Thursday, April 27, 2017
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Far-right supporters planned rallies today to denounce what they called an attempt to silence their conservative views after Ann Coulter said she was forced to cancel a speaking event at the University of California, Berkeley amid concerns violence could break out.
The conservative social and political commentator and writer said she still might "swing by to say hello" to her supporters as police and university officials braced for possible trouble whether she shows up or not, citing intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence.
The tension illustrated how Berkeley has emerged as a flashpoint for extreme left and right forces amid the debate over free speech in a place where the 1960s U.S. free speech movement began before it spread to college campuses across the nation.
As far-right groups and a leftist group prepared for their protests, university police set up barricades as a precaution for possible use in crowd control on the university campus and city officers patrolled a park where two far-right groups said they would hold their protests.
KCBS reported that Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump "Proud Boys," said he will speak in this afternoon at Civic Center Park and encouraged other groups to help make a large showing at the gathering.
The group describes itself on its Facebook page calls itself a fraternal organization aimed at "reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism." It said it supports minimal government and is also "anti-political correctness, anti-racial guilt, pro-gun rights, anti-Drug War, closed borders." Another group called the Orange County Alt Right Group planned a rally in the same place.