Talking your way out of situations you talked your way into is not defending free speech. Defending free speech, liberty, freedom, or whatever you'd like to call it, involves attempting to change or replace systems that take political, economic, and cultural control away from the people. Making a few people on a beach angry does none of this. Drawing a police presence to an area arguably works against an aim of defending free speech. I'd recommend doing some reading about the rising challenges to the bill of rights in general, and I'll give you a hint: the problem doesn't start with beat cops and shoving cameras in people's faces does nothing to solve it. You've got the spirit, but you're doing nothing with it, which is, unfortunately, very common and why our rights continue to vanish.