Lisa Woolfork is the producer of “Stitch Please,” a weekly podcast that explores sewing
and social justice. Publicity photo
By Erika Howsare
Lisa Woolfork had been sewing for years when she came to a realization—or, rather, a resolution. “I would never again trade my humanity in exchange for doing something I love,” she says. As a Black sewist, she had too often found herself in a compromising position: trying to participate in white-dominated sewing communities, but unable to “show up as my full, complete, and whole self,” as she puts it.
It was fall 2017, and Woolfork had recently had the harrowing experience of being on the ground for the deadly events of August 11 and 12 in Charlottesville. She’d been nearby when Heather Heyer died. But when she arrived at a sewing event in a different Virginia town, she wasn’t intending to discuss those things with the other, mostly white and conservative, participants.
“When I got there, people started asking me how I was, asking what it was like,” she remembers. “I would just answer, and say ‘yeah, it was hard, it was scary.’ I did not walk in to give lectures or speeches or anything. I just wanted to sew my project.”
Nonetheless, these conversations got her uninvited to the group’s next event. Woolfork realized that her presence was only accepted in this setting if she remained within very narrow boundaries. A friend told her, “‘This is what happens to Black folks when we go from being a pet to being a threat.’”
Woolfork, a professor of English at UVA, decided that she was done playing the role of minority in her creative life. Instead, she would create a new community in which Black makers stood at the center. In 2018, she began using Instagram to organize Black Women Stitch—“the sewing group where Black lives matter,” as she defines it. “Our intention is not to diversify the sewing community,” she says. “The advocacy is to create instead a space where Black women, girls, and femmes are centered in sewing.”
BWS gathered steam over the space of about a year, as Woolfork connected online with other Black women who wanted to talk sewing without leaving their identities or politics at the door. “I was looking for other Black women who had values similar to mine, including things like radical self-love, interest in Black liberation, and interest in racial justice,” Woolfork says.
The next big step was to organize an in-person event in early 2019: Beach Week, a week of sewing and togetherness in the Outer Banks. About a dozen people came, from as far as Texas and California. “We all came looking for the same thing: a sewing sisterhood,” Woolfork says.
They found a profound fellowship—“A friend described it as lightning in a bottle,” says Woolfork—and they emerged with another idea, too: a podcast. Woolfork uploaded the first episode of “Stitch Please” in September 2019. She conceived of it as a space to talk about sewing craft, Black women makers, and social justice, all at once. “There are podcasts about racial justice, womanism, feminism, all of these important practices for freedom and liberation and building a better society,” Woolfork says. “Then there’s podcasts that talk about sewing techniques, sewing celebrities, patterns, fabrics, all of these things. My podcast is the only one that is able to do both.”
Anyone who doubts that these topics belong in the same conversation might start to understand after listening to an episode or two. In one show, Woolfork discusses a controversy that arose within the general sewing community in January 2020 when the National Quilt Museum’s Block of the Month program included a free quilt block pattern that showed a pencil erasing the letters “in-” from the word “injustice.” A number of club members complained about this design, refused to participate, or altered the design with words like “Peace” or a picture of Mickey Mouse. As Woolfork puts it on the show, “It’s a revelation of the white fragility and racism that is prevalent in the sewing community.”
The mix of topics on “Stitch Please” has turned out to be a very potent brew. In one year, the podcast has seen an 1,100 percent growth in its audience, with 110,000 downloads representing 95 countries. Tobiah Mundt, also a Black maker and the co-owner of The Hive Cville, says she attributes that success to Woolfork’s authenticity. “She’s so real and she’s just herself,” Mundt says. “She’s not trying to be anything but Lisa, and she inspires us to have the courage to be ourselves and to live unapologetically.”
Shana Jefferson, a listener and occasional podcast guest who also attended the BWS Beach Week, agrees. “She’s uncompromising,” she says. “She’s been approached to have different sponsors or partnerships, and she takes very deliberate intentional time to think through those. If you’re not there to support Black women, girls, and femmes, she has no problem saying no.”
Woolfork says that sewing—an art she’s practiced for 25 years, and traces back through generations of women in her family—is a metaphor for community building. “This was an ancestral craft for African Americans,” she says. “[Community organizing] is a similar energy of transforming and creating and pulling together and binding.”
The "Inside Out: Charlottesville" mural features photos of 120 local activists, along the wall of the Violet Crown on Second St. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s been two years since the “Summer of Hate,” and Charlottesville, to the larger world, is still shorthand for white supremacist violence. As we approach the second anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017, we reached out to a wide range of community leaders and residents to talk about what, if anything, has changed since that fateful weekend, and how we can move forward.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What do you think of how Charlottesville, as a city, has responded in the aftermath of A12? What’s changed? What hasn’t?
