A protester on Boston Common on Monday apparently wanted to give Mayor Michelle Wu an earful.
There was only one problem, though: The woman he directed his criticism at wasn’t her.
The demonstrator interrupted a press conference featuring state Rep. Nika Elugardo aimed at boosting support for election-day voter registration, a move supporters say would help raise turnout among Black and Latino voters in Massachusetts, MassLive reports.
The protester, an unidentified man wearing sunglasses and a mask, claimed the American Civil Liberties Union does not care about minority communities and called on officials to probe criminal cases that involved Annie Dookhan, a former state chemist who fabricated evidence in approximately 24,000 cases.
The ACLU requested the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to dismiss over 40,000 cases that were impacted by Dookhan in 2016, the outlet reports.
“You’re a political puppet … Why don’t you look into it, Mayor Wu?” the protester said, apparently thinking that Wu was among the group leading the conference. “Look into that — you’ll find the truth, Mayor Wu.”
But the mayor wasn’t there.
Instead, the protester, unknowingly, was leveling his criticism at Beth Huang, executive director of Massachusetts Voter Table, who made light of the incident on Twitter later Monday.
“If only being a 5’4″ Asian woman imbued in me the powers of being mayor of Boston,” Huang wrote.
“I am not @wutrain, but we both support voting rights!” she wrote in a follow-up tweet.
Wu chimed in on Twitter, too.
“We should make some good trouble with this,” she tweeted at Huang.
Wu has been no stranger to protestors, as a vocal minority have raised opposition to the city’s employee and indoor COVID-19 vaccination mandates in recent weeks, including by staging demonstrations outside the mayor’s Roslindale home.
But Monday’s incident appeared to succinctly highlight the sexism and racism Wu, the first woman and person of color elected to serve as mayor, has experienced since taking office in November. She and other public officials have spoken out about and denounced the persistent issue during her short tenure in the mayor’s office.
Monday’s press conference came as the Election Modernization Coalition, a group of voting and civil rights advocacy organizations, continued to push for election-day voter registration to be included in a massive voting reform legislative package on Beacon Hill.
The proposal, if passed, could make certain practices — like mail-in voting — adopted during COVID-19 permanent fixtures of Massachusetts elections, MassLive reports.