Home Race Photos, Video from Charlottesville, Virginia Counterprotests to KKK Saturday Afternoon

Photos, Video from Charlottesville, Virginia Counterprotests to KKK Saturday Afternoon

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Here are some photos and video from today’s counterprotests against the KKK (yeah, those @#$@#!s are still around in the  year 2017 – unbelievable!) in Charlottesville today. Credit to Mayor Mike Signer, RTD reporter Graham Moomaw, Tom Perriello, Paige Perriello, Maureen Perriello and Taikein Cooper. Looks like the bad guys were outnumbered by the good guys by an enormous margin. That’s encouraging, at least…































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  • Kenny Boddye:

    We had a biracial president for eight years. We still (largely) welcome refugees and immigrants from every shore and every border. We’re a diverse people with roots that span the globe and the sum total of human history.

    Hate and bigotry should not have a place in our society, yet here we are.

    The only way we can stand up to hate is with love. Make no mistake – we should be confronting racist groups like the KKK whenever and wherever they are, but we can never defeat what they stand for by only challenging them at their demonstrations.

    We have to fight for the kind of America we know we can be: one of equity, opportunity, and justice for all. That starts on the streets, continues at the ballot box, and finally ends when we have a government which reflects our diversity, not our division.

  • KKK massively outnumbered in Charlottesville today

    https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4254/34995066923_c115b4289c_o.jpg

  • Cville Mayor Mike Signer:

    Over a year ago, Charlottesville began a difficult but necessary journey to finally tell the truth about race in our City. Over six months, our Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces – charged with changing the narrative by telling the full story of race through our public spaces – held 17 hearings.
    Their report contained over a dozen recommendations, many of which we have already acted on. This important work not only put us at the forefront of communities seeking to reconcile with a troubled past. It also made us a target for many fringe groups who oppose that very mission – who see no problem with a false history founded on systemic racism.

    Today could have been a day of rage and indiscriminate and violent confrontation. Instead, it was a day of prayer, education, testimony, and protest.

    Our Police faced the great challenge of providing for both the safety of our residents and visitors and the protections of the 1st Amendment. They did so through a sophisticated public safety strategy, involving over 200 officers and support from entities including the Virginia State Police and the University of Virginia.

    Throughout the day, we urged folks not to take the bait – to deny the KKK the confrontation and celebrity they desire. Thousands of people followed that advice, attending a wonderful set of alternative events — Unity Cville — revealing the hope and diversity of the people who call Charlottesville home.

    At the end of the day, our Police succeeded in executing their strategy of protecting both the 1st Amendment and public safety up to and during the KKK rally. The rally concluded in less than an hour. After the rally concluded there was a disturbance during which protesters apparently released pepper spray and officers released three canisters of tear gas. Despite this unfortunate event, and the fact that over 1000 people were in attendance, many armed, only 2 people were treated for heat injuries and one for an alcohol-related issue. There were 23 arrests.

    All in all, I believe that we came out of this difficult day stronger than before — more committed to diversity, to racial and social justice, to telling the truth about our history, and to unity. On a very hot day, we made lemonade out of a lemon – from North Carolina, no less.

  • God b watching U

    Some points for reflection:
    This Klan group is from Yanceyville NC, which, in 2010, had the seventh-lowest median household income of all places in the United States with a population over 1,000, and this poverty was throughout the population, while, as we know disproportionately among Black populations. So, for reflection: how come NC abandoned these people to become so desperate? So desperate that they blame others who are also suffering deprivation and abandonment? So desperate – without hope – that hate seems a remedy (‘hate’ at least arousing feelings of ‘power’)? Do the urban elites of NC who have abandoned rural communities like Yanceyville have any accountability? Do the urban elites of Charlottesville, or Richmond, or Alexandria have any accountability for abandoning desperate, deprived rural communities of Virginia, where, no doubt awful hate is festering? Does it help – or hurt – that urban elites send their nasty sh*t into rural areas? Where are the landfills IN city limits? Can you name any (other than Mt Trashmore in Virginia Beach, but that is no longer a landfill, is it?) ? Where are the toxic waste site IN city limits? Can you name any? Where are the nuclear waste sits or nuclear power plants IN city limits? Where are the coal mains and natural gas fields IN city limits? It appears that urban elites in Virginia are so clueless that they name-call abandoned, hopeless rural people when they make bad moral choices, or exercise bad taste – such as putting on a high-school’ish pageant with costumes and backdrops and prepared speeches – rather than seeing how their clue-less-ness offends rural people and stirs up their bad choices, Would you make bad choices if, for generations, other people dumped their waste, toxic waste, and actual sh*t’ in your community. If they located their dangerous nuclear power plants, their coal mines and energy plants, and pollution in your community. And all the while engineered markets to ensure cheap food prices for themselves in the city by poorly paying agricultural workers and underpaying good processing workers. While also calling your names like ‘red neck’, ‘hillbilly’, ‘White trash’, accusing you of being incestuous, brain damaged, and ‘deplorable’? HUH?

    • notjohnsmosby

      So it’s our fault they’re stupid?