It’s hard to say what’s changed in Charlottesville. Once heralded as America’s most ideal city, we’ve been outed as a place that is just as flawed as any other town. Having been forced to enter a conversation that has no easy solution, it feels like a collective healing from August 11 and 12 and its aftermath is going to take much longer than any of us want to believe. It’s a humbling and sober thought. That’s not to say there isn’t reason to hope—there certainly is—but I think that the pace of change—real, lasting change—is glacial. I think there’s a way to press on for a better future while extending grace to ourselves and each other.
—Sam Bush, music minister at Christ Episcopal Church and co-founder of The Garage art space
Charlene Green. Photo: Devon Ericksen
I think the way we tried to respond last year, from a law enforcement perspective, I think it was one of safety, we were definitely trying to assure the residents that no one was going to get hurt in the same way.
I think this year, the planning of Unity Days has definitely given community members a whole new opportunity to figure out how to be engaged about this, how to acknowledge the anniversary, and I think so far it has been a pretty successful effort.
It’s about constantly educating folks about what Charlottesville is all about, because we’re not a one-story town.
–Charlene Green, manager of the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights
I still think it’s a plantation, not a city. I feel that we should be going further with having transparency in the community to be able to work together.
The city hasn’t done anything besides make themselves look good, writing books, getting all these different recognitions for themselves, but nothing for the community.
[A lot of] the activists that were hurt…and that have been the true fighters for Charlottesville, are gone. And then you have some of us who are still left here, but I’m willing to leave, because I’m tired. Because this hasn’t just been going on for me since 2017, this has been going on for me for 13 years now. So I’m tired, because it’s like the more you’re fighting, it’s like it’s not changing.
–Rosia Parker, community activist and Police Civilian Review Board member
Rev. Seth Wispelwey and other clergy marched to oppose the KKK in July 2017. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s difficult to answer, because what people make of that weekend, whether they experienced it directly or not, is up to them, and relies so much on the stories we told about ourselves beforehand.
As a co-creator of Congregate, in our weeks of training, we always emphasized that it was about using the weekend of August 11th and 12th as a pivot point to the long, deep, hard, life-giving work we all can be a part of in dismantling white supremacy. So some people took up that call, and have continued to run with it, learning and growing along the way, and others covered their ears, and wanted to believe that this had nothing to do with Charlottesville or our collective responsibility to one another. And then still others were somewhere in the middle, believing that their ongoing efforts were sufficient, that the status quo was naturally going to lead to some sort of evolutionary progress. We’re a very self-satisfied progressive city.
I think it’s no secret that governing authorities, from City Council to the police force, in the summer of 2017 made choices that left our community vulnerable and exposed and suffering from violence. What hasn’t changed is there still has been little to no accountability for that, and so while people have undertaken their own healing processes, I still believe, even two years on, there’s a tremendous trust deficit between members of the community who saw the violent threat for what it was, and our ostensible leadership, who by and large prescribed ignoring it and left people to be beaten, and then prosecuted some people who defended themselves.
And again we saw that on the first-year anniversary, the over-militarized response. Treating the community and activists as the enemy has been the wrong direction so far. And I don’t think it would take much to repair that trust deficit. “I’m sorry” is free. But that’s going to take some work, and I haven’t seen changes there from city leadership.”
–Reverend Seth Wispelwey, former minister at Restoration Village Arts and co-founder of Congregate Charlottesville
I think in the aftermath of A12, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in civic engagement. More and more people are paying close attention to City Council and getting involved with local community groups. People are trying to understand where we’re at as a community, and how we can create real, lasting change.
The conversation around race and equity has completely changed and there’s an unprecedented level of awareness about local economic and racial inequalities. But we haven’t yet created the level of institutional change needed to fundamentally shift the balance of political and economic power within Charlottesville. We’ve planted the seeds of change, but we have a lot of work left to do when it comes to changing outcomes.
–Michael Payne, housing activist and City Council candidate
Everything and nothing. We’re still very much a city divided. There have been some efforts made…but I don’t think there’s been any real substantive change. We elected Nikuyah, but I’d like to think that that would have happened whether August the 12th ever did or not.
The city’s done a great job with the Unity Days events and that’s a huge start. But we’ve still got such a long way to go.
–Don Gathers, community activist and former Chair of The Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces
Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
“I was still new to Charlottesville when A11/12 happened; I had only been here about eight months, so I don’t have a great deal of perspective on Charlottesville before that time. The changes that I have seen, though, I would characterize as a greater urgency around the conversations that Charlottesville and the country as a whole must engage in—conversations around systemic and institutionalized racism, equity, and the historical inequalities that continue to resonate locally and nationally.
One of the things that worries me in the community is that I continue to hear people say things along the lines of, “they (meaning the white nationalists) weren’t from here…” True, some did come from other places, but I think it is dangerous not to acknowledge fully that this is our problem, too.”
—Matthew McLendon, Ph.D., director of The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA
In terms of where we are this year—with no active threat of more violence and a plan for less police presence, I do want to emphasize that there is increased possibility for the beginning of a healing journey, both at the individual and the community level. It was very hard to begin that process that year, as so many people felt unsafe around the anniversary, so that feels to me very different this year.
