captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, august 19: thousands in boston for a so-called "free speech" rally and counter-protests. the women of the alt-right. and, will a tech company crackdown on hate speech also limit free speech? next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.b.p. foundation. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america--

designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thanks for joining us. one week after the violent white nationalist rally in charlottesville, virginia, a self-described "free speech" rally today in boston organized by conservative activists was eclipsed by thousands of counter-protesters. hours before the rally in the massachusetts capital was to start, an estimated 15,000 counter-protesters marched peacefully through downtown boston. in sharp contrast with charlottesville, today's events in and ner the historic boston common were largely peaceful. more than 500 police officers were on hand, some undercover,

and commissioner william evans greeted the counter-protesters today, telling them violence would not be tolerated. a few dozen people attended the event organized by the boston free speech coalition, but shortly after the rally was scheduled to start-- and vastly outnumbered-- they left the site. today's organizers had publicly distanced themselves from the racist groups that gathered last week in charlottesville. after officials declared the so-called "free speech" rally over, some counter-protesters scuffled with police. there were other anti-racist events planned around the country, including in atlanta, dallas, and houston. for more on the scene today in boston, i'm joined by wgbh senior investigative reporter phillip martin. phillip, you were there. what was if like? >> well, hari, it was-- it was extraordinary in the sense that there were a lot more people there than what was anticipated. several thousand, by one estimate, 15,000 alone marching

from a section of roxbury, which is a black community in boston, to the boston common, where the so-called free speech rally was taking place, which was organized by a group of right-wing activists in the area with some very controversial speakers on hand. they-- the march essentially involved people of all races and represented a number of religions. i spoke to muslims. i spoke to crist crans. i spoke to a number of people who said they'd come in from hartford, "connecticut, part of what they call the moral monday, an offshoot of what happened in north carolina, around voting rights. and they said they would not have missed this because wherever there is hate-- quote, unquote-- they want to counter it with love. so the majority of people i spoke with were people who thought for themselves. antiwhite supremacists, they

said, anti-neo-nazi and anti-donald trump. >> sreenivasan: speaking of donald trump he tweeted this afternoon: that's his perception of it. how significant were the groups of people that were there to agitate? >> i would say not significant at all, though they had a presence. they were very apparent. but they were dwarfed by the large number of people who were there, again, to protest peacefully. police made sure that this was peaceful. they waited until the crowd taking sticks and poles away from people that were-- held placards. those placards, again, contained some choice words, which i cannot repeat, many of those directed at the president of the united states. thant-farba, antifas they were called, they were in fact present. they were clad in black, but they were not a significant presence. though, i did find a lot of

people had sympathy for their position. that is to say, their position is we do not negotiate with neo-nazis, white supremacists, and their position is they do not believe in freedom of speech for these individuals. but if they wanted to carry out any type of action, it was not going to be under the watch of the boston police commissioner, nor, frankly, of most of the people who took part in today's demonstration. they were there, and they asserted this forcefully, for peace, to show that they oppose white supremacy, and oppose the president of the united states who they say has endorsed white supremacy and hate. >> sreenivasan: all right, phillip martins of wgbh from boston. thanks so much. >> it's good to join you. >> sreenivasan: the pilot of a state police helicopter that crashed after monitoring the violent white nationalist protests in charlottesville, virginia last saturday was laid to rest today in richmond.

48-year old lieutenant h. jay cullen was eulogized as a "silent giant" by virginia governor terry mcauliffe. a 23-year veteran of the virginia state troopers, cullen is survived by a wife and two sons. after providing video to police on the ground, the helicopter crashed seven miles outside of charlottesville. the national transportation safety board is investigating the cause. the other victim of the crash, state trooper-pilot berke bates, was buried yesterday. a statue of robert e. lee was at the center of last week's violent protests in charlottesville, and early this morning, another statue of the confederate commander was removed, on the campus of duke university in durham, north carolina. there's an empty space in the spot where a statue of lee stood, among nine other historical figures at the entrance to duke chapel. duke university president vincent price said the decision was made after consulting with faculty, students, staff, and alumni, and was done to "above all, express the deep and university." the statue of lee was damaged by vandals who chipped off parts of the nose and face. overseas, an estimated

