This last week, President George W. Bush spoke at a fundraiser at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, where he delivered this speech.
As I was staying downtown that afternoon, a counterpart and I walked the four blocks from our hotel to the “designated protest area” to check out the protests.
Other images available in my picture gallery.
My observations… About 500 people overall, 4000 were predicted by anti-bush groups here. I’d say 100 were pro-bush, 400 were anti-bush, but that’s a non-scientific estimate.
Protesters comments ranged from “bush is a liar” to “free the haitians” to “free the palestinians’, and so on. Pro-Bush folks mostly had “college republicans for bush” and “Bush / Cheney” placards.
The rudest nastiest protesters were the union workers – they were in the face of the college republicans, cursing, and screaming.
The funniest protesters were the “Billionaires for Bush” – you can see their website here.
Police were there in force, but not quite the overt presence I was expecting. We did see one counter-sniper team on the roof of a nearby building, you can see that in a couple of the photos.
All in all quite an entertaining experience.