Mental health-wise, reflecting on the changes over the past few years, there are many more therapists and other people in our community who are prepared to respond to traumatic experiences and to facilitate healing—in particular the establishment of the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network.
Obviously, trauma is historical and something we’re still grappling with. On the positive side, our community is looking very explicitly at health disparity and in particular racial inequity around health outcomes for the first time. Everyone’s coming together in our community health needs assessment to say our number one priority is to address inequity in health outcomes. So I think that is a positive change. Has that disparity changed yet? No. So we have a lot of work to do, but awareness is the first step.”
—Elizabeth Irvin, executive director of The Women’s Initiative
Susan Bro. Photo: Eze Amos
I think Charlottesville is working to bring awareness to the citizens and change its image. There have been intensified efforts to shed light on the truth of the past. That’s a good beginning. But the racial divides in housing and education seem to still be just as bad as before. None of us at the Heather Heyer Foundation actually live in town or even Albemarle County. So we are on the outside, looking in.
—Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer and president of the Heather Heyer Foundation
It is always a challenge in the aftermath of a traumatic event, like A12, to move from the initial reactive state to a long-term adaptive state. The city, local businesses, organizations, and citizens responded to the events with a great deal of energy and attention. When we realized that many of us had turned a blind eye to the racism in our community, our leaders took on new initiatives and made demands for change with gusto. But the real trick is what happens in the next 5-10 years.
—Bree Luck, producing artistic director, Live Arts
What do you think the city needs to do to move forward?
One huge step would be to visibly and viably take ownership for that weekend and what happened, and the role that they actually played in it. It’s still very much a point of contention that the folks who directly lost their jobs were two men of color.
The council, whatever it may look like on the first of the year, they’ve got a huge task on their hands. The new buzzword of course is civility, and I think that we’ve got to become comfortable in the incivility for a while, because this was so very painful and hurtful for so many people. Now I’m not saying that 10 years down the road folks still should be shutting down meetings because of it. I don’t see the necessity of that. But if something triggers a person…I think we have to allow space for that, and understand it.
They’ve got to figure out how to bring about some level of trust between the city and the community and the police department. Because that’s what’s sorely lacking right now. And figuring out how to do that, that’s the E=MC squared equation.What it looks like and then how to make it happen. That’s something that’s vital to the renaissance, if you will, of Charlottesville, and getting us to a point where we’re not recognized as just a hashtag.
—Don Gathers
We certainly have issues in this community that we’re working on, but there’s also a lot of great things that are happening. The Chamber of Commerce is in a great position to help with that.
It’s not surprising that the business community [and tourism have] taken some hits from the events that happened in the last couple years. Nobody wants to minimize some of the tough conversations and hard work that’s going on here to build equity, but you can work on those things and also highlight the things that are going really well-—companies that are launching and doing world-class work here, opportunities that are opening up for new careers, that’s the piece that the business community thinks needs to be out there more.
It would be helpful if there was cooperation between elected officials and the business community and others, trying to get toward some shared goals.
—Elizabeth Cromwell, President & CEO, Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce
We have to commit ourselves to the work of making Charlottesville a more equitable city, not just in word but in deed. And we have to hold space to celebrate and document who we are as community and what we’ve accomplished. Fundamentally, we care about this community because we love the people in it. We can’t be afraid of acknowledging that.
—Michael Payne
I was fortunate to hear Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, speak earlier this year, and I was moved by his insistence on the need for “proximity.” He stressed that we must be close to, and by extension listen to, those who are not like us.
The Fralin Museum of Art joined the larger national conversation on social justice by participating in the “For Freedoms” project with “Signs of Change: Charlottesville.” Working with our community partners, most importantly Charlene Green from the Office of Human Rights, we convened a series of workshops to bring people together to first learn about the histories of marginalized people in Charlottesville and then talk about ways we could help to stop history from repeating itself. There must be continued opportunities for proximity, education, and dialogue.
—Matthew McLendon
What the City of Charlottesville I believe needs to do in its various official capacities is apologize and take ownership for the exposure and violence that came. At its root, it was a failure to take the inherent violence of white supremacy seriously: these were terrorist groups who threatened violence, the city was adequately warned, and we know for a fact that the police were more interested in what “antifa” was going to do, or [suggested] that we should just ignore them. No one can tell me that if this had been an ISIS free speech rally that it wouldn’t have been shut down immediately. So it starts with that.
Honest and sincere apologies are not weakness, they’re a sign of strength, and I think what Charlottesville is fighting to do and what the city could help do is stop continuing to gaslight people and say yeah, we were wrong, we will take the threat of white supremacy seriously, and I think the temperature would cool across the board.
—Rev. Seth Wispelwey
Rosia Parker outside the courtroom after the James Fields verdict, in December. Photo: Eze Amos
One, you gotta listen to the community. Don’t just listen at the community, listen to the community. [Be] willing to be transparent, willing to create ideas together, that will make a thriving community.