250 neo-nazi sympathizers marched today in berlin to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of rudolf hess, the one-time deputy to adolf hitler who committed suicide in prison in 1987. they were outnumbered by counter-protesters. with hundreds of heavily-armed police officers keeping the two sides apart. the neo-nazis rallied under tight restrictions. they were allowed to carry only one banner for every 50 marchers, and were not allowed to openly glorify hess. police in spain and along the border with france intensified their search today for the supposed ringleader of the islamic extremist cell that carried out two attacks in and near barcelona thursday. the islamic state claimed responsibility for both. police believe the suspect e van that plowed intoiver of pedestrians in barcelona, killing 13, including an american, and injurng 120 others. one person was killed in a similar attack in a seaside resort 75 miles southeast of

barcelona. in that incident, police shot and killed all five attackers. four other suspects are under arrest. spain's king and queen visited hospitals today, where 12 of the wounded remain in critical condition. europol and police officials in finland tried to determine today if there was any link between the attacks in spain and a deadly knife attack in the western finnish city of turku. intelligence officials say yesterday's spree was "most likely" a terror attack. the suspect is an 18-year-old moroccan who arrived in finland last year seeking asylum. police shot and wounded the suspect after he stabbed two people to death and wounded at least seven others in two public squares, seeming, police say, to target women. four other suspects, all moroccans, have been detained.

>> sreenivasan: in the wake of the violence and tragedy in charlottesville, virginia, last saturday, much of the past week has been spent examining the so-called "alt right." the ideology, based on white nationalism, rejects jewish people, people of color, those in the l.g.b.t.q. community and immigrants, and it is typically seen as a movement made up of white men. however, as reporter seyward darby writes in the september issue of "harper's" magazine, there is a disturbing trend worth paying attention to. seyward darby joins me now. the women, the women have not really been in the imagery that we've seen just in the past week, but as you find out, they exist, and they're growing in numbers. >> i went into this story with a simple question, and that was, "where are the women?" and i started to think of this question last winter around the time that, you know, millions of women around the country were organizing for the women's march on washington, and simultaneously, the alt-right was celebrating trump's victory and being portrayed as a movement of young white men. and i went looking for these

women, and they very much exist. and there is a cluster of them that are very vocal on youtube, twitter, sometimes in real life at conferences and events. and they are very keen to let other women know that they're there, and that the alt-right is a place where, if they're white women of a certain mind, they would be welcome. >> sreenivasan: so what's the allure? i mean, when you see the displays of sort of bravado that some of these men exhibit, why would women want to be there? is it because they like that sort of manliness of manhood, or do they see a place for them in the organization? >> the short answer is yes. they very much like the idea of alpha men who embrace a very sort of aggressive form of masculinity. but in terms of the place women see for themselves, they don't believe that these men are misogynistic in the way that people looking from the outside might. they think that the men of the

alt-right just understand biology and that men and women are fundamentally different, not equal, but equally important, and that men should be alpha, macho, fighting battles, running countries, making policy, whereas women have an equally important role on the home front, nurturing family unit, inculcating the beliefs of this movement. they would say they don't see that as, you know, submission or subjugation. they would say that it's equally important, almost like a yin and yang. >> sreenivasan: so what kind of numbers are we talking about here? >> it's really hard to say. and i spoke to many academics who have studied right-wing extremism for a long time, and they said because the alt-right is ultimately this movement from the internet, very motley, very disparate, from comment boards and various social media programs, it's really hard to get a sense of precise numbers. in terms of women within it, the number you hear bandied about is 15% to 20%.

but they're not necessarily the ones you're going to see in charlottesville. >> sreenivasan: let's talk also about the network effects here. how do these women congregate online? how do they meet each other? how do they get recruited? >> i think it is a deeply, deeply inside the internet in a way that can take a while if you're an outsider to find, to see the patterns of connection. they will say that there are meet-ups happening in real life that, you know, women are organizing in ways you can't see, but i do think fundamentally most of this is happening on these various internet platforms. >> sreenivasan: is there a moment that they see coming? i mean, do they see their influence increasing? >> they will say that they do. they would say that the moment is now, that we're seeing it. they don't necessarily see donald trump as alt-right. when i met and interviewed her, she pointed blank said, he's not one of our guys."

