The lineup for the 34th edition of the Virginia Film Festival is stacked with movies that are already getting Oscar buzz, like The French Dispatch, The Power of the Dog, Spencer, and Belfast. These films are bound to do big box office business for weeks to come, but this year’s fest also features several less-hyped films that are especially worthy of attention in an exciting, crowded program.
The Machinery of Dreams
This fantasy film is firmly anchored in reality through a horrible tragedy. When Lily’s mother is hurt in a terrible car crash, her grandmother tells her tales of fantasy to pass the time. The more tales she tells, however, the blurrier the lines between imagination and real life become. At its core, film is storytelling. From Pan’s Labyrinth to The Fall, it is easy to fall in love with fantasy when reality is too hard to bear. The Machinery of Dreams is presented as a part of the festival’s focus on Virginia filmmakers. The screening will be accompanied by a discussion with director Eric Hurt and actor Cora Metzfield.
Monkey Beach. Photo: VAFF
Monkey Beach
Stories of heroes returning home to save their communities and families are culturally ubiquitous. Monkey Beach takes the framework of the prodigal son and gives the age-old story a brand new voice. Highlighted as a film directed by an indigenous woman, this tale is told from the perspective of a young indigenous woman who is trying to save her brother. Along her journey she encounters what seems to be a menagerie of cryptids and supernatural elements that reconnect her with her past.
Zola. Photo: VAFF
Zola
The first feature film based entirely on a Twitter thread, Zola goes far beyond gimmick and social media references (see our interview with Jeremy O. Harris, the movie’s co-writer, on page 19). It is at times hilarious, terrifying, and confounding. What began as a simple road trip to make some extra cash dancing in Florida quickly turns into a cautionary tale that proves why your mother told you not to trust strangers. And it is all true—or at least that’s what Zola wants you to believe. The film looks at the lives of exotic dancers, peering behind the curtain into the less glamorous side of the business.
Mass. Photo: VAFF
Mass
The directorial debut of actor Fran Kranz, better known as the stoner in Cabin in the Woods, is not about Kranz once again flexing his comedy muscles. Mass takes place mostly in a single room as a group of grieving parents talk through an unthinkable tragedy. Franz might be a newcomer, but he’s been getting major critical kudos since premiering Mass at Sundance in January. The film stars Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs, and Reed Birney. Plimpton will be on hand for a discussion at the screening.
Memoria. Photo: VAFF
Memoria
Heady and artistic, Memoria has already garnered big industry buzz—and it won’t be released in theaters until the end of December. The film earned the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and it’s Colombia’s submission for Best International Feature at the 94th Academy Awards in 2022. Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is known for taking an architectural and paced approach to his visual design, and Memoria is no different. Starring Tilda Swinton as a Scotswoman living in Colombia who hears sounds, namely a loud boom, that others may not hear, the film deals with this disconnect as she begins to visualize these sounds. Synesthesia might not be the easiest phenomenon to put on the big screen, but Weerasethakul nails it.
A Suite of Short Films by Kevin Jerome Everson. Photo: VAFF
Short film programs
In addition to many feature films being paired with a short film, VAFF also has four stand-alone blocks of shorts. Loosely sorted into Being Human, Facing Reality, a repertoire of Sudanese film, and the films of Kevin Everson, there is plenty of variety in these collections. Short films are an artform unto themselves, and outside of film festivals it’s rare to get the opportunity to sit and enjoy them all on their own.
Arshay Cooper discusses and screens his film A Most Beautiful Thing. Photo: Richard Schultz. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films
Oar stories: During the ’90s on Chicago’s West Side, Arshay Cooper became captain of the first all-Black high school rowing team, an experience he claims saved his life. A Most Beautiful Thing, the humorous and inspiring documentary based on Cooper’s award-winning memoir of the same name, chronicles the team’s journey and a reunion 20 years later. Cooper will be joined by Olympian Jim Dietz, UVA’s rowing director Frank Biller, and local crew coach Craig Redinger for a discussion before a screening of the film.
