystanders could have been hit. “This is ridiculous tonight, someone could’ve been seriously hurt here,” Walsh said at the scene. “The shootings going on between groups of people that knew each other, they’re putting their lives at risk ... but it’s the people around them, the random stray bullets that go flying around the city of Boston, is what I can’t stand anymore.” Brenda Coffey and Terri Cagle, of Carbondale, Ill., were sitting near the corner of Boylston and Tremont streets when gunshots rang out. “We heard a ‘pop’ and thought it was fireworks, then heard a ‘pop pop’ and I said ‘That sounded like gunshots,” Coffey said. “Then it was ‘pop pop pop pop pop’ and everybody started running and screaming in all directions, screaming ‘Take cover! Take cover!’ I was terrified.” A Beacon Hill woman out for a jog said she was running near the bandstand when the shooting occurred. “I looked over and I saw a man fall,” she said. “I was too far away to get a good look at him. But I saw him fall.” The woman, who declined to give her name, said she and her husband spend just about every evening on the Common. “I run out here all the time,” she said. “I always feel safe. It’s so sad.” #NewYorkCity #Boston #Orlando #LosAngeles #Oakland #Philadelphia #Cleveland #Chicago #Miami #Atlanta #Houston #Pittsburgh #WashingtonDC #Columbus (at North Billerica, Massachusetts)

#pittsburgh #whogotshot #atlanta #mapoli #oakland #chicago #newyorkcity #miami #cleveland #bostoncommon #houston #washingtondc #philadelphia #columbus #embargo #losangeles #boston #orlando

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h-bailey · 7 years ago

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In the shadows of a racist past, Boston braces for a far-right rally

Barricades set up on the Boston Common where a “Free Speech” rally is scheduled and a large rally against hate in solidarity with victims of Charlotestville will converge Saturday, on August 18, 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

BOSTON — The Parkman Bandstand sits in a quiet corner of Boston Common, well away from the park’s iconic swan boats and the frog pond where little kids by the dozen are known to splash in the fountains during the warm summer months. It is an advertised stop along the city’s storied Freedom Trail, a walking tour of the spots that gave birth to American democracy and helped shape the country’s identity as the land of the free and home of the brave.

But those ideals — particularly the right to freedom of speech — could be put to the test this weekend, as Boston braces for a controversial rally hosted by far-right groups that many here worry could turn violent.

The rally, billed as the “Boston Free Speech Rally,” is scheduled for Saturday, just one week after a protest at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly. A woman was killed and dozens injured after one white supremacist allegedly plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters that was clashing with white supremacists and neo-Nazis who were in town marching against the removal of a Confederate memorial.

Organizers of Boston’s march, planned since July, have insisted that their group has no links to hate groups involved in the Virginia melee, but at least two of the announced speakers have extremist ties. The rally has prompted at least two counterprotest marches, including from the local chapter of Black Lives Matter, which also plans to converge on the Boston Common — prompting warnings from city officials and law enforcement they will not tolerate violence from either side.

On Friday, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh strongly urged hate groups to stay away and called for the city to embrace unity — invoking the history of other speakers who have taken the steps at the bandstand to speak of inclusiveness and equality.

“From that stage in 1965, Martin Luther King spoke the words that still ring true today, that it’s not a battle of white people versus black people, but a struggle of the forces of justice and injustice. From that stage about 10 years ago, Barack Obama was running for president of the United States of America and we began to imagine the idea of our country with its first black president,” Walsh said. “Those are the words we will remember.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., protected by umbrella from rain addresses civil rights marchers on historic Boston Common April 23, 1965 after a march from the Roxbury section. King came to Boston, to lead the demonstration to protest segregation in schools, jobs and housing. (Photo: AP)

Echoing King, he added, “We don’t respond to hate with hate. We respond to hate with peace.”

But Boston’s pushback against hate groups comes as the city has grappled with its own reputation of racism that it has long struggled to shake. Though it is considered one of the country’s most politically progressive cities — one that twice elected a black president, Obama, and a black governor, Deval Patrick, whose two terms in the Massachusetts state house ended in 2015 — Boston’s racial issues continue. That includes a high-profile episode in May when Boston Red Sox fans used racial slurs to heckle Adam Jones, an all-star center fielder for the Baltimore Orioles during a game at Fenway Park.