—Rosia Parker
As a city, I think we have an obligation to help provide opportunities for folks to be engaged and for people to see that we’re trying very hard to walk the talk. At the Office of Human Rights, if we say that equity and social justice are important for residents, then we need to show it.
—Charlene Green
Photo: UVA
Moments of adversity and heartbreak sometimes give us an opportunity for collaboration and progress. Since August 2017, UVA and the local community have been working together in unprecedented ways. The UVA-Community Working Group that came together last fall identified the most pressing issues that we can begin to work on together—jobs and wages, affordable housing, public health care, and youth education—and efforts are under way now to address those issues through UVA-community partnerships grounded in equity and mutual respect.
So many of us love Charlottesville. I think the best way we can express that love, and the best way we can move forward after August 2017, is by working together to make our community stronger, more united, and more resilient than it’s ever been before
—Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia
We need to continue our efforts to rebuild the bonds that unite all of us, with the understanding that a community dedicated to issues of social justice and racial equality is a place that we can be proud to call home, and a place that more people will want to come visit.
—Adam Healey, former interim director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau
Addressing racism at the structural and institutional level remains the highest priority. In particular being able to give the mike to people of color, black people in particular, who have historically not had a voice, would be at the top of that list. From a mental health perspective that’s important because healing can’t occur without first acknowledging the trauma of people who’ve experienced this, and I think we still have a lot of work to do. Some of these events of Unity Days are beginning to give voice to that, and I think there’s a lot more room to do more.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My heart goes out to the city officials since they’re the ones who are publicly shouldering what is actually each of ours to carry. I hope that they will continue to serve humbly, to keeping listening and asking questions. I’ve found that bringing small groups of people from different backgrounds together can be an effective way to get people to speak honestly and calmly in a way that inspires others to listen.
—Sam Bush
Someone besides me to say what we need to do to move forward. People like me who have been in leadership positions for many years ought to create the space for other people living and leading quietly in our community to say what needs to happen.
—Erika Viccellio, executive director of The Fountain Fund
Don Gathers and others at the official unveiling of the Inside Out: Charlottesville mural. Photo: Eze Amos
What do individual people need to do to move the community forward?
If you see a need, don’t wring your hands and hope someone does something about it. Step up to see what you can do to move things forward. And then actually do it. Don’t play armchair quarterback. Put feet to your intentions and get involved. If you don’t step up and out, who will?#StepUpStepOut.
—Susan Bro
I’m not sure the public speaking platforms of our age are as effective as we think they are. Many of us are speaking to people who already agree with us which, in turn, merely helps us feel better about ourselves while vilifying those who disagree with us. As a result, we seem quick to anger and slow to listen. The alternative, I think, is much more difficult but more effective. I think we’d each be better off by getting to know someone who couldn’t be more different from us and then befriending them. Easier said than done, of course.
—Sam Bush
There’s no magic pill here that’ll fix this. We’ve got to begin to have those tough and difficult and hard conversations. And we’ve got to stop talking about race and start talking about racism. We can’t just talk about white supremacy, we’ve got to actually have the difficult conversations about white privilege and white advantage. And once we embrace those conversations…then we can move forward and start talking about unification.
I’m not sure there’s a mediator or moderator in the world that could handle that, because in so many instances we’re still talking at each other instead of to each other. We’re still talking about each other instead of trying to handle and solve the problem as it presents itself. How it’s handled, what it looks like, I’m still trying to envision it, but I know that it’s got to happen in order for us to move that needle.
—Don Gathers
Lisa Woolfork and members of the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County, who fought for a ban on Confederate imagery in county schools. Photo: Eze Amos
People can support community members who are already doing the work to build a better Charlottesville. City councilors need to respect and support Mayor Walker’s leadership. Voters need to vote for strong racial justice supporters. School administrators need to respond with deep policy changes to address concerns about racial equity raised by students and families. We need to stop protecting Confederates and their white supremacist legacy. We can create a brighter future if we do the difficult, sometimes uncomfortable, yet necessary work of liberation, learning and unlearning.
—Lisa Woolfork, UVA professor and community activist
Listen! We are each, as individuals, responsible for change. I am clear that as a white male, I need to listen to people of color and other marginalized communities with lived experiences different from mine. By listening we can understand what we need to do to be active allies. My fear for our whole society is that far too many people want to speak and too few have the self-discipline or awareness to listen.
—Matthew McLendon
Choose to live in community. In an age of climate change, neoliberalism, and tech-mediated communication, we are encouraged to remain fearful and isolated. To paraphrase bell hooks’ essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom”, the road to healing our wounded body politic is through a commitment to collective liberation that moves beyond resistance to transformation. We all have a positive role to play in healing and transforming our community. Yes, that means you too!
–Michael Payne
As individuals we just need to get involved, and stay aware. Because we can’t depend on one agency or one entity to handle it all; we need to all step up as a community, and in whatever way you feel the most comfortable. Hopefully you’re able to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s when we stay in our little circles of comfort that we tend to perpetuate stereotypes and assumptions about people in different groups. So to push ourselves to get involved and be challenged, and to challenge each other, I think are some of the things we can do.
