Tag: Marissa Blair

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In brief: Surviving the anniversary, unfinished A12 legal business, another contender, and more

First Baptist Church was the scene for August 12 reflection and moving forward—as it was two years ago. Amy Jackson

Forward together

It was a full house at First Baptist Church on West Main Street on August 12, as a diverse crowd gathered for an interfaith service. “It fills my heart to see the pews filled like this,” said deacon Don Gathers. “We’ve come together not because of what happened, but in spite of it.”

A promised appearance by several presidential candidates fell through, after Cory Booker returned to New Jersey to deal with a water crisis, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had asked to speak at the service but been denied, canceled at the last minute.

The service, which echoed similar gatherings held at the church after the violence in 2017 and on the first anniversary last year, was full of music, prayers, and reflection. It also featured testimony from August 12, 2017, survivors and faith leaders.

Activist Tanesha Hudson, a Charlottesville native, said activists of color had sometimes been left behind, and urged everyone to put action behind their conversations. “The world is watching Charlottesville, so how we recover is going to lay down the blueprint for how the world recovers.”

Marisa Blair and Courtney Commander, who were with their friend Heather Heyer when she died, said the anniversary had been harder than expected, but Blair said she wanted to talk about love. “Be kind. Be gentle. You don’t know what anyone else is facing.”

Presbyterian leader Jill Duffield spoke about living in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white supremacist gunman murdered nine people at the Emanuel AME church, but said it had taken the events in Charlottesville to make her understand the prevalence of white supremacist violence.

And Rabbi Tom Gutherz, of Congregation Beth Israel, addressed the long history of anti-Semitism, calling it “the glue that holds white supremacy together.” The son of a Holocaust survivor, he acknowledged that Jewish people in America have also been privileged. “I may have been surprised,” he said of the violence in Charlottesville, “but African Americans have always known it.”

He exhorted the audience to “be a resister, and not a bystander,” and said, “I believe that we will find a way forward together.” 

Clockwise from top left: Don Gathers, Sarah Kelley and Michael Cheuk, Tanesha Hudson, Tom Gutherz, Marissa Blair and Courtney Commander, and Jill Duffield were among those who spoke at First Baptist Church August 12. Amy Jackson

Quote of the week

“You literally have to love the hell out of people.”—Marissa Blair, survivor of the August 12, 2017, car attack

In brief

Kessler refiles

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler took to the federal courts—again—on the second anniversary of the deadly rally in Charlottesville to sue the city and its officials for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights in August 2017. Kessler and co-plaintiff David Parrott claim police allowed a heckler’s veto to suppress their exercise of free speech by not stopping the fights that led to an unlawful assembly.

Hudson sues, too

Another civil suit was filed August 12, this one by local activist Tanesha Hudson. The lawsuit claims Hudson was denied her First, Fifth, and 14th Amendment rights when she joined Jehovah’s Witnesses counterprotesting at the Unite the Right rally. She’s seeking $400,000 in damages.

Fourth Street petition

City resident Aileen Bartels wants the mall crossing at Fourth Street closed and is circulating a petition to do so, a move unpopular with many downtown businesses, NBC29 reports. Bartels, whose petition had 325 signatures at press time, contends the crossing is a “serious safety hazard” for pedestrians on the mall, and notes the notoriety of the place where James Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.

Another challenger

A UVA doctor will run against Denver Riggleman for the 5th District congressional seat. Cameron Webb, who practices and teaches at UVA, lives in Albemarle. He says he’s going to focus on improving access to affordable health care. He joins R.D. Huffstetler and Fauquier lawyer Kim Daugherty in seeking the Dem nomination.

Screwdriver killing

A jury found Gerald Francis Jackson, 61, guilty August 7 of voluntary manslaughter in the slaying of his neighbor, Richard Wayne Edwards, 55, in his Cherry Street apartment. A jury recommended a sentence of 10 years in prison.

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Day 6: How Heather died—Witnesses detail severity of injuries

Marissa Blair Martin initially was unsure if she wanted to go downtown the weekend of the Unite the Right rally in 2017.  However, after the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11, she changed her mind. She and her then-fiance, Marcus Martin, decided, “We had to so stand up for our community,” she testified in Charlottesville Circuit Court December 3.

