Two rallies held Friday evening in Sweet Home stayed “absolutely peaceful,” police said, though participant numbers were up from the week before.
The fourth straight weekly Freedom Rally on the corner of 15th Avenue and Main Street attracted about two dozen participants at its peak.
About the same number lined the sidewalk near a corner of Highways 228 and 20, holding Black Lives Matter and similar signs.
Passing cars honked at both rallies, prompting cheers in response at the Black Lives Matter event and vigorous hand- and flag waving at the Freedom Rally.
At one point, said police Sgt. Jason Van Eck, vehicles containing “10 or 15 people” showed up in the Dandee Sales store parking lot, across from the Black Lives Matter rally “for 20 or 30 minutes, and then headed out.”
“I assume they were from the Freedom Rally,” Van Eck said. “They did some sort of chant over there and the folks on the Black Lives Matter side didn’t react to anything, really.”
He said the BLM rally seemed to be a “50-50” mixture of Sweet Home residents and out-of-towners.
They included representatives of “some sort of press organization” from the Coos Bay area, who showed up with helmets and gas masks on their backpacks.
“They came over and introduced themselves and said they were doing a press gathering, I guess,” Van Eck said. “I think they were just streaming.”
Thus far, the rallies have been “peaceful,” he said. “I think if both sides leave each other alone, everything will remain low-key. We don’t want to have to deal with a violent rally. We want to keep it peaceful.”
– The New Era staff