Thousands of New Englanders took to the streets over the weekend in protest of police violence, with more demonstrations planned for the coming days. A protest in Boston turned violent Sunday night.
The coronavirus has been the biggest story in the region for months. But for the past week, stories of the virus's impact have been eclipsed by the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, and protests held across the country.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has been walking a fine line in his public comments on all this. Reporter Matt Murphy of the State House News Service joins us to talk through it.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: The governor was first really asked about this — particularly the demonstration — on Friday last week. And he was somewhat encouraging, saying that he could understand why people were doing this.
In fact, he couldn't understand why people wouldn't want to take to the streets, and make sure that their voices were heard. He said he understood the anger, and he continues to say that as the Boston mayor, Marty Walsh — even after what was the largest demonstration yet on Sunday night, and was largely peaceful for much of the night, turned rather violent towards the end of the evening as looting started.
There were protesters overturning plant buckets, smashing business front windows. The police had to resort to using tear gas and other tactics. So it did turn a little bit ugly Sunday night, which was deeply unfortunate.
We saw statements out from both the governor and the mayor thanking both the protesters who remained peaceful and demonstrated peacefully to express their message, as well as to law enforcement for how they handled it. There were a number of arrests. I think things did get physical between some police and protesters.
There are more demonstrations planned coming up. We don't yet know how the city and the state are going to handle these future demonstrations after what happened.
Many protesters appear to have been masked, and these are outside gatherings. But is there concern that these large gatherings will lead to an uptick in positive cases of COVID-19?
Yeah, there is absolutely concern. There's no doubt that these gatherings are certainly in violation of the governor's guidance for gatherings of no more than 10 people. We saw thousands of people out there Sunday night.
But in light of what they are doing and saying, there's has been no effort to discourage them from doing this. The mayor, in particular, on Sunday was just reminding people that there is still a pandemic going on. This virus is still out there. And he said. "Please wear masks. Wash your hands for both yourself and the people you'll be returning home to." And he said the city would even be out handing out facial coverings to people if they did not have their own.
So we saw people trying to take whatever precautions they could. But being in a large gathering like that carries risks still to this day.
Massachusetts has released some coronavirus guidelines for restaurants and hotels, but there are a lot of unknowns. What's the latest?
Restaurants and lodging are both included in Baker's phase two reopening strategy, which the governor plans to make a call on by Saturday, June 6. So we should know by the weekend whether or not on June 8 those types of businesses will be allowed to reopen.
But if they do, it's going to look very different than what we're used to. If you go to a restaurant, you're going to have to sit outside. To start, tables will be split apart; menus will be single-use. Condiments will not be shared condiments. Your party sizes will be limited to six people, and you can't eat at the bar, for instance.
Lodging is an even trickier situation, because the two-week quarantine recommendation for visitors coming from out of state is still in place, and remains in place. They're even encouraging the lodging facilities to encourage, or implement if they can't, 24-hour waiting period for rooms to turn over, to allow for deep cleaning.
So these are not easy things to reopen, but if the data continues to trend in the right direction, we could be there by next week.