Wednesday 10/27. Free, 6:30pm. Western Albemarle High School, 5941 Rockfish Gap Tpke., Crozet. 823-8700.
A haunting night of fun awaits at the Witch's Ball. Photo: Publicity photo
Magic gathering: Halloweekend fun awaits at the Witch’s Ball, a late-night soirée full of occult oddities and chilling curiosities. Ships in the Night celebrates a new album, Latent Powers, along with performances by Synthetic Division and Solemn Shapes. DJ Cadybug provides nonstop dance tracks, accompanied by witchcrafted cocktails and unearthly delicacies from a variety of food trucks. A tarot reader is on hand for those who dare to discover what fate has in store.
Saturday 10/30. $20-26.66, 9pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. SE., ixartpark.org.
Catherine Baab-Muguira's self-help book sees Edgar Allan Poe step into an usual role. Photo: Pearson Scott Foresman
Poe knows: Darkly funny with a dash of the macabre, Catherine Baab-Muguira’s debut book, Poe for Your Problems, depicts Edgar Allan Poe as a self-help guru. Baab-Muguira walks readers through Poe’s life, in tandem with self-reflection that allows you to say “nevermore” to your problems, and discover the difference between positive and poe-sitive thinking.
Saturday 10/30. Free, 7pm. New Dominion Bookshop, 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. ndbookshop.com
Citizen Ashe follows the life of tennis legend and Virginia native Arthur Ashe. Photo: VAFF
Citizen Ashe, by award-winning director Sam Pollard and Rex Miller, chronicles the life of tennis great and Virginia native Arthur Ashe, a trailblazing figure on the court and activist off.
Ashe was the first Black man to win a singles championship at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the Australian Open. He was also the first Black man named to a U.S. Davis Cup team. But it was a heart attack at age 36 and subsequent bypass surgery that in many ways defined Ashe’s career.
Over the nine years following his first cardiac episode, Ashe embarked on a mission to advocate for heart health. But health issues continued to plague him. In 1988, Ashe was hospitalized yet again. Tests revealed he was HIV positive. Doctors said he likely contracted the disease from a blood transfusion received during his 1979 quadruple bypass.
As an activist, Ashe took on not only heart health and AIDS awareness but racial justice. He visited South Africa as part of a delegation promoting racial integration, and later, in 1985, was arrested for protesting during an anti-apartheid rally. Ashe protested mistreatment of Haitian refugees in 1992 and was again arrested for speaking out.
Born and raised in Richmond, Ashe was honored with a statue along the city’s Monument Avenue in 1996. Because of its location among Richmond’s many confederate memorials, the bronze sculpture showing Ashe holding a book and tennis racket and surrounded by children has become a touchpoint in the ongoing conversation about antiquity and historical injustice in modern American life.
Citizen Ashe is narrated by Ashe and features Johnnie Ashe, Stephanie Cookie Carson, and Donald Dell. The film attempts to put Ashe’s life into sociological context, examining the racial issues surrounding the predominantly white sport of tennis.
Virginia’s current congressional map yielded seven Democratic representatives and four Republicans in the 2020 election. A bipartisan panel convened to adjust the lines has struggled to make headway. Photo: US Geological Survey
Redistricting commission on brink of collapse
Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting committee is coming apart at the seams. The bipartisan commission—composed of four Democratic legislators, four Democratic citizens, four Republican legislators, and four Republican citizens—was supposed to create fair, even maps. But the commission can’t agree on anything, and it missed its October 25 deadline to submit Congressional map proposals to the General Assembly.
Last year, Democrats in the legislature voted to create this commission rather than draw their own congressional lines, an attempt at good-faith mutual disarmament that could go belly-up if the commission continues its stalemate. (“Democrats Supported Redistricting Reform in Virginia. Was it a mistake?” asked a provocative Slate headline.) If the commission can’t agree on maps, the Virginia Supreme Court will hire its own consultant to draw the lines.
