A small-town solidarity rally with Black Lives Matter ended in chaos after some of President Donald Trump’s supporters showed up with guns to berate demonstrators.
Alicia Gee, a 36-year-old substitute teacher, was inspired by demonstrations in Hazard, Kentucky, to hold a protest in her hometown of Bethel, Ohio, to show support for equal rights, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.
“I guess in my mind, we only think about protests happening in the city,” Gee told the newspaper. “I’ve always gone to cities to protest, and then to see that something was happening in Hazard — I was like, if Hazard, Kentucky, can have a protest, Bethel can have something.”
Gee, a former children’s minister and a member of the village’s arts collective, set up a Facebook page for the event Tuesday, hoping to draw about 50 supporters, and she drew chalk marks on the sidewalk Saturday night to allow demonstrators to remain socially distant from one another.
But her plans were upended when a group of armed motorcyclists and others showed up wearing Confederate flag, […]