Following Unrest In D.C., Massachusetts Activists Plan To Protest Every Day Until Biden Is Inaugurated

As thousands of people stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, calling for the re-election of President Donald Trump and violently clashing with police, Scott Gilbert and Stan Lawrence began to gather up their signs, their megaphones and put out a call to Massachusetts-based activists: Fight back.

“We need millions of people to be in the street to stop this fascist movement,” Gilbert told GBH News, marching from Nubian Square to the Massachusetts State House with a crowd of around 50 protesters Wednesday night. “The hardened fascists are taking over the capital. Where are the millions of people who hate this sh*t right now? They need to be in the streets.”

Gilbert, a 67-year-old Somerville resident, and Lawrence, a 72-year-old from Arlington, are both regional organizers for the Refuse Facism movement, which was created shortly after the election of Trump.

Wearing an orange shirt that read, “TRUMP PENCE OUT NOW” Lawrence led the crowd in a chant, “Trump lost! Facists go home!” while marching down Tremont street.

“This has to be the beginning of a movement that brings people into the streets,” Lawrence said. “It was wonderful that millions of people voted to remove Trump from power. But people have to realize that you can't put back a fascist movement by voting and then going home. You have to come out in the streets and the numbers have to grow.”

The Refuse Facism organizers are planning protests every day in Boston and in cities around the country until President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated and the transition of power is complete, Lawrence said.

Congress was set to confirm that Biden had won the 2020 presidential election Wednesday, an outcome that Trump — who lost both the electoral college and the popular vote — continues to dispute. “We will never give up, we will never concede,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters outside the White House, just one hour before the process to count the electoral votes was set to begin.

That’s when the demonstration turned violent, with a mob of armed Trump supporters pushing their way into the U.S. Capitol, firing weapons and pushing past police and security. A woman was shot inside the building and later died.

At the protest in Boston, activist Antuan Castro Del Rio expressed disbelief that the police — who tear-gassed protesters outside a church in D.C. so that the president could pose with a bible — could not stop Wednesday’s mob.

“Are you going to tell me that in the most militarized country on the planet, with the most militarized police in the world, they couldn't stop a small group of white men who are armed?” Castro Del Rio, a 32-year-old Watertown resident, told GBH News. “We have a country that has different judicial systems, one for Black and Brown people, one for police and armed forces and one for the rest of the people. We police Black and Brown people one way, and we police white people another way.”

The response from law enforcement to the pro-Trump extremists who breached the Capitol building was symbolic of a larger policing issue, Lawrence said, where those who support and uphold a “fascist regime” of white supremacy are supported by police departments.

“If there had been a demonstration of Black Lives Matter that had come anywhere near that level of intensity, they would have been forcefully, powerfully put down,” he said. “The fact that these thugs were able to run rampant in the halls of Congress demonstrates to me that it wasn't being taken seriously.”

Ernst Jean-Jacques, a Roxbury-based activist who was recently arrested during a protest in Swampscott, said Wednesday’s events demonstrated a disparity in policing that Black Lives Matter activists like him have been fighting against all summer.

“Law enforcement protects one side and assassinates and harasses the other side," Jean-Jacques said. "Something has got to give.”