I Was Wrong. Please Accept my Apology.

Scott Oliveira
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read

I am someone who admits when I am wrong, and this is one of those times. As most of you know, last Saturday, people protested a Free Speech Rally in Boston. Last week I used to type that phrase, free speech rally, in quotations. I no longer am doing that because I truly believe that the people who gathered in that gazebo were there to cause no harm and express their first amendment rights as Americans. They weren’t there to to push some Alt-Right or Neo-Nazi agenda. They were people of all different races, backgrounds and beliefs all gathered to express those views, and they were met with 30,000 people who wanted them gone, yelled awful things at them and cheered when they left. They were even a group of people who reached out to a representative of BLM to ask if they wanted someone to come to the rally to represent BLM. There were people at the rally who were holding signs saying “Black Lives DO matter” The organizers of the free speech rally actually denounced racism. How are these people white supremacists?

I am apologizing because as someone who loves Boston, loves this country, and loves people exercising their free speech in protesting, jumped the gun on sharing videos of the liberal victory and added to the shaming of the people gathered in that gazebo without doing my due diligence on research like I normally do. I was swept up in emotion and I am human, I make mistakes.

I heard all week that the people responsible for Charlottesville were the ones who were organizing that free speech rally. I was led to believe that the Boston Common, a place I adore, would be tarnished with Nazi and Confederate flags. The opposite happened.

Now, I’m not condemning all 30,000 people who were there in protest. Most of them were there as a symbol to anti-hate and were there in response to Virginia and not there to attack the people at the rally, and to those people, I love you. However, there were people there who were looking for a fight. Who were looking to add more hate and violence into this already volatile world. My heart breaks when I see people who claim to be on the left, who claim to be anti-fascists, burn the American flag on the streets of Boston during a protest that is supposed to be about love. I cringe when my fellow liberals berate someone walking by just because they are wearing a MAGA hat. That’s not what we are about. That is not what I am about. As much as I don’t like our President, I respect the Presidency and I respect my fellow Americans and would not treat them poorly or differently because they think differently than I do and I denounce the people who do. The world would be a boring place if we all had the same opinions.

So… I apologize for throwing out a false narrative out into the world. I hope this makes up for it. I will do my best going forward to do the proper research and push through all the different outlets trying to convey their own narrative before I come up with an opinion of my own. Let’s come together to patch up the Divided States of America.

I have provided links below showing where my new opinion is coming from and why I felt the need to apologize. Thanks for listening.

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Scott Oliveira

Written by

New England native. Just a millennial finding his place in this world.

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