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.
![](/images/protests/bfb.jpg)
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.