“It’s frustrating but also predictable,” said Delegate Marcia Price, a Democrat who opposed the amendment, in The Washington Post. “I just think inherently when you have a partisan and political process you’re going to have gridlock.”
The seven-day moving average of new local COVID cases is the lowest it’s been since July. Photo: Blue Ridge Health District
COVID cases declining locally
After a September surge, COVID cases in the Blue Ridge Health district have fallen steadily in the last month. October 25 saw the seven-day moving average of new cases drop to 25.3, the lowest it’s been since July. Vaccination rates locally have largely stagnated: In Charlottesville, 58.7 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and in Albemarle, that number is 68.1 percent.
The Blue Ridge Health District has also begun offering booster shots, by appointment, to those age 65 and older, immunocompromised individuals, or people who work in high-risk environments.
New cases have declined on Grounds as well. The rolling seven-day average of cases is 3.1 per day, down from a late September high of 23.3. UVA has mandated that all university faculty and staff must be vaccinated by December 8. If they refuse, they face unpaid leave or possible termination. The rule comes after a federal government order stipulated that employees working for organizations that have contracts with the federal government must get the shots. Currently, over 95 percent of UVA faculty and staff are fully vaccinated, and the admin is urging all employees to take action as soon as possible in order to meet the December 8 deadline.
In brief
Unknown package was false alarm
A suspicious package drew attention from the Virginia State Police bomb squad last Friday night. The package was left outside the federal courthouse on West Main Street. The bomb squad cordoned off the area for an hour and a half, but the package ultimately turned out not to be a safety threat, and was later described as a “personal item” by the city.
Banned band takes a stand
UVA’s marching band won a fight with the administration last week. The band had been banned from playing their instruments in the stands at football games, a regulation purportedly to prevent the spread of COVID. But the band disagreed: “The energy of Scott Stadium is being subdued for the sake of optics,” stated a petition urging the admin to let them play. Eight thousand signatures later, the university relented, and the “Hey Song” once again blared from the stands during Virginia’s victory over Georgia Tech last Saturday.
Civilian watch dogs get a new toy
The City of Charlottesville has launched a Budget Explorer so that curious citizens can dig deeper into the FY22 adopted budget and compare it to previous years’ budgets. The interactive dashboard allows viewers to review the last four budgets “in line item detail” for most city departments that are part of the general fund. Find yourself wondering how much money the Charlottesville city government spent on small hand tools in 2022 compared to 2019? Have no fear, the Budget Explorer is here!
Bringing out the big guns: Dave Matthews, Jaime Harrison, and Stacey Abrams joined Terry McAuliffe for a Charlottesville campaign stop. Photo: Eze Amos
By Kristin O’Donoghue
Virginia’s November 2 gubernatorial election is rapidly approaching, and the two campaigns are ramping up their efforts to energize voters. Last Sunday, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe hosted a star-studded get-out-the-vote rally at the Ting Pavilion. Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams spoke alongside McAuliffe and DNC chair Jaime Harrison, while Dave Matthews played an acoustic set for the hundreds who had gathered.
Glenn Youngkin will wrap up a 10-day “Win for Glenn” bus tour on October 28. Youngkin has held a number of meet and greets at inns, restaurants, and convention centers, especially in rural areas. The bus tour did not include a stop in Charlottesville, a Democratic stronghold.
McAuliffe also held an event with former president Barack Obama in Richmond on Saturday. “You can’t run, telling me you’re a regular old hoops-playing, dish-washing, fleece-wearing guy, but quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy,” Obama said of Youngkin.
In Charlottesville on Sunday, Harrison told the crowd that “Virginia is a blueprint for so many other states. That only happened because of the leadership in the governor’s mansion and at the state house.”
The DNC committed $5 million to Virginia, a testament to just how significant the upcoming race is.