but he's got the coattails that they felt they needed to be pulled more so into the main stream. and what we're seeing in charlottesville and other place where the alt-right is, you know, stepping out into the world to show themselves, i think that they very much see this as the moment when they can garner more followers. they want it to seem like they have a lot of momentum. whether or not they do, it's hard to say. >> sreenivasan: all right, seyward darby has this as one of the big stories in "harper's." thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. >> sreenivasan: the events in charlottesville also prompted a response from the tech community that quickly took steps against hate speech. companies like google, godaddy and cloudfare have decided to stop hosting or supporting white supremacists' websites. paypal and apple pay have decided to stop allowing known hate organizations from using their payment platforms to raise funds. fundraising sites like patreon and gofundme have kicked certain users off their system. facebook, youtube, and twitter

have begun shutting down known white supremacists' accounts. airbnb and uber have kicked white supremacists off their service, and even began taking down music from hate rock bands. our next guest says this is a slippery development. she's cindy cohn of the electronic frontier foundation. she joins us now from san francisco. cindy, for those people who aren't familiar with what e.f.f. does, a nutshell summary. >> well, we work to make sure that when you go online, your rights go with you. so, we spend lot of time thinking about free speech and privacy, and how to make sure that the internet is the place that we all want to be. >> sreenivasan: tell us of the constitutional protections in place for free speech and how they translate online. a lot of these public companies and private companies on the internet are going to say, "hey, we're well within our rights. we are the ones that host these communities, and we want to figure out what kind of speech works." >> they're absolutely within their rights to kick off these... these folks. there's no legal problem here.

there's no first amendment problem here because they're private companies. so they're within their rights. you know, what we're worried about is that this... this tactic is not a new tactic. and we think it's a very dangerous one. we have spent last ten years trying to help all sorts of websites and speakers online respond to threats being issued against their service providers to try to silence them. and while, you know, everyone's just awakening to this now because of the horrific, you know, words on these websites, you know, the vast majority of people who we have tried to help protect are people who i suspect at least some of your audience will be far more sympathetic to. >> sreenivasan: are you concerned that different groups can fall under the same category? right now, we're going after the nazis. we may go after someone else six months from now or two years from now. >> that's exactly right. in fact, there is a pretty significant effort to try to get people to call the black lives

matter movement a terrorist movement and stop their hosting. in the past, we've helped people who have done parody sites. we have seen big companies like debeers or the u.s. chamber of commerce try to go after parody or criticism websites by getting their hosts and their domain name hosts not to host them anymore, to chase this speech off of the internet. so, you know, i have no love lost for the daily stormer and the neo nazis. but if we endorse this tactic here, it's going to be much harder for me and other people the next time, when it turns around and it goes against a cause that we love, to say, "no, no, no." you know "you should just be a neutral content host." >> sreenivasan: it seems that these tech companies are actually creating a set of laws that cross borders. i mean, if facebook has two billion users on the planet, this is not just the united nations sort of geneva conventions that we're living by; they're figuring out what speech works in one country, what's controversial in another.

>> that's correct, and they get it wrong all the time. and this is something that we know from where we sit because we try to help them. let me give you a very recent example. youtube was trying recently to use artificial intelligence to get rid of what they called "extremist content" on youtube. and you know what they ended up taking down? a bunch of the people who are collecting war crimes evidence. it's not that easy to just say, "oh, well, that's bad speech, we don't want it; this is good speech, we do." there are easy cases, but there is far more hard cases. and what we see is, this ends up meaning that powerful people get to censor and take speech down and not-powerful people don't. >> sreenivasan: all right, cindy cohn of the electronic frontier foundation joining us via skype from san francisco today, thanks so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: six police officers were shot, two fatally, in three unrelated incidents

overnight in florida and pennsylvania. in florida, two officers in kissimmee came under fire after police say they approached a group of people suspected of illegal activity. both officers were killed. a suspect is under arrest. and in jacksonville, officers confronted an armed suspect said to be threatening three people in a house. two officers were wounded and the suspect was killed. in a third shooting, two pennsylvania state troopers exchanged fire with a suspect outside a convenience store south of pittsburgh, killing him. the troopers are listed in stable condition. president trump thanked steve bannon for his service in a tweet this morning. white house officials announced that bannon departed yesterday as the president's chief political strategist. it was a year ago that bannon was appointed the trump campaign's chief executive. bannon returned last night to his position as executive chairman of breitbart news. well in advance of the event, the white house said today that president trump and first lady melania trump have decided to skip this december's kennedy center honors festivities.