Another reason she went was disbelief at such overt racism in 2017. “I had to see it with my own eyes,” she said.

Martin went with her friends from work, Courtney Commander and Heather Heyer, the latter of whom had parked at McDonalds, the same place the man accused of murdering her, James Alex Fields Jr., had parked earlier August 12.

Heyer was “very passionate,” easy to be around, and “very compassionate,” said Blair. “Heather was always outspoken. She was not argumentative but she tried to understand” where other people were coming from.

The four friends had joined a joyous group walking on Water Street. Blair decided to Snapchat the event. “I wanted everyone to see how happy everything was that day,” she said. “It was not all hate.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony played Blair’s video. Although not visible from the gallery, whoops, whistles, a drumbeat and the chant of “Whose streets? Our streets” could be heard in the courtroom.

Antony stopped the video and asked Blair about the woman with a long braid in front of her in the video. It was Heyer—and it was probably the last image of her alive.

In a split second, the scene went from happiness to “complete chaos,” said Martin. Screams could be heard on the video and Martin was yelling, “Marcus, Marcus!” She told the jury about being unable to find him in the “moments of terror” after the attack. “I saw the red baseball cap he was wearing and it had blood all over it.”

Nick Barrell, a captain with the Charlottesville Fire Department, was in charge of the station on Ridge Street August 12. He estimates that when he was dispatched to Fourth and Water streets, it took about two minutes to get there, he testified. What he didn’t know from the message he’d received—”Female struck by a car”—was the full extent of devastation that awaited him at the scene.

When he arrived, people were already performing CPR on Heyer. He noted a “very large contusion on her chest,” he said. “When you see bruising immediately after a trauma, that’s very serious.” Heyer, he said, had multi-system trauma with no palpable pulse and “she was not breathing on her own.”

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Jennifer Nicole Bowers performed the autopsy on Heyer, and said blunt force trauma to the torso was the cause of death. Heyer’s thoracic aorta—the largest in the body—”was snapped in half,” said Bowers.

Heyer suffered multiple other internal injuries, including fractured ribs that lacerated her lungs and liver, and a broken leg.

DNA analyst Kristin van Itallie testified that Heyer’s blood and tissue were on samples she tested taken from the windshield and side mirror of Fields’ dark gray Dodge Challenger.

Dean Dotts, the second officer on the scene after James Fields was stopped at the corner of Monticello and Blenheim, testified the Dodge Challenger “appeared to be a crime scene.” trial photo

Witness Thomas Baker is a conservation biologist who had just moved to Charlottesville in May 2017. “I’m not an activist, but I wanted to be present against the hate that was going on,” he said.

Baker, too, joined the “joyous” group walking up Water Street. “The energy was very positive,” he said, compared to that earlier in the day when it was “very aggressive, very violent.”

By the time the group turned left onto Fourth Street, Baker was at the front of the group “I heard screaming and thumps,” he testified. “I saw bodies and a car directly in front of me. I was sure it was my very last second.”

The car hit the lower half of Baker’s body. His head hit the windshield and threw him up in the air and then onto the ground. When he saw the reverse lights on Fields’ car, he thought, “I’m not going to survive getting hit again,” and got up.

Baker knew he was seriously injured, but he wasn’t sure what his health insurance would cover. Initially his doctor recommended he try physical therapy, but after more than a month, when that didn’t work, he had surgery that put four screws in his hip, permanent sutures, reattached the labrum to the hip, and reshaped the femur head.

Before August 12, he said, “I’ve been an athlete, a really good athlete my whole life.”

Now he has significant discomfort and doesn’t run at all. The crash “altered every aspect of my life physically,” he said. “Every aspect of my life has been dramatically changed.”

Testimony on Day 6 of the three-week trial ended early, and according to Judge Rick Moore, “the commonwealth is very confident it will rest before lunch tomorrow.”

Correction December 4: Thomas Baker does have health insurance. It was originally reported he did not.

Correction December 5: Baker’s doctor recommended he try physical therapy first and that’s why he didn’t immediately have surgery.

