Rifles, baseball bats and racial slurs: Armed counter-protesters confront BLM protest in Ohio [View all]

[marmar]

Hundreds of armed counter-protesters confront Black Lives Matter rally in Ohio
Counter-protesters harassed a group of peaceful demonstrators with rifles, baseball bats and racial slurs in mostly white town of Bethel, Ohio

(Guardian UK) A small and peaceful demonstration in an Ohio town to support the Black Lives Matter movement at the weekend was overwhelmed when hundreds of counter-protesters – some armed with rifles or baseball bats – harassed the group.

Alicia Gee, a 36-year-old substitute school teacher, expected about 50 people to attend a demonstration – the first protest she had ever organized, she told the Cincinnati Enquirer, but almost twice as many turned out.

The rally was intended to show solidarity with the minority black community in Bethel, Ohio, a mostly white town of about 2,800 people 30 miles east of Cincinnati, she added.

But instead the small group of protesters was overwhelmed when roughly 700 counter-protesters turned up to show their opposition to the kind of rallies and marches against racism and police brutality sweeping the nation since the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/hundreds-armed-counter-protesters-confront-black-lives-matter-event-bethel-ohio