–Charlene Green
Photo: Nick Strocchia
First and foremost is that self-reflection and working around issues of race and privilege. And within that, being willing to take care of ourselves and recognize what we need to do around our stress and anxiety so we can continue to have uncomfortable conversations and meaningful dialogue, but also continue to challenge ourselves moving forward.
Relative to the traumatic aspect of the anniversary itself, people who were more directly impacted still may be experiencing a lot of traumatic stress, so I just encourage those people in particular to reach out for support.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My own perspective shift came from new and growing relationships in Charlottesville, thanks to a lot of grace and space afforded to me by people who have been working on anti-racist advocacy for a long time here.
The truth is we all have space and grace to grow forward, and so what individuals can continue to do, and I’m talking about cis-hetero white individuals particularly, is not just listen to voices and perspectives that are threatened and crushed by white supremacy, but start to foreground their asks and desires. It will be costly for a lot of the privilege we carry, but it’s a cost that liberates, and is really life-giving in the end.
We can’t all be responsible for all the things all the time, or we’ll burn out, so get plugged in and focus where you feel most called and led. There’s a multitude of opportunities, but life’s too short and racism is too strong in this country to not try a bit harder to show up in embodied solidarity, somewhere.
—Seth Wispelwey
For those of us who weren’t born and raised here I think we need to be committed to better understanding the community we live in. It is only recently that I started regularly attending events and tours at the African American Heritage Center. I have a new, and essential, emerging understanding of the community I’ve been “serving” all these years.
—Erika Viccellio
One thing that we can do as individuals is to extirpate the systemic racism that plagues our culture. At Live Arts…we have begun to explore the systemic barriers to [theater] participation, including obvious issues like cost and content representation—and not-so-apparent barriers like architecture, language, food, and transportation. With the help of community partners this year, Live Arts offered more “pay what you can” tickets and scholarships than ever before. Also, we are diversifying representation on our stages by making more stories written and directed by and about persons of color and women.
Education is the key to effecting change. At Live Arts, we discussed micro-aggressions, unconscious bias, and workplace discrimination each month in board and staff meetings. This summer, we invited volunteer directors to join a diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop so that our creative teams have the tools to create a safe space to work and play.
We are far from perfect. But the aim is not to create a utopian society where we all say and do the right thing. Instead, the goal is to have an equitable culture of belonging, prosperity, community, and creative exploration.
Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA, said the Albemarle County School Board’s decision to have protesters arrested at its last meeting was a “complete embarrassment, and a moral failure.”
eze amos
“You can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution,” were the words scrawled on a giant white sign held by a man in sunglasses.
It was the first meeting of the Albemarle County School Board since the August 30 one where six anti-racist activists were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs for allegedly being disruptive, and where one was sent to the hospital after a police officer knocked him to the ground.
This time, things were more peaceful—board chair Kate Acuff only threatened to have one community member removed for clapping.
Activists with groups such as Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County have put intense pressure on the board for over a year to make county schools more inclusive and safe for all students—by, among other things, banning Confederate imagery currently permitted in the school division’s dress code. In response, a panel of nine volunteer students has been tasked with writing an anti-racism policy that will be implemented at all county schools, says school spokesperson Phil Giaramita, and a re-examination of the dress-code policy could happen subsequently.
Albemarle County School Board Chair Kate Acuff threatened to have one community member removed for clapping at the September 18 meeting. eze amos
That response has not satisfied activists, who want Confederate imagery banned now, and who have been outraged at the school board’s aggressive attempts to limit dissent.
Tension was high at the September 18 meeting, and Superintendent Matthew Haas, perhaps hoping to set a new tone, began with a statement declaring that county and city schools will join together to end racism and discrimination in their hallways, and close opportunity gaps.
“Discrimination against diverse people of color is still deeply ingrained in American culture,” he said. “Whether we call it racism or systemic bias, it results in inequitable opportunities for African American and Latino students.”
But the nearly 20 community members who had signed up for public comment wanted to talk specifics.
After a warning that any sounds of support or non-support could result in ejection from the meeting, a retired Henley Middle School teacher of 25 years stood up to speak.
Margie Shepherd said she had successfully argued before the board a decade ago that students using hate speech should be disciplined, and now the same conversation has resurfaced.
Because those who agreed with her weren’t allowed to cheer, or even snap, they silently waved their hands in support as Shepherd said Confederate symbols “make schools less welcome and less safe for our students of color.”
Matthew Christensen spoke next, and criticized the board for not being open to two-way communication, which it promises in its code of conduct.
“Each and every one of you needs to think very long and very hard about who you are and what you want to represent to this community,” Christensen said.
School board members are aware of the danger they’re putting students in by allowing such “traumatizing imagery” in schools, he claimed.
“And yet you do nothing,” he said. “You pretend to care about our children. You pretend to care about our community, and yet, you have shown over and over again that you don’t.”
Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA, called the board hostile, and said its decision to have activists arrested was a “fetishization of order over justice,” a “complete embarrassment, and a moral failure.”