 

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Federal judge to rule on motions to dismiss in August 12 victims’ case

Jim Kolenich, who represents Jason Kessler, "Crying Nazi" Chris Cantwell, Elliott Kline and multiple others in Sines v. Kessler, addresses the media outside the federal courthouse while his co-counsel Elmer Woodard gives a rare interview to a Washington Post reporter in the background. Staff photo

In a lawsuit filed on behalf of 10 alleged victims of last summer’s deadly August weekend in which hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis descended upon Charlottesville, a federal judge is now considering whether to grant several of the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case.

Attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn claim that 25 individuals and groups named as defendants in the suit premeditatedly conspired to commit violence at the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

Plaintiffs include victims of the Fourth Street car attack, other white supremacist violence and extreme emotional distress, including Elizabeth Sines, Marcus Martin, Marissa Blair, the Reverend Seth Wispelwey and Tyler Magill, who suffered a stroke after being beaten on August 11.

“There is one thing about this case that should be made crystal clear at the outset—the violence in Charlottesville was no accident,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants spent months carefully coordinating their efforts, on the internet and in person.”

The document quotes Unite the Right promotions that stated, “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August,” and “Next stop: Charlottesville, VA. Final stop: Auschwitz.”

The suit further quotes one rally organizer Elliott Kline (aka Eli Mosley), who allegedly declared, “We are going to Charlottesville. Our birthright will be ashes and they’ll have to pry it from our cold hands if they want it. They will not replace us without a fight.”

Ohio-based defense attorney Jim Kolenich, who represents Kline and nearly a dozen other high-profile Unite the Righters, including Jason Kessler and “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, argued in United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia today that Kaplan and Dunn failed to prove that his clients conspired to be violent at the rally.

“There is no specific allegation in those paragraphs,” he said, adding that the only conspiracy was one “to come to Charlottesville and be provocative with their political speech.”

“Yes, they are provocative people,” Kolenich said, and noted that defendant Jeff Schoep, the neo-Nazi at the helm of the National Socialist Movement, has said if he could meet Adolf Hitler today, he’d thank him, as also referenced in the complaint.

Northern Virginia-based John DiNucci, who as of yesterday is representing Richard Spencer in the suit, made the same claim that no specific evidence pointed to Spencer’s premeditated conspiracy for violence. As did Brian Jones, a local lawyer who’s representing Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs and the League of the South.

Mike “Enoch” Peinovich,  the New Yorker who founded The Right Stuff, a right-wing media hub, and podcast The Daily Shoah, is the only defendant representing himself in the case.

“I have many opinions that people may find shocking,” he told Judge Norman Moon, but he also said there’s no evidence that he was planning to be violent at Unite the Right, and though the lawsuit points out that he announced the rally on his podcast and his name appeared on rally fliers, Peinovich said that’s “just First Amendment stuff.”

To combat the claims that the suit’s defendants weren’t the ones who conspired to do harm, Kaplan told the judge, “We carefully chose the 25 defendants we did. …We went after the leaders.”

She said her team is still gathering evidence from sites that alt-right leaders used to plan for the rally, such as Discord, where they often use screen names to conceal their identities.

When she gave the real-life screen name example of “Chef Goyardee,” Peinovich shook with laughter. She also referred to internet conversation about running counterprotesters over with vehicles, which she said the alt-right has since denounced as an “edgy joke.”

“We believe that what we have here is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

Kolenich, who admitted during the hearing that he doesn’t know which Confederate general’s statue is causing such a ruckus in Charlottesville, said outside the courthouse that the judge should have a ruling within 30 days.

Beside him, his co-counsel gave a rare interview with Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira.

Said Elmer Woodard, the Blairs, Virginia, attorney who’s recently spent quite a bit of time in Charlottesville defending white supremacists at the state level, “I represent murderers, drug dealers and perverts, but I’m not one of them.”

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In brief: The militia won’t come back, a free speech controversy and more

Militia members on August 12. Photo by Eze Amos

And stay out!

Six militia groups and their leaders named in a lawsuit aimed at preventing white supremacist and paramilitary organizations from showing their mugs around Charlottesville again have settled, agreeing they won’t engage in coordinated armed activity in any of the city’s future rallies or protests.

The latest round of defendants to bow out includes the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, New York Light Foot Militia, III% People’s Militia of Maryland, and their commanding officers: Christian Yingling, George Curbelo and Gary Sigler.

