SWAMPSCOTT — A few hundred people gathered outside Gov. Charlie Baker’s home this weekend with a range of strong opinions about the state government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The message, primarily, was reopen businesses, get the economy going, and get people back to work.
Around 2 p.m. Saturday, people started gathering at the intersection of Elmwood Road and Monument Avenue — where Gov. Baker lives. Dozens of local and state police closed off the two roads, while protesters gathered with megaphones, American flags, and signs reading, “Keep America Great,” “Trump 2020,” and “Boycott China.”
“I’m not going to comply, I’m not going to wear a mask, and I’m over it,” said Leon Armstrong, who came up from Florida to protest stay-at-home measures, and led the crowd in a chant of “U.S.A.”
Many were angry at the government’s “essential businesses” order, which prevents many businesses from opening during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m a business owner in Massachusetts, and I’ve been a business owner for 25 years. I survived eight years of Obama, and I never thought I’d be here,” said Vincent Delaney, a Peabody resident who added his business, V.I.P. Mechanical, Heating, and Air Conditioning has had to lay off all its employees, and is about to go out of business. “I didn’t qualify for anything last year because of this guy, two-inch Charlie.”
Delaney said he has no faith that the governor will allow businesses deemed non-essential to reopen soon enough, and he is pursuing legal action against the state. Delaney, like many others at the protest, spoke along partisan lines, praising Trump while chastising Baker — himself a Republican — and Democrats.
“This guy’s going to keep us shut down,” he said. “We’re going to turn this state red in November, and it can be done.”
While easily outnumbered, there were people with opposing views at the event, who stood along the outskirts of the crowd holding signs supporting Baker and his COVID-19 policies.
Marc Strager, of Swampscott, watched from the front porch of his friend’s house at the corner of Monument Avenue and Elmwood Road, directly facing the protesters and standing above a sign supporting Baker.
“This is a very difficult situation, and a lot of people are hurting, but it has to be a safe environment before we can open up,” Strager said.
Strager did not say where he works, but said he is in “retail and manufacturing” and is also out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While he sympathized with the protesters to an extent, he said it is too early to reopen things.
“I can’t wait to open again, but only once everything is safe,” he said. “Some of their (the protesters’) things, I don’t necessarily disagree with, but there is definitely a middle ground.”
Others, like Scott Gilbert, were more passionately against the display. Gilbert was with an organization called Refuse Fascism, and labeled the event a fascist rally, even comparing the protesters to “storm troopers and the brown shirts” in Nazi Germany.
“What’s going on here is a fascist Trump rally,” said Gilbert, who also said he works as a “clinician.” “This is a pandemic, it’s worldwide, and the Trump administration decided consciously not to do anything about it at the beginning.”
Gilbert said not doing anything to combat the spread of the virus is a “crime against humanity,” and that many people would die if nonessential businesses were immediately reopened and went back to business as usual.
The Swampscott rally is only a couple weeks after a rally outside the Massachusetts State House by protesters claiming their freedoms were being unjustly taken away during the pandemic.
Monday, Baker is expected to speak about the “reopening” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what businesses may begin to — or at least begin to think about — reopening. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, there were 84,933 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state as of Saturday.