Introduced by Harrison as the “Energizer Bunny of American politics,” McAuliffe hopped on stage to talk about his “proven leadership.”
He highlighted a few achievements from his time in office, including the restoration of voting rights to those who had committed a felony, and his efforts to protect women’s reproductive freedom.
In reference to abortion rights, McAuliffe said, “This is no longer a talking point. This is real.”
Photo: RealClearPolitics
Abrams—the first Black woman in American history to be nominated by a major party to run for governor—underscored the important role that young people and people of color play in Democratic politics, though the gathered crowd was predominantly middle-aged and white.
“The commonwealth has the power to set the course of this nation for the next decade,” Abrams said.
When asked what might motivate young people to vote for someone they might perceive as yet another establishment candidate, Harrison talked about the ways in which McAuliffe represents progress for young people and for the nation.“What young people want is the freedom to be able to live their American dream…We don’t need neanderthals like Glenn Youngkin to drag us back into some bygone time.”
All the speakers warned against the “radical Republicans” who, if elected, would roll back all the progress the state has made in recent decades.
“There is such a profound threat to our democracy, and we’ve got to show up for Terry to change the future for the better,” Matthews said before ginning up the crowd with a performance that included his hits “Mercy” and “Bartender.”
“The Avengers are not coming in November,” said Harrison. “It’s up to all of you.”
Addressing the young people in the crowd, Abrams pleaded: “Don’t let us screw this up.”
Jeremy O. Harris will appear at the The Virginia Film Festival to screen Zola, discuss his work, and accept the American Perspectives Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema. Photo: VAFF
Playwright Jeremy O. Harris made history this year when his provocative Slave Play garnered the most Tony nominations ever for a single work (12, including Best Play). He began writing Slave Play while attending the Yale School of Drama, where he earned an MFA in playwriting, but his inspiration was intrinsic, stemming from his experiences growing up in Martinsville, Virginia.
Unpacking the harsh realities of sexual and racial violence and trauma, Slave Play stirred controversy with its brash and graphic nature. At times generating a sense of discomfort for the audience, the work forces theatergoers to face ugly truths, reckon with the past, acknowledge its impact on the present, and assess their own place within the trajectory. The same is true for Harris’ film, Zola, the adaptation of Aziah “Zola” Wells’ viral Twitter chronicle that took the internet by storm in 2015, resulting in the high-profile Rolling Stone magazine feature, “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted.” For his foray into film, Harris teamed up with writer/director Janicza Bravo to co-write an honest, raw look at sex work in America while maintaining the singularity and humor of Wells’ voice. In conversation with C-VILLE Weekly, Harris reflects on his rise to success, and what it means to him to return to Virginia.
C-VILLE: You went to high school in Martinsville, VA. Can you talk about how your experience growing up in the South, particularly in Virginia, impacts your current work?
JH: It’s impacted every facet. The tradition of Southern storytelling is very rich. The thing that’s special about the South is its sort of wild, complex history with both the slave trade—Virginia being the hub of the domestic slave trade in America once the Transatlantic slave trade was ended—and also the fact that Virginia specifically was sort of like the hub between the North and the South…but the Confederacy capital is in Richmond, right?
There’s a lot of complexities that come from this area that teaches one, without even knowing it, the value of what you want, and how you tell your story, and how you know your history. It takes a lot of nuance to explain to someone, as a Black person, that one of your best friends was the owner of the largest plantation in southwestern Virginia. What does that mean that we played there together? Just the fact that we played doesn’t absolve that person of anything.
These are the kind of questions that are at the core of Faulkner stories, right? These are at the core of so many of the bedrocks of American literature and literary traditions. Those things have very much been like a fuel to the fire of the stories I’ve told.
For a lot of people in the North, this year was one of the first times they’ve actually reckoned with race—even though Trayvon Martin happened [almost 10] years ago. There have been a litany of other things that have happened in our lifetime, for even someone as young as I am, that they could have pointed to as a moment of racial reckoning. But it literally took George Floyd and a pandemic for them to recognize it in the North.
