One person died and dozens were injured after violence erupted at a White nationalist rally in Charlottesville Virginia Saturday, August 12.
The “Unite the Right” rally was organized by Jason Kessler, a white nationalist who described the event on his Facebook page as “biggest pro-Confederate right-wing rally of the year!” The rally began in Emancipation Park at around 7 a.m. and began spiraling out of control after two people were injured in an altercation near the park, the city said on its official Twitter account. By about 11:30 a.m. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville, according to a statement released by his office.
A short time later a car drove through a crowd of people in the downtown area, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others, Charlottesville police said on their Facebook page.
James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, was arrested for the crash, the city said in a statement on its Twitter page. Charges include one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.
Two Virginia State Troopers were also killed when their helicopter crashed in Albemarle County, Virginia State Police said on their Facebook page.
According to ABC News, Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates were killed while assisting in the response to the violent rally.
As chaos ensued, Kessler told people on his Twitter page to “be peaceful.”
The next day in Washington, thousands gathered at the White House at 7 p.m. to hold a vigil for those that died. The crowd then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to protest White supremacy. They passed Trump International Hotel and gathered in Judiciary Square, where the District’s only outdoor statue of a Confederate Civil War general, Albert Pike, resides.
Several protests, calls for removal of the statue and instances of vandalism of the statue occurred throughout the following week. On Friday, August 18, D.C. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton called for removal of the statue, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.
“Generally, Norton opposes simply tearing down Confederate statues but believes they should be moved to more appropriate settings, like museums, to avoid erasing an important part of history from which Americans must continue to learn. However, she does not believe that Pike’s statue should be placed on federal land or on D.C. land,” according to a news release issued by her office.
A public memorial service was held by Heather Heyer’s family on Aug. 16 in Charlottesville, followed by a candelight vigil on the University of Virginia campus located there. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, asked those in attendance to speak out for fairness. “Find what’s wrong and say to yourselves, ‘What can I do to make a difference?’”
In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, racial justice rallies were held in over 30 U.S. cities on Aug. 19.
This article was first published by our sister street paper in Detroit. It has been updated and reprinted thanks to the International Network of Street Papers, http://insp.ngo.