While the board made no apologies for the previous meeting’s arrests, school board member Graham Paige, a retired teacher of 30 years, stayed back to talk with some of the remaining activists. “A dress code and anti-racism policy that benefits all of our students is really the mutual goal of Hate-Free Schools and the board,” he said.
The board will next meet September 27. And the activists have promised they’ll be there, too.
SURJ members serenade diners at Miller’s in 2017 with chants like “Nazi go home.”
Eze Amos
During the week leading up to the August 11 and 12 anniversary, local anti-racist groups hosted a series of events, including panels on their use of in-your-face tactics and why they believe the First Amendment should not apply to white supremacists.
Protesters up the ante
UVA religious studies professor Jalane Schmidt opened the August 7 Black Lives Matter event with a terse request: “For everyone’s safety, we’ll ask all police to leave.”
The five-person “Why We Protest” panel discussion took a decidedly brasher tone than previous community events, showcasing the confrontational tactics some Charlottesville activists have embraced.
In the packed Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium, Showing Up for Racial Justice activist Grace Aheron moderated the panel, which included Congregate Charlottesville organizer Brittany “Smash” Caine-Conley, SURJ activist Anna, UVA English professor Lisa Woolfork and UVA Students United activist Ibby Han. In keeping with the SURJ ethos, Aheron forbade audience members from livestreaming the event. “If you want the information, you have to come, or take notes and tell everyone,” she said.
Panelists prefaced the discussion by giving their preferred pronouns and tracing their paths to activism. Anna and Han got their start in campus organizations, while Woolfork was driven to protest out of a desire for “her children to inherit a world better than the one I have.” For Caine-Conley, experiencing police violence during a prayer circle at Standing Rock was the tipping point.
The first question addressed a common objection to protests against white supremacy: Why don’t you just ignore them? “Apathy is not a strategy,” said Woolfork, to a roaring applause. Other panelists argued that public disruption has been an indispensable tool for thwarting the alt-right.
Some on the panel adopted a more elastic definition of protest to accommodate mental and physical handicaps. Anna, a disabled activist, said, “Feeding the homeless is an act of protest to food injustice.”
Panelists endorsed controversial tactics for combating white supremacy, such as denying public figures they associate with fascism a platform and accosting them when they go out in public, an approach that has been used against several White House officials—and Jason Kessler.
Woolfork discouraged arguing with bigots, though other panelists adjusted this stance when someone asked what to do if the bigot is a family member. Struggling through tears, an audience member recalled contentious disputes with her parents, who voted for Donald Trump.
Caine-Conley said as a queer woman with family members who do not accept her, she has found it helpful to tell them stories about her activism. “It causes cognitive dissonance…because I am involved,” she said.
Panelists reiterated the need people to participate in demonstrations, citing the successful push to ban Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler from UVA. “The arc of justice doesn’t bend naturally,” Han said, “it bends when people push on it.”
Many activists agreed that the biggest threat for the August 12 weekend didn’t come from neo-Nazis. At the #ResilientCville town hall a few weeks ago, several audience members expressed concerns about police overcompensating to make up for last year’s failures. Woolfork echoed these concerns, warning that, if this is the case, “black people will bear the brunt.”—Jonathan Haynes
Free speech victims
Showing Up for Racial Justice sponsored an August 8 lawyers’ panel on free speech and anti-racist work—and how “false notions” about the former “hinder” the latter.
UVA law professor Anne Coughlin called the idea that there’s such a thing as legally protected free speech a “myth.” She said, “We regulate speech all the time.” Free speech gets thrown around as an absolute right, while “the protections are much narrower that people believe,” she said.
Legal Aid Justice Center and National Lawyers Guild attorney Kim Rolla questioned the idea that in an unfettered marketplace of free speech, “truth will shake out.”
Said Rolla, “Right now, the First Amendment is used to punish anti-racists and protect white supremacists.”
SURJ organizer Ben Doherty, who works at the UVA Law Library, elaborated on that theme: July 8, 2017, when “police gave full protection” to the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and tear-gassed anti-racist activists; a federal judge allowing Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler to hold his violent rally last year “under the guise of free speech;” August 11, 2017,at UVA, when neo-Nazis and white supremacists carried torches through the Grounds of UVA and “formed a lynch mob” while “police were paralyzed.”
And he listed the UVA law school, which allowed Kessler to be there twice, while arresting an activist “for merely sitting in the office with him.”
Coughlin, who said she has colleagues who say student “snowflakes” are trying to silence free speech, called “completely false” the notion of a “presupposed golden age of free speech and the sharing of ideas freely” when women and African Americans were excluded from law schools.
“We have the power to change the meaning of what’s protected speech and what’s violence,” she said.
White supremacists are now characterizing themselves as victims and “a minority group that’s being silenced,” said Rolla. “To say white folks are victims is really dangerous.”
Trickier for the panelists was how to prevent hate speech from having First Amendment protections.
