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Article snippet: BOSTON — This city was bracing for a rally on Saturday that was expected to draw thousands of demonstrators, some of them advocating free speech, while many others, fearing that the rally would attract white nationalists, were promising a major counterdemonstration. The dueling demonstrations in Boston, along with rallies expected over the weekend in a handful of other cities, come at an extraordinarily tense moment, a week after violence broke out in Charlottesville, Va., and as a national debate was unfolding over questions of race, violence and the fate of Confederate symbols. Here, in a city accustomed to frequent demonstrations on Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park, no one seemed certain what to expect on Saturday, while city officials announced plans for a heavy police presence and a policy of zero tolerance for violence. “If anything gets out of hand,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said on Friday, “we will shut it down.” Other protests were expected around the country this weekend on the heels of the deadly rally in Charlottesville, where white supremacists led a protest that deteriorated into one of the bloodiest confrontations to date over the removal of a Confederate monument. A woman, Heather D. Heyer, was killed when a car was driven into a crowd of counterprotesters. In Hot Springs, Ark., demonstrators on Saturday were expected to rally in support of preserving monuments to Confederate history. In Dallas, demonstrators said they would meet on Sat... Link to the full article to read more