Organizers tried to weed out vocal protesters from Richard Spencer speech
GAINESVILLE — Two University of Florida students who attended white supremacist Richard Spencer’s Thursday speech said event organizers tried to keep out anyone who would not allow the white nationalist to speak.
Kristen Jackson, 19, said people who wore shirts bearing messages like “Black Lives Matter” or carried anti-Spencer signs were turned away at the somewhat secluded location where tickets were handed out. But the event was not just limited to white people.
“It did seem like there were more white students than non-white students but I don’t think they were basing it on that,” Jackson said. “It was more like, were you going to let Richard Spencer spout off whatever he wanted to say.”
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Wallace Mazon, 23, had no trouble entering the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Before making his attempt, he discarded a large sign he made and folded another in his pocket.
“They just let us get tickets,” Mazon said. “I just showed them my student ID and they let me in, which is surprising because I’m black.”
Mazon said Spencer’s security team became more selective as the event was about to start and the line for tickets grew longer. The pick-up location was vague, but an area where a large number of Florida Highway Patrol troopers had gathered marked the spot, he said.
“We were in the front of the line, that first group of people, so it was easy,” Mazon said. “And there were other groups that got in, like the Florida Young Democrats, which was crazy because they had brown and black people, too.”
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People who were selectively denied access were thought to have led the protesters that swarmed the center just before the speech.
“I think if they saw they were leading people as they marched they didn’t get in,” Mazon said. “But I think at one point they were like, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
Spencer himself published a Twitter message just before his staff handed out tickets that everyone was welcome to attend. The university initially planned to start distributing tickets the Saturday before the event. But Spencer’s organizers decided to hand out tickets themselves about an hour before the event after hearing word of Gainesville bars offering to trade them for free beer.
Spencer’s ticketing plan created another security challenge, but logistics for the event, such as timing and location, were still controlled by the university. The event was on a weekday, during daylight hours and it was on the western edge of a 2,000-acre campus.
“That definitely worked for us, too,” university president Kent Fuchs said. “They wanted it in the middle of the campus and at night and we said no.”
Jackson said timing kept many of Spencer’s supporters away. Without the lenient rules for entry, most of the 800 tickets would have been unused. During his speech he asked for a show of hands from people who agreed with his ideas and only 30 people responded.
“And I think those were the group that actually were with him, like they were inside when we got in there,” Jackson said. “It was just those people out of maybe 500 people who were in there.”
Jackson grew up just south of Gainesville in Marion County, where she said several people share Spencer’s beliefs. But everyone she knew who would have wanted to attend the event had work.
“I definitely know people who would have killed to be there to hear him speak,” she said. “But they can’t just attend an event like that in the middle of the day.”
