HARI SREENIVASAN: Echoes
of last weekend's protests
in Charlottesville,
Virginia, continued
to reverberate today.
Counterprotesters took
to the streets in Durham,
North Carolina, even
before a rumored white
supremacist march
got under way there.
And in Boston, police and city
officials are preparing the
city for a self-titled free
speech demonstration
slated for tomorrow.
John Yang takes it from here.
JOHN YANG: Thanks, Hari.
To talk about how Boston
authorities plan to deal with
tomorrow's rally, I'm joined
from Boston by Phillip
Martin, a senior investigative
reporter at PBS station WGBH.
Phillip, thanks for joining us.
First of all, help
us understand this.
Is there any connection
between the people organizing
tomorrow's event in Boston and
the people who organized last
week's event in Charlottesville?
PHILLIP MARTIN, WGBH: Well,
the people who are organizing
tomorrow's event would like
to say there's no connection.
They call themselves the
Free Speech Coalition.
And I can talk about that
later, what the Southern Poverty
Law Center says about the
Free Speech Coalition.
But some of the same
speakers, some who have
now been disinvited or
dropped out altogether,
are some of the same people
who are connected to the
Charlottesville rally.
We're talking about people like
Augustus Invictus, a renowned
white supremacist, someone who
believes that there should be a
second civil war, and a fellow
named Joe Biggs, notorious
also within extreme
right circles who also
has an association
with what many call the
alt-right, what others simply
call white supremacists.
JOHN YANG: So, given that, what
are Boston police and others
doing to try to -- or what
lessons do you think they have
learned from Charlottesville?
What are they doing to
make sure there isn't
another Charlottesville?
PHILLIP MARTIN: Well,
they are intent on
guaranteeing that there's
not another Charlottesville.
You could start
with the deployment.
We're talking about 500
police officers tomorrow.
None of them will simply
be sitting around, which
is what they believe
is one of the lessons
from Charlottesville, not that
they were super critical of what
happened in Charlottesville,
but they're aware of it.
And so they're talking about
blocking off streets, the
entire perimeter that borders
the Boston Commons.
So, you won't see cars
driving into a crowd.
They're very much aware of what
happened in Virginia and very
much aware of what happened
in Spain, in Barcelona,
the use of cars as weapons.
You will also see a
huge deployment of
state police officers
playing a secondary role.
And what you won't see are
undercover police officers who
will be dispersed throughout
the crowd ready to take away
sticks that might be -- were
attached to placards, ready to
take away bottles, ready
to take away spray cans.
Anything that might be used
as a weapon or construed as a
weapon will be taken away by
police officers.
They're also working with the
Joint Terrorism Task Force.
They have been looking at the
organization, again, that's
sponsoring this, a coalition
of actually young people who
call themselves libertarian,
but whose speakers roster and
some of their rhetoric reflects
some of the extreme right-wing
events that we have seen
around the country,
including in Virginia.
JOHN YANG: Phillip Martin from
WGBH in Boston, thanks so much
for helping us out understand
what's going to happen tomorrow.