      • God b watching U

        as described …. urban and suburban communities and their economic, political and cultural elites have their aggressively infrastructured amenities and privileges by manipulating markets to extract cheap energy, cheap materials (forest materials, minerals, other natural materials), and cheap food from rural communities …. and then, as if this imperialistic exploitation of rural communities (which are White, Black, Latino, Aboriginal) were not enough urban and suburban people send their nasty sh*t – LITERALLY and figuratively – into rural places. you can dispute this analysis ONLY if you can show that Virginia cities keep all their sh*t in city limits: their landfills, dumps for their toxic waste, all their partially de-sh*tted gray water, etc …. all within city limits. And further, you’ll need to show that Virginia cities produce all their energy within city limits … if from coal or natural gas then all the mining and refining in city limits, and if from nuclear, the nuclear power plant AND the nuclear waste site must be in city limits. etc. Can you show that?

        • notjohnsmosby

          You’re ranting, so I don’t really know what you’re trying to say. Do you think that rural areas would somehow become economically viable if the were completely disconnected from urban and suburban areas? No trade at all? You guys adopt a manorial life on the farm or something?

          • Edward N Virginia

            thanks for requesting some practical solutions.
            rural folks are generally exceptionally practical.
            along with some magical thinking, and actual magic, and a tendency toward metaphysical perceptions of reality, but, of course Nature is inherently a meta-physical construction. as quantum physics, for example, apprehends.

            oh, speaking of constructions, as we all know, from relentless mind-bending by academic elites (again, very highly self-opinionated and very highly paid for the real work that they do, ain’t it?0 who are obviously so much more smarty pants about everything, the social constructions with which we live – ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘class’, etc – are MORE REAL than real people. Of course! ….. or of course NOT?

            but having said that, here are a few Practical solutions:

            1. BECAUSE, OBVIOUSLY, rural people have been colonized culturally by urban Democratic Party constructions of reality, as a part of the centuries-long economic imperialism of urban American in rural communities, we propose that the Democratic Party – national, and state – ‘affirmatively’ include rural voices and rural leadership. That means affirmatively to require over-representation of rural voice and rural leadership until the breach if healed.

            2. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, rural communities have been abused by urban imperialistic aspirations, rapprochement is required. Rapprochement requires dedication to establishing common ground(s). In Virginia some Democrats have emphasized discovering and evoking ‘common values’ before going directly to policy formulation. That might be a ‘grounds’ for rapprochement. It is at least a start.

            3. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, urban communities have been – figuratively and actually – RIPPING OFF rural places for many decades – RIPPING off mountain tops to have cheap energy, RIPPING off agricultural workers by NOT giving them Social Security coverage and NOT paying them proper wages, etc etc etc examples of RIPPING OFF – urban folks must STOP RIPPING rural community off. It is not enough for urban Democrats to join us in rural Virginia to STOP the PIPELINES, they must also DEMAND that the pipeline estimates being discussed reflect the REAL VALUE of taking the land, disrupting rural communities, burdening rural counties, etc. Why are urban Democrats – in Tidewater, etc – ENCOURAGING THE PIPELINES? And why aren’t they DEMANDING that their energy rates be RAISED TO REFLECT the real burden of energy extraction on rural places?

            4. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, it is just a continuation of imperialism that urban waste is dumped in rural places, cities must STOP doing that. Urban elites get up their high horse daily and preach about environmentalism, sustainability, green this and green that …. when every sh*t, every waste, every junk, etc …. gets dumped, eventually, into rural places. AND they have the unabashed hypocrisy to call their lifestyles sustainable?! Well plantations are sustainable economies if you have enslaved workers and contemporary cities are sustainable if they get most of their food and energy from outside the city – through imperialistic economies – and if they send their nasty sh*t outside the cities. So either STOP being UN-sustainable or shut up the preaching about it because all that preachey hypocrisy is really un-nerving! And that leads us back to 1. and 2.

  • Video about anti-KKK protests in Charlottesville yesterday

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtcYrJ9y6yo

  • Video: Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer says “finally tell[ing] the truth about race in Charlottesville…has put us on the radar of some really far-right groups that totally disagree with that mission about finally getting it right about the element of systemic racism and white supremacy in our history.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GeKmpLyQv8

  • God b watching U

    The small Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas often show up at Gay pride events – with their street performances of people dressed up on peculiar costumes, wearing bizarre fetish gear, and overt displays offensive to general social attitudes, and carrying or speaking messages that many consider dangerous or threatening. The Westboro Church counter-protesters carry obnoxious signs, use offensive hateful words, shout rebukes, and otherwise revile and threaten the people that they don’t like and don’t believe should be included in American or local society.

    In Charlottesville this weekend a large group of folks, mostly likely not from the area, showed up to the KKK event – with their street performances of people dressed up on peculiar costumes, wearing bizarre fetish gear, and overt displays offensive to general social attitudes, and carrying or speaking messages that many consider dangerous or threatening. This large group – of so-called Antifa – carried obnoxious signs, used offensive hateful words, shouted rebukes, and otherwise reviled and threatened the people that they don’t like and don’t believe should be included in American or local society. Going beyond what Westboro usually does, these Antifa ‘occupied’ public streets, threatened and abused law enforcement, and hindered the peaceable security of the public who needed to use those streets and sidewalks.

    The First Amendment allows all of these to carry out their rights of expression within lawful boundaries.

    In the parable above which crossed lawful boundaries?

  • True Blue

    The best counter-protests are those which meet hate-filled groups straight on with grace & love, blocking them out with a powerful symbol: angel wings. “Angel wings are meant as a loving support to the fallen, not to create more anger or violence” said the artistic director of Orlando’s Shakespeare Theatre as Angels shielded victims’ mourning families from pitiful, offensive WBS which only exists to spread hate. “All night, All day, Angels watching over Me. . .”

    It was encouraging to see thousands of counter-protestors who understood that hate is not welcome in Ch’ville!