Charlottesville on edge as it prepares for white nationalist rally
For the second time in six weeks, Charlottesville, Va., is bracing for a protest of its decision earlier this year to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park. White nationalists, white supremacists and members of alt-right groups will gather in the city Saturday at noon for the Unite the Right rally to voice opposition to the decision and assert itself as a movement.
The planned event — and one held July 8 by the Ku Klux Klan for the same purpose — has sparked fierce opposition in this town of close to 50,000. Large counter-demonstrations are planned by a collection of faith-based groups, civil rights organizations and University of Virginia students and faculty.
The convergence of potentially thousands of protesters and counter-demonstrators has left many city leaders, residents and business owners worried about possible violence and property damage.
“With large crowds of individuals with strongly held and potentially opposing beliefs, there is also the potential for conflict,” the city’s communications director Miriam Dickler wrote in a news release. “Those who live and work in the area of these events should exercise their best judgment on the day of the rally and should avoid the area if they have concerns.”
City relocates protest
The protest was originally scheduled to take place in the heart of the city at Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park, where the city has ordered the removal the Lee statue. (A Charlottesville judge ruled in May that the statue cannot be moved for six months, and the next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 30.) Earlier this week, however, city officials declared that the protest be moved to McIntire Park, due to concerns about crowd size.
But Jason Kessler, a local blogger who organized the rally, said in an interview Tuesday that the event “is absolutely not changing venues.”
“The genesis of the entire event is this Robert E. Lee statue that the city is trying to move which is symbolic of a lot of other issues that deal with the tearing down of white people’s history and our demographic replacement,” Kessler said.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville civil liberties organization, wrote to the city Tuesday insisting that Kessler be allowed to hold his rally at Emancipation Park.
The two organizations are expected to challenge the city’s order in Charlottesville Circuit Court. But wherever the event is held, there is widespread concern about what it will bring.
“I would say the mood around here is pretty grim,” said Ross Mittiga, a University of Virginia instructor. “Many people are concerned about the potential for violence this weekend.”
Richard Spencer, a leading white nationalist who led a torchbearing rally at the Lee statue in May and who will be speaking at Saturday’s rally, says he too is concerned about violence, but he worries it will come from antifascists, or “antifa,” activists.
‘Anxious and afraid’
Brittany Caine-Conley, a member of Sojourners United Church of Christ in Charlottesville, has been active in the effort to have the Confederate statues removed.
Caine-Conley echoed Mittiga’s concerns about what the community is expecting.
“People are scared,” she said. “They are becoming more aware of the magnitude of this event and more aware of the violence that is done by the alt-right. And so people are anxious and afraid.”
But Conley said there also was a growing feeling in the city that people need to make a stand now against the white nationalists and white supremacists. “They are really getting the idea that this is a ‘capital M’ moment for our city and our nation,” she said.