And for people in the South, that sort of delayed recognition…I’ve always felt like racism, the questions around white supremacy, questions about privilege, even if the language wasn’t there, the ideas were very much there because they were ingrained in the architecture of where we were.
We’ve been dealing with our own racial reckoning here in Virginia. In Charlottesville, everything came to the forefront in the wake of the white supremacist rally in 2017—and most recently in Richmond with the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue. What does it mean to you to screen one of your works here, given the sociopolitical context?
I think it’s exciting; it’s a sort of a homecoming. I feel like myself, and a lot of people from Virginia, specifically, who feel othered—whether it’s because they’re Black, whether it’s because they’re gay, whether it’s because they’re a woman with too much ambition—they end up going to some faraway city and not coming back, right? And being like, this is a safer place for me to exist and explore and become the human being that I want to be.
I’ve done that and it’s been phenomenal for me, but it’s been tinged with some sadness because I would prefer to be able to grow with people that I grew up with; I would have preferred to have shared the lessons I was learning with everyone around me, and not feel as though I had abandoned my community and taken away a resource that you know, Virginia helped foster.
I was watered and planted in Virginia, and then I was uprooted, and went somewhere else and became a grand, surprisingly large flower, right, that beared fruit. And that fruit is being beared and shared with people in New York and people in L.A. So it’s really exciting to have this step of me being brought back and welcomed back in some small way to a community I left because I didn’t know if I would ever feel welcome there.
Photo: VAFF
Do you feel a responsibility to take the lessons you’ve learned and the success you’ve achieved and channel it back into your community in some way?
I think that’s a complicated thing. There are moments where I feel like I owe everything to everyone down there and then moments where I’m like “I owe them nothing.” Oh, do I owe the cousin that called me the F-word, do I owe the students that called me the F-word anything? No.
There’s that question of, is it up to the person who’s been historically disenfranchised or othered to do the work?
That’s what gives me pause about coming back. But on the flip side, I think of the fact that there are people there who opened their homes to me, who shared things with me, and taught me things that I would have never known. And there’s also some other little boy or other little girl who feels a lot like I felt there, who probably feels alone.
I also do think that it’s very easy to abandon communities that you think haven’t evolved fast enough without trying to help them evolve. And again, that’s a lot of labor. But a part of me is like, it’s easier to evolve when you see it right in front of you; it’s harder when you can’t see it at all.
Maybe I do owe it to my community to be this out, proud, Black, successful gay man in Virginia, who can be a model for people who maybe have never even seen a gay person that’s out. I mean, they’ve definitely seen a gay person, they just maybe haven’t seen one who feels comfortable telling the world who they are. And me existing there might be something that could change that, right? Me existing there as someone who is very excited and proud to have co-written a movie directed by a Black woman…might make people have a different relationship to gender, and who gets what jobs in that area, because now they might not feel as though there’s some wild imposition of masculinity the minute that a woman is involved in any sort of project that a man is involved in.
That brings me to Zola, which you co-wrote with director Janicza Bravo. What first attracted you to this project?
I was actively on Twitter as it was happening. [A’Ziah “Zola” King] had written maybe like 15 of the 145 tweets and I was at tweet 15 thinking, “This is the funniest line ever—who is this?” And I think that I was captivated immediately then by the ferocity of her voice and the newness of her voice in the sense that her voice felt similar to the ways in which I process the world.
Can you talk about your writing approach to the film? It’s a unique undertaking in that you’re adapting tweets. Many lines in the movie were lifted directly from Zola’s tweets—but how did you maintain her voice?
Isn’t it so funny [the opening line of the film]: “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this bitch here fell out?” Isn’t it such a Southern turn of phrase? That line just feels like home to me.
And it’s immediately captivating. It feels like sitting around the table talking to your friends.
