Free Republic

A recent surge in street violence that left six people shot in Dorchester and Roxbury has fed-up residents bracing for more bloodshed ahead of Halloween and city officials vowing to put more cops on the ground in the Hub’s high-risk neighborhoods. In what Mayor Martin J. Walsh described as a series of unrelated shootings, police say six people — three of them young women — wound up in Hub hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds late Friday night and early yesterday morning.

BOSTON — One year after the lights went permanently dark inside the Bay State’s remaining human-staffed tollbooths, giving way to the era of all-electronic tolling, a bill on Beacon Hill touted by a powerful Democrat from Lynn would expand tolling throughout Greater Boston, with high-traveled freeways like Route 128, Interstate 93, Interstate 95, and Route 2 transitioning into tollways. State Senator Thomas McGee, the chairman of the Joint Transportation Committee, filed the bill, “An Act Establishing the Metropolitan Transportation Network,” last January. His bill was heard by the committee on Tuesday. Testifying at the hearing against the bill was Citizens...

Launched in 2015, the fair-wage pizza shop will close at the end of the year, according to Bing Broderick, executive director for the nonprofit Haley House, which oversees the shop. While popular, the shop is not breaking even financially, which has put stress on the wider nonprofit organization. “I don’t think anyone is looking at it as a failure,” said Luther Pinckney, a team leader at Dudley Dough, which is in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building. “It’s an experiment, and some very good things came out of that, such as skill-building for staff and being in this building at...

The rage is still strong in some Trump opponents who plan to band together to "scream helplessly at the sky" on the one year anniversary of the 2016 election. Facebook events around the country invite people to gather together and let out a "primal scream for the current state of our democracy" on Nov. 8. The idea came from Boston, where people will gather in America's oldest park, the Boston Common, to scream. Other liberal cities like New York, Austin and Philadelphia picked up the idea.

Police yesterday were searching for multiple suspects who fled the scene of a fatal predawn shooting at the Holiday Inn Express in Dorchester. Police responded to the hotel, located just steps from Interstate 93 South, at 4:15 a.m. yesterday after receiving a call that someone had been shot. When they arrived, they found a man in his mid-20s in a fifth-floor room suffering from apparent gunshot wounds, police said.

Connecticut abolished tollbooths more than 30 years ago, and every attempt to reinstate them since has been blown out of the water. But that would have to change, says U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, should his proposed underground highway system in Hartford become reality. For the last eight months Larson has talked to nearly every civic group, news editorial board, local business, municipal government, state agency, and federal office, trying to drum up support for his proposed $10 billion “big dig” project. So far, support has been hit or miss for the plan that would sink interstates 84...

On January 13, Robert González Nieves, archbishop of San Juan, revealed Pope Francis’ role in Barack Obama’s pardon of terrorist mastermind Oscar Lopez-Rivera. Speaking from the Cathedral of San Juan, Nieves announced that although the Holy Father made no public statement of his involvement, he had indeed worked behind the curtain on behalf of the unrepentant, bloody-handed Lopez-Rivera. The archbishop was pleased to say: “I know that there have been efforts made through diplomatic channels. The pope is very aware. We are grateful to the Holy Father for his support.” Papal complicity in this politically charged act received little notice...

UPDATE, 1 a.m., Sept. 14: The protest group member who spoke to CSNNE said Antifa Boston's claim of responsibility for hanging the banner at Fenway Park is "ridiculous." "The five of us are in no way associated with Antifa nor did Antifa Boston have anything to do with the action," the group member wrote via text. As proof, they provided an image of the banner when it was being unfurled ahead of the demonstration, as a test.

Specifically, they are having a Freaky Friday and demonstrating in the streets, the way students did in the 1960s. "Thirty-one professors from Harvard and other Boston-area universities were arrested Thursday for blocking traffic along Massachusetts Ave. in protest of President Donald Trump's decision to rescind an Obama-era program that gives legal protections to undocumented young people," The Harvard Crimson reported on September 7, 2017. "Professors took to the street outside Johnston Gate in a planned act of civil disobedience, forming a human chain and blocking traffic on Mass Ave. Before the arrests, Cambridge Police officers read a written statement warning...

A masked man burst into a Dorchester barber shop yesterday morning and fatally shot a customer as he sat in a chair getting a haircut, then turned and left, police and witnesses said. “He came in, shot and got out,” the shop’s owner said, translating for another barber who witnessed the killing. “There was no robbery. He didn’t say anything.” The shooting occurred at about 10:45 a.m. at Creole International Style on Stoughton Street, police said.

