Boston Free Speech rally organizer sues Marty Walsh for slander
Mayor Marty Walsh is being sued for slander by an organizer of this summer’s Boston Free Speech rally, who says he lost his job and was repeatedly “called a hater” online following the demonstration, which attracted widespread media attention and counter-protests.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Berkshire Superior Court, sues Walsh in his personal capacity, claiming the mayor made “either knowing lies or reckless false statements” by repeatedly characterizing the rally and its organizers as “white supremacists” or hate groups.
Brandon Navom, one of the rally’s organizers and suit’s plaintiff, says he lost his consulting job in the software industry and was cyber-bullied because of Walsh’s comments.
Navom’s lawyer, Rinaldo Del Gallo III, says there was an “easily found wealth of information” online showing that the rally’s organizers, speakers, and “invited attendees” were not members of white supremacist or hate groups.
“I believe the Mayor was purposefully lying and if he wasn’t lying, he was grotesquely incompetent,” Del Gallo said in a statement. “But at the very best the Mayor’s comments [represent] a wanton, callous and reckless disregard for the truth.”
The mayor’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.
Organizers of the August rally described themselves at the time as “neutral libertarians” and “free speech absolutists,” though they admitted there would be some “overlap” in attendance between their rally and the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Anti-Defamation League described the group behind the rally as a “loosely-connected movement whose adherents generally shun white supremacist thinking, but who are in step with the alt right in their hatred of feminists and immigrants, among others.”
In the suit, Navom strongly denies that he is a white supremacist or a member of any hate group. According to the ADL, Navom is a failed Lowell City Council candidate who describes himself as a libertarian and has propagated the conspiracy theory that former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered for political reasons.
It’s particularly unclear how the comments by Walsh cited in the lawsuit, which never mention Navom by name, directly caused the plaintiff’s economic and emotional losses, as opposed to comments made by others characterizing the free-speech rally-goers as white supremacists.
Del Gallo argues that people turned to the news for information on the rally and that media outlets “constantly” quoted Walsh. The lawsuit extensively lists media accounts in which Walsh is quoted characterizing rally-goers as representing “hate.”
“This stuff will be up on the internet forever and forever haunt my client,” Del Gallo told Boston.com.
The lawsuit does not provide any details about how Navom was fired. But according to his attorney, people found Navom’s information online, figured out where he worked, and contacted his employer, who in turn fired him.
“If the Mayor told the truth about the organizers and speakers (that they were not white supremacist and they were not members of known hate groups), 40,000 people would not have showed up in protest ‘against white supremacy,'” Del Gallo said in an email.
The lawsuit comes the same week as a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union and regional media organizations accusing the City of Boston of improperly excluding journalists from a “buffer zone” surrounding the rally’s speakers.
Another “free speech” rally on the Common is scheduled for November 18.