Exactly. It does feel exhilarating. The thing that made it very easy for me was that she told the story with such conviction, with such an innate and natural understanding of the rhythm of the storytelling that I didn’t have to do anything. It was basically like plug and play. So every beat that’s in the movie is from her actual Twitter thread, right. And so we just went through it and wrote them all down as the outline. And we filled in the beats in between the tweets.
Anything that could have happened between a pair of tweets—like there’s a tweet where they got in the car, and the next tweet, they’re in Florida—we filled out what happened on the ride to Florida, then. And that became a really important process. And then outside of that, we went through her actual history—some of the things she had told [David Kushner], the man who wrote the [Rolling Stone] article about her and used those things to add further flavors to the story.
This movie is categorized as a comedy, but it takes on a very serious subject. And I felt like it challenged me. There were certain scenes that I thought were funny, and there were other scenes that made me uncomfortable. Then there were scenes that I appreciated, but I felt like I wasn’t the intended audience. As a viewer, I felt very self-aware and my interpretation was that that was intentional. Was it?
I believe very strongly that an audience who is aware of itself, aware of its presence, are able to take on bigger ideas, even inside of a comedy, than they would if they aren’t aware of themselves. You do enough to remind people that what they’re watching is a movie that has an idea and the ideas are X, Y, and Z, so that they’ll notice things like the Confederate flag or the fact that a Black woman who doesn’t look anything like Whoopi Goldberg is being called Whoopi Goldberg. And even if they don’t understand what that means in the moment, they’ll think about it for longer because the movie has done a lot to destabilize the relationship to what they’re seeing.
This month, we asked you to scare us silly with your spookiest horror stories. Here’s the catch: They had to be just two sentences long. Below, we’ve printed the 10 most frightful submissions, which will be performed by the actors at Live Arts. (Look out for the video later this month on our social media.) Read on—if you dare.
First place: Robert tenderly kissed the palm of Jennifer’s small, delicate hand. Then he turned to hang it on his Christmas tree with the others. Judith Dianne Anderson
As satisfying as it was to push him drunk and dazed off the cliff, she found even greater delight when she climbed down to look at his corpse. Who knew that carrion beetles could be so tasty? Anne Olsson Loebs
When he first awoke to complete darkness and utter silence, and was unable to move any part of his body in any direction, he thought maybe he was dead. Then, as he felt hundreds of tiny little insect feet crawling all over his body and into his ears and eyes and nose, biting and stinging as they ran into his mouth and down his throat when he screamed, he wished he was. Mark Ehlers
Desperately this deformed, unsightly creature stares back at me, armed with eyes that have seen 1,000 lost worlds and shrieking silent howls that carry enough horror to crush any mortal soul, casting its agony upon those who dare see or hear it. I hate my mirror. Michael Urpi
The dinner was a cheery one, with all the guests smiling brightly. But the only noise was that of the host’s scraping steak knife, stained a deep maroon, and the buzz of flies circling the guest’s forgotten faces. Rose O’Shea
She holds her husband’s hand every night while watching the local news. He’s been dead for 10 years, but she doesn’t mind his boney grip between her fingers. Kathleen Richard
I started picking up speed through a haunted corn maze on Halloween when a man started chasing me. Then I thought to myself, fake chainsaws don’t usually have the chains on them. Chloe Root
It’s so good to have a mask mandate on campus. My peers would finally assume that everyone has a mouth. Hans Bai
My ex mistress keeps visiting me throughout the day, and I don’t want my wife to find out about her. Maybe I shouldn’t have buried her in the backyard. Brenna Kidd-Bania
The eerie quiet of midnight coated the Downtown Mall, except for a plump rat that nibbled gleefully on a half-eaten Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Suddenly, a crescendoing shriek pierced the silence, and the feasting rat jerked his gaze upward to see a ghost rising above the rubble of the Landmark Hotel and chanting: “Build me, build me.” Matt Deegan
Jason Kessler, center, is among the defendants in the ongoing civil trial against the organizers of the Unite the Right rally. Photo: Eze Amos
Each day, we’ll have the latest news from the courtroom in the Sines v. Kessler Unite the Right trial. For coverage from previous days, check the list of links at the bottom of this page.