Black players have repeatedly complained about racial epithets being hurled their way by Red Sox fans at the iconic ballpark. But the abuse made headlines when Jones, who is black, said Boston fans repeatedly insulted him with racial slurs and threw a bag of peanuts at him. Jones described it as one of the worst experiences of his 12-year career. Boston leaders condemned the incident and Red Sox management threatened lifetime bans for any fans caught using racial epithets at the park. Jones later received a standing ovation from Red Sox fans at another game and apologies from Walsh and others who said the behavior was not reflective of their city.

But the incident revived an age-old question for residents here who have long viewed their increasingly diverse city, which has gone from roughly 82 percent white in 1970 to 54 percent white today, as cosmopolitan and enlightened because of the large number of universities and research institutions here. “Is Boston racist?” a Boston Globe headline asked earlier this summer.

In July, the paper in coordination with Suffolk University posed the question to 500 Boston residents. The poll found the city nearly split: 45 percent said Boston is not a “racist city,” while 42 percent said it is, results that were within the survey’s 4.4 percent margin of error. Thirteen percent were undecided. Broken down by demographics, the results were predictable: Blacks and Latinos said Boston is a racist city; whites overwhelmingly said it was not.

But Boston’s ugly history when it comes to race goes back generations, dating back to when the Irish and other immigrants were discriminated against and even quarantined during the early 19th century by the wealthy Brahmin elite. While monuments around Boston celebrate the city’s heritage of being anti-slavery and encouraging freedom for blacks, the city struggled longer than most when it comes to relations between blacks and whites.

“The Soiling of Old Glory” – A white teenager, Joseph Rakes is about to assault black lawyer and civil-rights activist Ted Landsmark with a flagpole bearing the American flag. It was taken in Boston on April 5, 1976, during a protest against court-ordered desegregation busing. The photo won the1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot Photography. (Photo: Stanley Forman/Stanleyformanphotos.com)

The Red Sox was famously the last major team to racially integrate — waiting until 1959 to add a black player to its ranks. But perhaps the most enduring symbol of pain dates back to the 1970s, when white residents violently resisted a federal order to desegregate local schools by bussing in black students. They hurled rocks at buses while some attacked city officials, including many who were black. The tensions continued well into the 1980s, when the New York Times published a 1983 article about racism in Boston. The story was a stain against a city that by then was regarded as liberal and educated since it was the home of some of the nation’s top universities.

But even now racial tensions endure. The city remains largely segregated — with many minority residents living outside of central Boston. Though mayors before him have tried and failed to bridge the city’s divide, trying to solve Boston’s race issues has been one of Walsh’s priorities at City Hall.

Late last year, he convened a series of forums mixing residents of different races from all over the city and encouraging them to talk about racism and how it has effected them or not. The events came after Walsh’s 2013 mayoral campaign, in which he was confronted by a voter who asked him point blank if he thought Boston was a racist city.

Walsh, a Democrat who is the son of Irish immigrants, struggled to answer. He told her he thought Boston was better than it used to be — a response he instantly felt was insufficient. Walsh has since been more outspoken. “We have racism in the city of Boston that we have to deal with,” he said last year. “We talk about one Boston, but we don’t see one Boston in the city of Boston right now.”

Last month, Walsh unveiled a report called “Resilient Boston” aimed at promoting racial equity in Boston, including more investment in black communities, hiring more minorities for city jobs and encouraging more discussions among Boston residents on the thorny issue of race. It’s a plan, he has said, that will likely take years to implement.

Mayor Marty Walsh, right, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker arrive to speak at a press conference held to address a controversial rally planned Saturday for Boston Common. (Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Ahead of Saturday’s rally, Walsh and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker have presented themselves as a united front against racial division. Both were quick to condemn President Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville and the rhetoric he later used in defending white supremacists who sparred with counterprotesters, whom Trump described as equally violent.

Speaking to reporters at City Hall on Friday, Walsh said he would spend Saturday away from Boston Common, touring some of the city’s black neighborhoods in a show of unity. He repeatedly said he wished that he didn’t have to approve a permit for the Boston Free Speech Rally organizers — but acknowledged it was their “right to gather, no matter how repugnant their beliefs are.”

Walsh repeatedly called for peace in the city and bemoaned the attention that hate groups have gotten in recent days. But, he added, “We can’t look away, the children of our city are watching. The young people of our city. …We have to make it clear what we stand for in the city of Boston. We have to stand together.”

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