“I’m hesitant to give more tools to the government to restrict speech,” said Rolla.
“There’s no reason the KKK should be a legal organization in the United States,” said Doherty. “It’s a terrorist group.” He said the government outlawed the Black Panthers through FBI surveillance and infiltration.
Attorney Lloyd Snook was in the audience, and he says that infiltrating the Black Panthers was not the same as passing a law, “Two of the three panelists don’t know their First Amendment history very well.”
The decisions that came out of the Warren U.S. Supreme Court were to protect civil rights organizers, union organizers and Communists, he says. “Later on the KKK and Nazis latched on to that.”
Moderator Lisa Woolfork with free-speech panelists Ben Doherty, Anne Coughlin, and Kim Rolla. staff photo
How Kessler could get a permit for the Unite the Right rally last year was a question from the audience.
In federal court, the basis the city gave for moving the rally was the number of people anticipated for then-Emancipation Park, said Rolla.
Rolla pointed out that then-mayor Mike Signer told ProPublica on Frontline’s “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville” that the city had no knowledge there would be any violence. Rolla called that “astounding” and said, “People stood in front of City Council” with information of the violent intentions of rally-goers, and there should have been prior restraint based on the threat of violence.—Lisa Provence
Hundreds of students, faculty, and other supporters gathered at the University of Virginia on August 11, the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist-led tiki-torch rally on Grounds, to support those who were beaten by men in white polos and khakis a year earlier. They also protested the police, and the security parameters they allege that UVA forced on their rally. Photo by Eze Amos
Minutes before their rally was scheduled to begin August 11 in front of the Rotunda, UVA student activists dropped a banner that said, “Last year they came with torches, this year they come with badges,” and instructed hundreds of attendees to move their demonstration a few hundred feet to the left, where cops weren’t already waiting for them and they wouldn’t have to pass through metal detectors.
“They are here to control us,” said Erik Patton-Sharpe into a megaphone, and the crowd of students, community members, and out-of-town activists who came to support them echoed it. “They are here to control us,” the student said again, stomping a black combat boot on the pavement with every word.
It was the anniversary of the night that hundreds of white supremacists marched across Grounds, carrying lit tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.” When they reached the Thomas Jefferson statue at the base of the Rotunda, they encircled it and a group of counterprotesters—mainly students and faculty—and then pepper sprayed them and beat them with their torches.
The victims have often said that night in 2017 set the tone for the rest of the August weekend, when countless brawls between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists broke out in the streets, and law enforcement stood by idly.
At an event titled The Hope That Summons Us earlier that morning, President Jim Ryan said on his 11th day in office that UVA must admit to the mistakes it made last summer, pledge to learn from those mistakes, and not be afraid to apologize.
He earned himself a standing ovation with his message for the victims: “I am sorry. We are sorry.”
At their rally for justice that evening, a student said she didn’t believe him.
Others said cops don’t exist to protect them, and that law enforcement has a history of violence against anti-racist protesters.
Students C-VILLE interviewed at the rally declined to give their names, but allies passed around a flier with their unified message.
By Eze Amos
“What you see around you is not what we asked for,” it said, alleging that UVA administration forced them to plan the rally within the security parameters, required them to choose a select group of community members to join them, suggested they only allow those with student IDs inside the barricades the university erected, and designated a space for white supremacist counterprotesters. Said the flier, “It is a betrayal of our ideals and our community. …The city and the university’s desire to control images and protect their brands has created a dangerous police state.”
“This was a wonderful opportunity to look at the physical structures that they were being framed in as an analogy for the institutional structures that they are trying to resist,” said Lisa Woolfork, a Black Lives Matter organizer who teaches at the university.
She was wearing a T-shirt that said “professors act against white supremacy” when one of the student organizers at the rally asked her to help pass out their fliers.
Many professors wore the same shirt, and another student said she could feel the support from UVA faculty that night.
“I do have a certain degree of power and authority, and I think it’s useful for those in positions of power to support those who have less power,” said Woolfork.
The flier also listed the students’ demands to the university: To pay all outstanding medical bills for victims of last August 11 and 12, to denounce white supremacy by issuing lifelong no trespass orders to the men identified on Grounds last August 11, and to disclose any profits raised at last summer’s Concert for Charlottesville.
By 7:20pm, riot cops had lined up on the outskirts of the new rally location on the triangle of grass in front of Brooks Hall, and the activists began hurling a new chant at them: “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here.”
Photo by Eze Amos
Some went face to face with law enforcement, while others advised them not to escalate the situation. The rally resumed peacefully and its attendees were again on the move.
They marched to The Colonnades amphitheatre at Lambeth Field, with a dozen first stopping to confront a person they called “Nazi” wearing a Longwood University T-shirt and cowboy boots. By about 8:05pm, they had regrouped and some decided on a march through the streets of Charlottesville.
Students, faculty, and allies then marched through town, chanting and cheering as people came out of their homes and businesses to clap along or record the chaos on their cellphones. A few miles later and after many had tapered off, a group of about 100 local and out-of-town activists arrived downtown.
