Charlottesville council votes to shroud Civil War statues

The Charlottesville City Council voted to drape two Confederate statues in black fabric during a chaotic meeting packed with irate residents who screamed and cursed at councilors over the city’s response to a white nationalist rally.

The anger at Monday night’s meeting, during which three people were arrested, forced the council to abandon its agenda and focus instead on the tragedy that surrounded the rally. Covering the statues is intended to signal the city’s mourning for Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car slammed into a crowd protesting the rally.

“I think what you saw last night was a traumatized community beginning the process of catharsis,” Mayor Mike Signer told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The council meeting was the first since the “Unite the Right” event, which was believed to be the largest gathering of white nationalists in a decade. The demonstrators arrived in Charlottesville partly to protest the City Council’s vote to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

That removal is in the midst of a legal challenge. A state law passed in 1998 forbids local governments from removing, damaging or defacing war monuments, but there is legal ambiguity about whether that applies to statues such as the Lee monument, which was erected before the law was passed. A judge has issued an injunction preventing the city from removing the Lee statue while the lawsuit plays out.

Signer said Tuesday that city staff had begun working to find a way to cover the large statues with a material that can withstand the elements. The council believes doing so would not violate the state law, he said.

Later Tuesday, University of Virginia police said they obtained arrest warrants for a white nationalist in connection with crimes they say were committed on campus a day before the deadly violence.

The police statement said Christopher Cantwell of Keene, New Hampshire, was wanted on two felony counts of the illegal use of tear gas or other gases and one felony count of malicious bodily injury with a “caustic substance,” explosive or fire.

Contacted Tuesday evening, Cantwell said he would turn himself in to authorities. He acknowledged he had pepper-sprayed a counter demonstrator during a protest but insisted he was defending himself, telling AP he did it “because my only other option was knocking out his teeth.”