traditionally, the first couple has hosted a white house reception and sat with the honorees during the ceremonies. alluding to comments by several honorees that they would not attend the reception, the white house said the trumps wanted t"" allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction." the honors celebrate people who have made lasting contributions to the arts and culture. today's announcement comes one day after the president's committee on the arts and humanities resigned en masse in protest over mr. trump's controversial comments on the violence in charlottesville. heavy monsoon rains in nepal, bangladesh, and india are believed to have killed some 500 people and to have affected more than 16 million others. the red cross is calling the flooding one of the region's worst humanitarian crises in years. the red cross says more than a third of bangladesh and nepal have been flooded. heavy rains and damaged roads are hampering the relief efforts while relief officials also have to worry about the threat of waterborne disease and food

shortages. india's meteorological department forecasts more heavy rain over the next few days. artist robin bell is using projection art, and the trump international hotel, to protest the trump administration. you can read more at www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: oysters were once so abundant in new york city that it used to be known as the world's oyster capital, but over-harvesting and pollution led to extinction of the harbor's population. now, thousands of new york city public school students are trying to bring the oysters back. newshour weekend's ivette feliciano reports. >> does everyone have a pen or pencil? >> reporter: 7th grade science teacher clarissa lynn takes her class on a 15-minute walk from their school in harlem to new york city's east river. there, they pull up a cage filled with oysters from an oyster restoration station. >> put it in. >> reporter: observing the growth of oysters is part of the billion oyster project, an initiative to restore a billion

of the once-plentiful oysters to new york's harbor by 2035. clarissa lynn's central park east 2 is one of over 100 participating middle schools and high schools. >> the oysters are a perfect hands-on vehicle to teach kids a lot of different science skills. you can go into lessons on classification, and identification, ecology roles. so, how do these organisms work together to create a balanced ecosystem? >> reporter: more than 10,000 students monitor and collect data at 100 oyster restoration stations. >> you can identify what type of crab. >> they're learning so much about the world that they particularly live in. we're not studying a coral reef in some other part of the world. no, this is your backyard. >> reporter: students document conditions, like water quality and clarity, and write reports. >> my question is, how and why are the oysters dying?

since there's like, a lot of things going on. like, our oysters haven't been doing well today, so-- and like, for the past few months. >> we started with about 100 and then next thing we know, a bunch of them died. >> reporter: twins janine and e.j. jiminez are studying why 70% of the oysters have died at their station since last october. >> that was their whole inspiration for their project: why is this happening? finding out that this is not a suitable place to put an oyster reef is important, because that will help us narrow down the places for the project to ultimately be successful. >> reporter: new york city was once known as the oyster capital of the world, with 200,000 acres of oyster reefs. >> there were more oysters consumed, produced, and shipped out of new york harbor in new york city than anywhere else in the world. but by the early 1800s, we had eaten them all. >> reporter: billion oyster project co-founder murray fisher considers oysters a keystone species that can help can clean or filter the water by removing

algae, phytoplankton, and other particles. >> an adult oyster filters, conservatively, in the summertime when they're feeding, a gallon of water an hour. so 24 gallons a day. that means the standing volume of new york harbor would be filtered by a billion oysters once every three days. >> reporter: the oyster reefs not only filter the water, they also provide habitat for other wildlife and help protect erosion of the shoreline from future storms and flooding. since the project began three years ago, students have planted over 24 million oysters in the harbor. while these oysters are not destined for consumption, restaurants across the city are participating, by providing millions of recycled oyster shells to build back the reefs. >> we keep the top part of the oyster shell. when they're done with the oysters, we make sure we keep the bottom parts as well. >> reporter: naama tamir hosts a daily oyster happy hour at her restaurant, lighthouse, in

brooklyn. she donates 800 shells a week. the project then implants them onto the shells and distributes them to the monitoring stations. the project still has a long way to go before reaching a billion. >> my hope is that some of these students will end up in career paths into sciences, technology and engineering. they definitely have the ability, and i think a big part is helping them see that they have the confidence or they have the capability to do that. >> this once was one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. if we want to live sustainably and happily for another several hundred years or maybe every thousand years, we've got to take care of this natural resource. and if we don't know about it, we're not going to take care of it. >> sreenivasan: finally, a tragic mystery of world war ii, solved. researchers, led by microsoft

co-founder paul allen, said today they have found the wreckage of the navy cruiser u.s.s. "indianapolis" on the bottom of the philippine sea, more than three and a half miles deep. the warship sank in only 12 minutes after being torpedoed near the end of the war. only 317 of the crew of almost 1,200 survived. the indianapolis had just completed a secret mission, to deliver parts for the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima. that's it for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz.

the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. be more, pbs.

- [announcer] jfk, the lostt inaugural gala has been made possible by support from kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. the david and carol lackland family foundation. with additional support by the blanche and irving laurie foundation, the estate of alice h. mathias, and edward n. krapels, and by viewers like you. thank you. (give me the simple life) ♪ i don't believe in frettin' or grievin' ♪ why mess around with strife - i hope that no one will think it presumptuous for some of us in the entertainment world to pay tribute to the president-elect of the greatest nation in the world. ♪ you make me young