A police helicopter trailed the march, and officers were lined up along the way. On Water Street outside of Mono Loco, a Virginia State Police officer darted into the crowd and tackled one woman, for reasons VSP spokesperson Corinne Geller was unsure.
Immediately, the woman’s anti-fascist comrades swarmed her, and yanked her out of the officer’s grip. The brawl had separated into two smaller ones, and the activists joined back with the march without any arrests.
Video of the mini melee shows two VSP officers holding a third one back, as he struggled to break free in an apparent attempt to reach the protesters involved in the fight.
Another similar scuffle broke out on the Downtown Mall, where police say an officer saw a man masking his face and he and the suspect were knocked to the ground as the officer moved toward him. Charges are pending in this incident, but, again, the activist and his friends rejoined the demonstration and were lost in the crowd. They made their way to Market Street, where they decided to call it a night.
And to make sure everyone in the group was on the same page, they shouted their plan: “Come back tomorrow morning.”
Richard Pryor stars in Car Wash. Courtesy Universal Pictures
“Working at the car wash / Working at the car wash, yeah.” Those of a certain age can’t glide through the auto wash without humming a few lines from the 1976 movie Car Wash. Starring Richard Pryor and George Carlin, the time-stamped comedy follows the employees and owner at a Los Angeles car wash who prove there’s no problem that cannot be soothed by disco and funk. Despite its box office failure, the film won two prizes at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, plus a nomination for the Palme d’Or, and a Grammy for Best Album Original Score. Stay for the post-screening discussion with UVA professor Lisa Woolfork.
Tuesday, June 12. $10, 7pm. Lighthouse Studio: Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W. Market St. 293-6992.
Dozens of community activists showed up in support for DeAndre Harris outside Charlottesville General District Court on March 15, the day before his trial, in which he was found not guilty of assaulting a white supremacist with a Maglite on August 12. Photo by Eze Amos
As DeAndre Harris’ attorney played video footage of a group of white supremacists beating him to the ground in the Market Street Parking Garage on August 12, Harris sank back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Today, he was on trial in Charlottesville General District Court for an encounter that happened just moments before the bloody beatdown, when he was walking down Market Street and testified that “everybody just stopped.”
Harris said he turned around to monitor the situation, and that’s when he says he witnessed League of the South member Harold Crews “driving his flag into Corey [Long].”
Long—who is now widely recognized as the tall, muscular black man who appears to be wielding a homemade flamethrower at a white supremacist in an August 12 photo that went viral—is one of a few people Harris attended the Unite the Right rally with. Harris said he had seen people using flagpoles as weapons throughout the day.
So when he saw the tip of one poking into his friend’s torso, that’s when he took a Maglite out of his backpack and swung it in the direction of the flagpole. His attorney, Rhonda Qualiana, said you could hear the flashlight hit the pole in the video.
Harris came to the rally carrying a bag full of water and a white towel to cover his face in the event that tear gas was dispersed, he testified. An unknown white man dressed in all black had handed him the Maglite and a face mask for protection just prior to the incident.
After he swung it, Crews—the North Carolina man who brought the assault charge against Harris—claimed he was struck on the left cheek, which left two abrasions.
While Judge Robert Downer said he believed Crews’ testimony, he said, “I cannot find beyond a reasonable doubt that [Harris] intended to hit Mr. Crews.”
And though the judge formerly instructed several rows of activists in the courtroom that outbursts were prohibited, they erupted in applause and whistles when he found Harris not guilty of the misdemeanor.
As part of a campaign community activists are calling “Drop the Charges,” members of groups such as Black Lives Matter, Congregate Charlottesville, Showing up for Racial Justice and Solidarity Cville have demanded that Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania acquit Harris, Long and another black man, Donald Blakney, from the charges they’ve faced as a result of protecting the community from neo-Nazis on August 12.
Outside the courtroom after the verdict—where, not long before, Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler made his rounds through the screaming crowd, exchanging middle fingers with activists and filming a police officer who smacked his arm and caused him to drop and allegedly break his phone—activists chanted, “Being black is not a crime,” after the verdict.
Among a sea of signs in support of Harris, the 20-year-old who was working as a lead counselor at the local YMCA and a teacher’s aide at Venable Elementary School, one stood out: “Venable families stand with Dr. Dre.”
Quagliana said Harris would not be speaking to the media or the activists.
“Your enthusiasm and support has meant everything to DeAndre,” she said to the crowd of approximately 75 people. “It’s almost hard for me to not be emotional.”
The attorney said the day was also very emotional for her client, who has been searching for the woman who initially gave him aid on the steps of the NBC29 building where he lay after he was removed from the parking garage on August 12. Quagliana said he wants to thank her.
“DeAndre and his parents want peace in this community,” she added.
Black Lives Matter-Charlottesville organizer Lisa Woolfork said the acquittal of a victim whom white supremacists tried to turn into an assailant was a cause for celebration.
“Our community is much safer because of this verdict,” she said.