With heightened security outside the courthouse, the courtroom closed to the public, and media restricted to a live feed of proceedings in a separate room inside the federal court building in downtown Charlottesville, Sines v. Kessler got underway on Monday morning. The lawsuit is aimed at disrupting and bankrupting the hate groups responsible for the August 2017 Unite the Right rally. Difficulty seating a jury in the civil case emerged almost immediately.
“These people are terrorists,” said the first prospective juror questioned in court about his ability to be objective about the defendants, a who’s who of white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
“Do you think you can set aside that opinion,” asked presiding Judge Norman K. Moon.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can,” the man replied, prompting Moon to release him from the jury pool.
Moon released another prospective juror over advanced age and a heart condition (jury service is optional for those 70 and over). Several others who are self-employed requested release from jury service due to the length of the trial, which is scheduled to last four weeks. The court also released a school bus driver who noted that the nationwide shortage in her field would make a four-week absence a hardship for students.
By mid-afternoon, 12 prospective jurors had been questioned and nine had been released for reasons ranging from age and health to self-professed bias. As court wrapped up at 6pm, several more had survived challenges from the defense or plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs in the case are represented by a phalanx of high-powered attorneys led by Roberta Kaplan and funded by the nonprofit Integrity First for America. Kaplan is best known for her 2013 victory in the landmark Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor, a watershed moment in the quest for marriage equality.
On the opposite side of the courtroom, several attorneys representing defendants were present, while Christopher Cantwell and alt-right leader Richard Spencer represented themselves.
Negative views of Nazis and white supremacists were frequent among the prospective jury pool but weren’t the only strong feelings expressed.
“You have unfavorable views against antifa?” Moon said to a female prospective juror.
“Honestly, I think they’re all a terrorist organization. They’re trying to hurt people,” the woman responded.
“Realizing that all the plaintiffs will say they are not members of that organization, do you think you can give the plaintiffs a fair hearing and make decisions based on law and evidence?” Moon asked.
“Yes,” the woman replied.
While jury selection took the majority of the time on Monday, the day started with a motion by plaintiffs to sever the case for Cantwell. If granted, the motion would create a separate lawsuit with Cantwell as the only defendant.
“The reason why we’ve done it just now is we were here for the first time with Mr. Cantwell, and we saw how he was given documents that he had never seen before,” said Kaplan. Kaplan noted that Cantwell’s present incarceration for threatening rape has prevented timely communication with him.
“It’s not about any newfound empathy for Mr. Cantwell,” said Kaplan. “There does appear to be an issue with respect to Mr. Cantwell getting pleadings in this case, documents in real time.”
Requesting the court’s permission to speak, Cantwell, who earned the moniker “the crying Nazi” after the Unite the Right rally for a self-posted video of him weeping over his impending arrest, asked the court to sanction the plaintiffs, but Moon swiftly interrupted.
“The court is willing to sever the case and allow you the time you want for your case,” said Moon. He denied the plaintiffs’ motion after Cantwell told the court he didn’t want his own legal proceeding.
Sines v. Kessler accuses Cantwell and two dozen other individuals and groups of conspiring to commit racially motivated violence before and during the weekend of the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. Defendants include the KKK, Vanguard America, League of the South and the National Socialist Movement. Individual defendants include rally organizer Jason Kessler, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Elliott Kline (aka Eli Mosley), Matthew Heimbach, who co-founded the Traditionalist Worker Party with fellow lawsuit defendant Matthew Parrott, and James Fields, who was convicted of murder and maiming in the August 12 car attack.
The suit’s ambitious goal goes beyond simply punishing individuals; it seeks to financially cripple groups and people who promote bigotry, hate, and violence, preventing future Unite the Right-like rallies in Charlottesville or anywhere else in the country.