A group of Boston Public Schools teachers is aiming to build a new ethnic studies curriculum for schools across the district to expose Boston kids in the majority-minority district to the diverse histories and cultures of their families. “The mission is to have a curriculum that meets student needs and is reflective of our students’ backgrounds,” said Natalia Cuadra-Saez, a history teacher at Snowden International School who this summer travelled to Savannah, Ga., for a workshop focused on the Gullah descendants of slaves. “It is something students can relate to more. It is more relevant to them. When they see...

The recent acquittal of four Boston Teamsters charged with attempting to extort the producers of the popular “Top Chef” television show is the latest illustration of a loophole in federal law that permits organized labor to engage in acts of extortion that would be illegal if anyone else tried it. Since a 1973 Supreme Court decision exempted union extortion and racketeering actions from the Hobbs Act, so long as the object being extorted constituted a legitimate union objective, union thugs have been getting a free pass on violence and threats such as what occurred in June 2014. Perhaps inspired by...

Kicking off the political campaign season, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh denounced President Trump’s policies at Monday’s annual Labor Day breakfast, saying Trump has turned his back on working families. But as he took aim at the White House, Walsh also had some choice words for union members who showcase their labor connection on the back of their cars alongside Trump bumper stickers. “Those union numbers stand for something,’’ said Walsh, highlighting the gains labor has made through the years. “They stand for healthcare; they stand for pensions and annuities; they stand for the rights and protections [of workers] ......

The counter protest to the Free Speech Rally on the Boston Common went off nearly as expected. The Free Speech people were already at the Boston Common bandstand, protected by a ring of Boston Police on foot, then a second ring of police on bicycles, then a third ring of metal fencing about 200 feet from the bandstand. At that distance, none of the protestors could throw anything and hit the Free Speechers in the bandstand. About half to two thirds of the protestors were there by 11 A.M., organizing, milling about, shouting obscenities while touting their equally obscene signs....

BOSTON — “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” counter-protesters screamed at a Donald Trump supporter wearing an American flag around his shoulders. “We’re not Nazis,” the man in question told The Daily Caller as he scuffled away from the mob. “We’re here to exercise our American tradition of free speech.” He was spat on. Water was thrown on him. His Make America Great Again Hat was knocked off, twice. Nobody broke up the conflict: they were too busy filming from their smartphones like an episode of “Black Mirror.” “YOU KILLED HEATHER [Heyer]!” someone screamed. His companion told them that he served in the...

The Boston “antifa” group lumped the thin blue line pro-police symbol with a list of white nationalist, neo-nazi and alt-right logos, enraged NYPD union officials said Monday. The thin blue line symbol is used to show support for law enforcement and commemorate fallen members who died in the line of duty and has become a symbol of police pride across the country and abroad. However, during the antifa protests in Boston over the weekend, it was shown on one of their posters as a symbol of hate to watch out for, next to images of an alt-right flag and a...

President Donald Trump praised protesters in Boston on Saturday, after an estimated 40,000 people arrived in the city to challenge a planned free speech rally of about 300 right-leaning people. “Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate,” Trump wrote. “Our country will soon come together as one!”

In case all the turmoil in Berkeley, Charlottesville, and now Boston isn’t clear, Antifa revealed its true feelings in a simple tweet on Saturday. “Free speech is dead” a graphic declares. “(Retweet) to piss on its grave,” the self-declared “Anarcho-Communist cause” writes, adding the hashtag #UniteTheLeft.

One week after violent protests rattled Charlottesville, Virginia, a scheduled free speech rally in Boston today was met with thousands of counterprotesters, but the day went off mostly smoothly, police said, with 27 arrests for assaults on police Officers, but few injuries..... After the free speech event has concluded, counterprotesters still swarmed Boston this afternoon, and riot police also responded in the city. ... Amid the confrontations, Boston police tweeted that individuals are asked to "refrain from throwing urine, bottles and other harmful projectiles at our officers."

John Medlar, the 23-year-old spokesman, said he and other young men began communicating on the Internet to express alarm over what they viewed as support for protesters who set fires, damaged property, and started fights following the University of California Berkeley’s decision to invite controversial conservative figures to speak. “We were alarmed that people were OK with fringe anarchists burning down a campus and driving [out] speakers,’’ Medlar said. ... “We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence. We denounce the actions, activities, and tactics of the so-called Antifa (militant leftists) movement. We denounce the normalization of political violence,’’ the...