More today from a resident of Charlottesville ...
I just finished watching the local evening news (I recorded it earlier). Here’s what they reported: There was a press conference today outside Charlottesville City Hall given by the white supremacist rally leader Jason Kessler. It didn’t last very long. Kessler basically again accused the police of failing to protect the rally participants the day before and that this was the reason the violence had occurred. The crowd of several hundred people then surged forward and a guy punched and knocked Kessler to the ground. State police were on hand to either side of the podium and quickly responded, pushing the crowd back, removing Kessler from the scene and arresting the guy who attacked him. The State Police were more than capable of handling the situation and there was no need for National Guard involvement. They said that Kessler plans to have another press conference tomorrow in DC. The guy who drove the car into the crowd was identified as Alex Field from Ohio and a member of the Vanguard America White National Group. He had been seen earlier at the park and must have gone to get his car right after the rally was shut down and circled back around to the crowd of counter protesters for the attack. Of the 19 people hospitalized, 9 were released today and the 10 remaining are listed in good condition. The woman killed, Heather Heyer, was from Greene County and grew up not far from where I live. There is now a petition circulating to take down the Robert E. Lee statue and put up one of Heather in its place. The State Police helicopter going down and killing the two troopers on board was also a big story. This one i don’t really understand and think there is considerable spin being put on it. They keep including the two officers in the death count for the violence and saying that the white supremacists are responsible but there has been nothing to indicate foul play in regard to the helicopter. It wasn’t shot down (at least nothing has been reported or even hinted at) and could have crashed for any number of mechanical reasons. It is tragic by all means, but from where I sit the tragedy is being exploited by the governor and the mayor for political purposes. That’s the latest from here. I did see the MPs in the fray but only once. It was after the unlawful assembly call was made and they were pushing the crowds back away from Lee park. There were three tiers of police, all in riot gear - city police were on the front line moving the people, state police were the second tier and military police were the third tier. When they got to Jackson Park (the counter protesters had a permit to demonstrate there) the three tiers peeled off and encircled the park. They stayed that way for 20 or 30 minutes and when it became apparent that no white supremacists were there, only counter protesters in nonviolent mode, all of the police pulled back and let the demonstration continue. I thought that was a good call. At about the same time the local news reported that the white supremacists were leaving the downtown and going to another nearby park, McIntyre park, and that the counter protesters were following them. I expected this new location to become the next battlefield and assumed that they were pulling police to shift over there, but nothing seemed to come of it. The white supremacist leader, Jason Kessler, called the local news station from “an undisclosed location” and was bitching about the fact that the police screwed him over by not protecting them from the counter protesters. I also expected things to get ugly that night, after darkness and alcohol consumption, but that didn’t occur either. It appears that the white supremacists pulled out soon after the unlawful assembly decision. This left the downtown area full of counter protesters with nobody to clash with when the knucklehead ran his car into the crowd and killed the woman. I believe when they caught and identified him he was a local and not an out-of-towner, but I may be wrong. So, it may well be that the MPs were geared up and down several times as the police C&C tried to figure out the white supremacists next move, which never materialized. Hope this helps. Begin forwarded message: The spin being placed on this incident is pretty significant. Your conclusion that this was an out of town organized event on both sides is accurate. Let me state up front that I was not downtown to personally witness what happened (my assessment was that it was going to get stupid and was not a safe place to be) but I did watch the live local news coverage throughout the day and it was unfiltered until the summaries began to appear that evening. First, remember that Charlottesville is one of three points on the liberal triangle in VA that carries the democratic vote for governor and the presidency (the other two are Fairfax County in the north and Hampton/Newport News in the east). Local politics here are considerably over the left edge. All the members of the city council are democrats, and don’t forget the prevailing attitude from the stalwart members of academia at UVA! At the head of the mess is the idiot mayor, farther to the left than anyone else, who declared after the national election last November that “Charlottesville will be the center of the revolution”. He is the one who has been pushing the racial injustice mantra and the removal of the statues. After appointing a committee to review options, the city council decided to get rid of the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in “Lee” and “Jackson” Parks. The actual removal was blocked by two different law suits from two different groups so the council decided to take additional immediate action by changing the names of the parks to “Emancipation” and “Justice” parks (this done as a unilateral action without public hearing). A lot of people were unhappy with that. With all the publicity from the New Orleans statue