Anarchists, Counter-Protesters Square Off At Nashville May Day March

NASHVILLE, TN — Shouting and menacing from both sides led to a tense confrontation between anarchists and counterprotesters at a May Day demonstration at Nashville's Public Square Park Monday, according to The Tennessean.

Members of Nashville Antifa, who told the newspaper they were marching in support of the working class on May Day, and counterprotesters squared off for nearly two hours as Metro Police tried to maintain calm.

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The face-to-face battle came after weeks of internet bickering, which culminated with one man posting a video of a man holding a hand grenade and brandishing a gun, encouraging people to kill anarchists. That threat was reported to police, one of the organizers of the counterprotest told The Tennessean.

"He was advocating for hurting people," Rutherford County's Brandon Curran told the newspaper. "And we reported that crime."

Curran and Michael Graham of White House said they organized the counterprotest to prevent the kind of property destruction that occurred during recent protests in Berkeley, Calif.

The newspaper reported the out-numbered Antifa marchers carried baseball bats, while the counterprotesters were kitted up with "homemade shields, hockey sticks, (and) flag poles."

Metro Police kept the groups separated with a barrier of bicycles.

Eventually, Antifa left for another demonstration and marched away as their opposition sang the Pledge of Allegiance and chanted "Trump!", according to the newspaper.

May Day began to be celebrated as International Workers Day following a proclamation by the Second International in 1904, commemorating Chicago's Haymarket affair of May 4, 1886, in which anarchists and socialists were blamed — controversially even today — for a dynamite bomb that killed seven police officers and four others during a protest agitating for a eight-hour workday.

Image via Michael Rivera, used under Creative Commons