On Saturday, City Hall plaza was full by 7:30 p.m., the official kickoff time to the protest against white supremacy. Helicopters circled overhead, including one that liked to dip hard into the turns as it cased 1500 Marilla. There were officers on rooftops, officers on horseback, officers on bicycles. DART buses and sanitation trucks blocked streets. I counted officials from the Dallas Police Department, the Department of Homeland Security, Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, and Texas Department of Public Safety. They took no chances on Saturday, and for the most part, it looked like they wouldn’t have to. It was peaceful and positive inside the bubble of the plaza.
Attendees were very proud of their signs—“Nazis Go Home To Their Mom’s Basement,” “The South Despised Again,” “Dear World, We’re Sorry … Again”—and I saw two Colin Kaepernick jerseys and one woman handing out sheet cake. Memes go both ways. You could hear speakers shouting through megaphones in the distance, but it was tough to make out their words. The constant chant, however, was undeniable: “Take them down.” Another group had a giant paper mache Donald Trump, which they walked throughout the crowd to the beat of tribal drums.
A group of anti-fascist antifa protestors, probably about eight of them, snaked their way through the plaza on their way to the statues, which was where the pro-Confederate memorial folks had largely holed up. The antifa protestors covered their faces with black T-shirts and walked in a straight line, moving a little nervously, sometimes stopping to make sure their buddies hadn’t gotten separated. At that time, their presence was jarring: The mood was light and jovial. More than anything, they looked silly. At that point, I’d seen maybe two counter protestors, and they were shouted down and minimized.
I didn’t think much of it until an hour later, when reports came of mounted police surrounding the monuments as the antifa folks harassed the few pro-memorial counter protestors who had gathered in the cemetery near the statues. The Dallas Morning News covered this well, noting the “Tear Them Down” rhetoric had turned violent a few hundred yards away from the plaza: “Fuck the police,” being the most prominent. Members of Black Lives Matter helped calm the situation, urging antifa to back off. One man, in a cowboy hat and a blue gingham shirt, tried to start a chant of “mask off!” Around 9:30, the cops began getting folks out, and some stayed until 11 or so. By the time it wrapped, there were no arrests and no injuries, and Mayor Mike Rawlings praised the city’s decorum.
We asked the photographer James Coreas to shoot the protest for us. What he brought back was a reflection of the above: A little bit of tension, and a whole lot of people—2,500 of them—showing up for equality and calling for the teardown of the city’s Confederate monuments.