removal, and the fact that C’ville’s decision had been put on hold by the courts, it became a magnet for the white extremists to use as a means to protest. At the KKK rally last month it was the counter protesters who got stupid (the Klansman actually conducted themselves according to the rules and caused no problems!). The counter protesters blocked the Klan’s path to the site (Jackson Park) and the police intervened to clear the area and escorted the Klan members to the statue for the rally and then back to their vehicles afterward. The counter protesters were pissed and it ended up badly when they refused to disperse as ordered by police. When a couple of the idiots used pepper spray on several officers, the police immediately unleashed a barrage of tear gas and started busting heads. The lefties were shocked by the police response and the Chief of Police was criticized for how it was handled. Contrary to the local political assessment, the police handled it exactly as they should have and consequently there was no violence at that event. Unfortunately the prevailing local attitude was that the Klansman had won. The month between the two events became a near continuous “planning" venue with local news coverage on a nightly basis with how they were going to handle the “next one”. Earlier this week the city council decided to move the rally site away from the Lee statue to another park. The reason given was that there would be more room for the event. However, several comments coming from the city council members indicated that the main reason was the size of the counter-protest crowd and had minimal to do with the rally participants. In a stunning move the VA ACLU, representing the white supremacists, filed a law suit against the City of Charlottesville for discrimination and violation of 1st amendment rights because they tried to move the rally away from the Bob Lee statue in order to accommodate more counter protesters. The judge heard the case on Friday and ruled against the city. (While he stayed in the background through all of this, I felt that the driving force behind the whole fiasco was the idiot mayor!) It became obvious on Friday that the white supremacists weren’t going to play as nice as the KKK when the local news reported that the police had responded to a report of “men with guns” in the Walmart parking lot. It turned out that it was about a dozen white supremacists (one was a scheduled speaker at the rally) who were exercising their right to open carry in the state of VA. No one was arrested, but my thought at the time was that the potential for stupidness the next day just went up significantly. That night was the incident on the UVA campus where the white supremacists marched with torches and had a physical interaction with the students. This apparently caught the counter protesters off guard (very few of them appeared to be around) and It was interesting that there was no mention of it on the local Saturday morning news. NBC did carry the story with the disclaimer that it was “the largest gathering of white racists in decades”. All morning the local news kept quoting the police chief and emphasizing that 3 or more people acting in an aggressive manner constituted a “public disturbance” and that it would be the trigger for the police to act. My assumption was that the police were going to handle it the same way they did at the KKK rally and protect the rally participants from the counter protesters. That’s not what happened. Skirmishes broke out between the two groups starting about mid-morning and escalated right up to the noon rally start time. Both sides had helmets, clubs, shields, mace and the very creative soda cans filled with concrete. People were getting seriously injured and there was no intervention by the police. As the white supremacists moved toward the statue area just before noon, a group of counter protesters with clergy in robes at the center, blocked the entrance to the park. Unlike the KKK rally, no police appeared to clear the way and escort the participants to the site. (I believe the clergy aspect was a key strategic move that may have caused the police to hesitate - envisioning images of them busting heads of religious leaders appearing on the national news!). The white supremacists responded by trying to push through the counter protesters and only then did the police intervene, declaring an “unlawful assembly” and ordering the crowd to disperse. Then the local, state and military police (the governor had activated the national guard) pushed the crowds back into the downtown area. This is also where the governor's and mayor’s statements about “outsiders” gets a little tainted. They blamed it all on the white supremacists but I saw several signs in the crowd that read “Black Lives Matter - New York”. It was my opinion that the counter protesters were the aggressors at the rally site (just like they were at the KKK event) but this time the rally participants responded in kind and without the police controlling the situation it went quickly downhill from there. The most telling local news clip (and I only saw it broadcast one time) was a woman jumping up and down screaming “we won! we won!” when the police declared the unlawful assembly. At the news conference Saturday night the police chief did not look happy. I can’t speculate as to whether or not he was told to let things play out at the rally site, but his demeanor was far from the confident man that defended the actions of his police force at the KKK rally. This morning on NBC Today, they interviewed the Charlottesville mayor, who ended up being cut off by the host when he started into an emotional rant about having declared last year that he was going to do something about the racial problem in this country. It just confirmed all my suspicions that this knucklehead created and then perpetuated the whole sad event. 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