Brief recap: July 8th 2017 Anti-KKK Counterprotest, Charlottesville VA

To see photos of the demonstration, check out the Virginia Defender's album here. 

This past Saturday, I attended a counterdemonstration opposing a Klan rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A segment of the Ku Klux Klan from Pelham, North Carolina held a rally in Charlottesville's Justice Park, in front of the Robert E. Lee statue, to protest the city's decision to sell its monuments honoring Confederate leaders. To my understanding, the group Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Charlottesville called this specific counter-demo, but there were a ton of groups with a presence, and various events earlier in the day. Lots of Richmonders were there in solidarity.  

There were about 2,500 counterdemonstrators, around 100 police officers from the city, county, and state, and approximately 30 to 40 Klan members. There were also a handful of Klan supporters in the crowd, but they were a tiny minority who mostly stayed clustered near the police. 

Police erected barriers to allow the Klan to move in and out of the park; a couple of activists tried to prevent their entry, and were arrested. The Klansmen ultimately entered at about 3:45, guarded by police in riot gear, and stood around shouting racial slurs and doing Nazi salutes for a while— I'm certain they spoke, also, but they were drowned out by boos and chants. When they were eventually ushered out, still under heavy guard, another group of counterdemonstrators tried to block their egress and were arrested. The police then issued an order to disperse, declared the gathering unlawful, and used three tear gas canisters. Mayor Mike Signer is now saying that police were provoked when protesters attacked them with pepper spray, but there's no evidence, video or otherwise, that this actually happened. Black Lives Matter Charlottesville has a write-up confronting this claim here. 

Throughout the course of the event, 23 anti-Klan activists were arrested. You can contribute to their legal fund here. 

Prior to the demonstration, anti-racist activists in the area faced police surveillance and unannounced visits to homes and workplaces from detectives wanting information on their activities and affiliations. Al-Jazeera recently published an article on the disparate reaction of Charlottesville police to left groups vs. far right groups like the Klan. 

Groups like the Klan hold events like these for two reasons: to intimidate, and to recruit. When you show up to oppose them in numbers like Charlottesville did this weekend, you prevent recruiting and show them for cowards. For all their posturing, they were only able to show up and scream racial slurs from behind a line of riot cops. 

That said, let's get ready for Round 2: a local white supremacist has called a larger "Unite the Right" rally on August 12th, at Charlottesville's Emancipation Park. More details on that in another post. 

What fascists operate in Richmond?

Below is my answer to a question submitted to the Active-RVA Tumblr. If you have a question you want to ask, the best way to reach me is at activerva@gmail.com. Here it is:

To my knowledge, there aren’t currently any openly fascist organizations operating in Richmond. However: 

The Traditionalist Worker’s Party, whose ideology is essentially fascist (they want an authoritarian white-only America where opposition to non-white immigrants unites whites across class lines), is trying to establish a chapter at VCU. To my knowledge, they’ve got like 2-3 students involved, but their activities are currently limited to fliering and posting in VCU-related Facebook groups. Their primary organizer is a philosophy student named Derrick Davis. 

The Virginia Flaggers are neo-Confederates whose primary goal is to put Confederate imagery on things. They mostly protest in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts a couple of times a week, organized armed patrols to protect Monument Avenue’s Confederate monuments from vandalism, and every year or so they raise a bunch of money to erect a huge Confederate flag somewhere visible to the highway. Their ideology is weird to pin down, because they very much buy into the “Heritage Not Hate” slogan, and even have a single black member they hold up against charges of racism. However, they’ve also got members who used to be with the Klan, a relationship with the League of the South (advocates modern Southern succession to establish a whites-only state), and are friendly with Matthew Heimbach (founder of the Traditionalist Worker’s Party, described above). 

Around the state, we’ve got chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and the Wolves of Vinland, a white nationalist group structured like a motorcycle club which is mostly a prison gang. They own property in Lynchburg. 

If you want to fight fascist and white nationalist organizations in the area, link up with the newly-formed Antifascists of the Seven Hills (ASH).