Rainbow Suits and Riot Gear at the Boston Men’s March
The participants of Boston’s Men’s March had only made it a few steps down Commonwealth Avenue when the clowns arrived.
Numbering nearly 100, they flooded the street, donning tutus and face paint, accompanied by a marching band playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” and “The Imperial March.” The men tried to pray, but their words could not reach God from here, drowned out by the clowns chanting, “Out of the circus and into the streets!”
Thus marked the start of the 2024 National Men’s March to Abolish Abortion and Rally for Personhood. More than 100 anti-abortion protestors — primarily, though not exclusively, men — marched three miles from the Packard’s Corner Planned Parenthood to the Parkman Bandstand in Boston Common. Since 2022, Boston’s iteration of the Men’s March has been met with the Boston Clown March, which bills itself as “a jolly pro-choice musical clown march” meant to counteract the anti-abortion messaging.
While the Clown March may be an unusual form of counterprotest, it is not without precedent. Clowning has historically been used to delegitimize right-wing demonstrations. The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army was a UK-based activist group that used clownery to protest capitalism and the Iraq War in the early 2000s. Across the U.S., clowns have disrupted neo-Nazi marches, transforming racist intimidation tactics into a raucous joke.
In the same spirit, the Clown March has come to make a fool of the far-right. The participants of the Men’s March, with their dark suits and posters of mangled fetuses, carry themselves like mourners in a funeral procession. But their gravitas falters when their Hail Marys fail to overpower the clowns’ cacophony of kazoos. One counterprotester shouts at the men, “Y’all look ridiculous, and I’m a fucking clown!”
In joining the Clown March, counterprotester Elizabeth Lister hopes to undercut the Men’s March. “We don’t want to give them legitimacy, especially because in the current state of U.S. politics, they have entirely too much legitimacy,” she explains. (Men’s March organizers did not respond to a request for comment.)
Lucas Milliken, another participant in the Clown March, wears a bear costume, referencing the viral “man or bear” trend, which asks participants if they would rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear. Throughout the march, he juggles. “It’s a weapon that I have at my disposal to be able to bring this liveliness into this space,” he says. A different person in a bear costume stands at the edge of the Men’s March, holding a handwritten sign that reads “I’m with GAY →” — the arrow pointing to the solemn men praying beside him.
The silliness of the Clown March has a serious purpose. Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, 13 states have enacted near-total bans on abortion. 28 states have bans based on gestational duration, with several criminalizing abortion past six weeks. Since Donald Trump was elected to a second presidential term, some abortion opponents have begun to push for a national abortion ban.
Zoe F. Weiss, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts, came to the Clown March with her husband and infant son. Though Weiss isn’t wearing any clown attire, her husband, who originally suggested they attend the protest, stands next to her with a colorful striped top hat, watching their son in the stroller. Weiss says anti-abortion groups are profoundly misinformed about the circumstances in which most abortions occur and the attitudes of the women getting abortions. “Any preconceived notion people have about the kind of person who gets an abortion has never actually seen that population before,” she says.
Christopher Ferry, dressed in a rainbow tie-dyed button down, explains that his wife had a miscarriage before his daughter was born. “Depending on your definition, she had an abortion, and we got dirty looks from pharmacists for getting the drugs that she needed to not get sick and die,” he says.
As the Men’s March enters Kenmore Square, counterprotesters affiliated with several feminist and socialist organizations converge with the Clown March. The counterprotesters — clowns and comrades alike — form a barricade across Commonwealth Ave., bringing the Men’s March to a standstill. Boston police order the counterprotesters to disperse.
When they refuse, violence breaks out. Officers can be seen dragging one of the counterprotesters by their ankles. Several others are forced to the ground as zip ties are secured to their wrists. Police arrest 17 counterprotesters in total. The Men’s March continues toward Boston Common — now, with police in riot gear walking alongside them. The counterprotesters follow, chanting at the officers, “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”
In Boston Common, the police erect metal fences in the grass around the Parkman Bandstand. The Men’s March congregates close to the bandstand, behind the cops, while the Clown March rallies on the other side of the barricade. Ordinary people strolling through the Common stop to stare at the chaos. Jim Havens, the leader of the Men’s March, gives a grave speech from inside the bandstand. He speaks of mothers and children and what he calls the “lie of abortion.”
But the bystanders, peering over the neon wigs of the clown marchers, might find it hard to take him too seriously.
— Magazine Editor-at-Large Yasmeen A. Khan can be reached at yasmeen.khan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @yazzywriting.