Pro-police, BLM demonstrators meet in Mansfield

MANSFIELD, Mass. — Perhaps 20 feet of asphalt physically separated protesters in downtown Mansfield Sunday. The philosophical gulf was harder to measure.

“We’re here supporting our police,” said Mike MacDougall of Mansfield. “We’re supporting black lives at the same time because black lives are so important to us.”

“Mansfield is not a hateful town,” said a demonstrator, who said she was protesting across the street on behalf of Black Lives Matter. “We are not the type of people to be racist. But these people come in and make it that way.”

What started as a pro-police protest, just days after charges were announced in the Breonna Taylor case, morphed into a shouting match across a downtown street, each side’s arguments seemingly focused on which lives matter.

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“I’ve been in Mansfield for 12 years now,” MacDougall said. “I have friends that are cops, and it’s so important what they’re down right now to make sure we show them that we have their backs.”

“We’re just here to say the system is built to oppress people of color and it’s built on the backs of people of color,” said a demonstrator. “So we’re here to say, ‘down with the system,’ and we’re going to rebuild in a fair and equitable way.”

Despite the shouting, the seeming rancor of the event, both sides claimed some common ground.

“We never said that all lives didn’t matter,” said Black Lives Matter supporter Amelia Zachary. “We’re trying to support black people because they’re the only ones in danger from police.”

“We support black people but we support cops,” MacDougall said. “We could do both. We can do both and we can all get along.”

Cox Media Group