SWAMPSCOTT — After more than six months, the weekly Monument Square protest appears to finally be dying down.
At 10:15 a.m., the rally featured only about 10 people, five BLM supporters and five Donald Trump supporters.
Later in the rally the numbers had grown slightly on both sides, but the turnout was still far smaller than the crowds of hundreds who have shown up for these events in the past.
Trump supporters attending the rally questioned Joe Biden’s election victory, which was called by the major news outlets and networks last Saturday. The Associated Press reports that Biden has won 290 electoral votes to Trump’s 217, propelled by victories in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.
“It’s far from over,” said Mike, a local business owner and Trump supporter. “I know that there will be massive riots, and I’m ready.”
“There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to come out,” he said, claiming unverified instances of voter fraud. “The lawyers aren’t gonna say stuff like that without evidence.”
Mike claimed that Trump’s support is much more widespread on the North Shore than it appears.
“So many people in Marblehead or Swampscott who I’d stereotype as anti-Trumpers come out here and thank me. They’re scared! They don’t want to come out and say it because they don’t want their house getting vandalized.”
“Not my house,” added another Trump supporter. “We have guns. I have so much ammunition.”
“They’re drinking the Kool-Aid,” said Gary Gill, The Official Gay Queen For The LGBT Community of Salem, who stood with the BLM protesters waving a NAACP flag. “Everything that they believe in we’ve already proven is wrong. They’re the ones filled with anger. Not the Democrats.”
A statement released by the Swampscott Select Board Wednesday condemned the vulgar and racist symbolism and rhetoric of the protestors, stating that the presence of protest should increase the community’s commitment to become more accepting and inclusive.
“These protestors may be speaking from Swampscott, but they do not, and will never, speak for Swampscott,” the statement reads.
Jim Walsh, the chair of the Nahant Democratic Town Committee, urged his members in an email to forgo the protests which he described as “mostly symbolic,” and to instead focus their efforts on a Georgia postcard campaign, which he deemed to be more practical.
Marblehead resident and Salem State Computer Science student Ben Roze has been attending the events for more than a month in support of BLM.
Today he held a sign reading, “How many more weren’t filmed?”
A self-described anarchist, he expressed his discontent with any “unjust hierarchies.”
“Ultimately I’m pretty anti-government,” he said. “But for the foreseeable future since we have a government, we might as well have it work for the people.”
He was glad to see Trump out of office but expressed his belief that a Biden administration would still be flawed.
“This isn’t going to be the end to my activism,” he said. “I want to push Biden to the left and fight for a more progressive America. I’ll be here as long as this is going on. ”
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected].
