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Conservatives staging free speech rally attacked by critics

APTOPIX Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Protest San Francsico
Posted at 12:57 AM, Oct 18, 2020
and last updated 2020-10-18 01:00:45-04

SAN FRANCISCO — A free speech demonstration staged by conservative activists quickly fell apart in downtown San Francisco Saturday after several hundred counterprotesters surged the area and attacked.

They threw punches and glass bottles, knocking out the front teeth of the organizer of the event.

Philip Anderson, the organizer of the event by Team Save America, posted photos to social media of his bloody mouth with a front tooth missing and another hanging loosely.

The group organized the rally to protest Twitter, which it said squelches conservative speech.

A photographer working for The Associated Press witnessed a Team Save America activist taken away in an ambulance and an injured San Francisco police officer on the ground by the city's United Nations Plaza.