Militia groups were confused with the National Guard on August 12 when both groups showed up strapped with assault rifles and wearing camouflage tactical gear, but the former have maintained that they independently attended the rally to serve as a buffer between the increasingly violent alt-right and counterprotest groups.

“It became so overwhelming that the only thing we could do was pick people up off the floor,” Curbelo told C-VILLE after the suit was filed last October.

The lawsuit, which names 25 groups and individuals, was filed by Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection last October on behalf of the city and several local businesses and neighborhood associations.

At this point, Jason Kessler, Elliott Kline—aka Eli Mosley—Matthew Heimbach, the Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America and Redneck Revolt are the only defendants actively litigating the case, according to the law group. Others are in default or haven’t been served yet.

The League of the South, its leaders, Michael Tubbs and Spencer Borum, and the swastika-loving National Socialist Movement and its leader, Jeff Schoep, have also settled.

So with the literal neo-Nazis officially agreeing to stay away, it begs the question: Who will come to Kessler’s anniversary rally (for which the city has denied a permit) this summer?

Rotunda Bible reader silenced

UVA alum Bruce Kothmann decided to challenge the university’s new speech policies when he read from the Bible on the steps of the Rotunda in early May. University police told Kothmann that was not allowed because he needed permission a week in advance and, in any case, the Rotunda is not one of UVA’s designated free speech zones for unaffiliated people—including alums.

Sex reassignment pioneer

Dr. Milton Edgerton, a plastic surgeon who performed some of the first genital reconfigurations in the country in the 1960s at Johns Hopkins University and then in 1970 at the University of Virginia, died May 17 at age 96.

Tweet of the week

Big bucks

The city’s FY 2019 budget provides $225,000 for City Council’s own staff, including a researcher and spokesperson. A recent job listing on Indeed.com for the latter, officially called the “council outreach coordinator,” offers a starting pay between $21.36 and $31.25 per hour to “develop, implement and champion council community engagement initiatives,” among other tasks.

 ’Hoo at Windsor

UVA alum and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian attended the nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with his bride, Serena Williams, who’s a pal of the new Duchess of Sussex.

Ryan Kelly

Ryan’s redo

Pulitzer Prize-winning former Daily Progress photographer Ryan Kelly, who last captured Marcus Martin flying in the air August 12 after being struck by a car that plowed into a crowd on Fourth Street, took photos of Martin and Marissa Blair’s wedding for the New York Times. Pop soul musician Major sang at the event, and the purple theme was in honor of the couple’s friend, Heather Heyer.

Pole-sitter lawsuit

The Rutherford Institute has filed suit on behalf of Dr. Greg Gelburd to demand that one Mountain Valley Pipeline protester named Nutty, who’s perched on a 45-foot pole in the Jefferson National Forest, be allowed food, water and examination by the doctor, whose conscience and religious beliefs have led him to offer services to poor and disadvantaged people across the world.

A big nope

A federal appeals court has ruled that Sharon Love, the mother of Yeardley Love, will not have access to George Huguely’s family’s $6 million insurance policy in her wrongful death lawsuit against her daughter’s convicted killer. The Chartis Property Casualty Company policy has an exclusion for criminal activity.

Ew, gross

The exotic East Asian tick, aka  longhorned tick, was found on an orphaned calf in Albemarle last week, after initially being spotted on a sheep farm in New Jersey in 2017. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is still determining the significance. And in other gross news, the invasive emerald ash borer is on its way to Charlottesville and expected to kill all untreated ash trees within three years.

Quote of the Week

Nikuyah Walker. Photo by Eze Amos

“Most of the stuff I’ve been dealing with is complete nonsense.” —Mayor Nikuyah Walker on Facebook Live May 16

 

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August 12 victims sue Unite the Righters

UVA library systems employee Tyler Magill is one of 11 plaintiffs suing white nationalists and ne--Nazis who came to Charlottesville. Photo by Eze Amos

Eleven residents injured during the August 12 weekend, represented by legal powerhouse firms, filed a suit in federal court October 11 seeking monetary compensation from organizers of the Unite the Right rally, including Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer and more than three dozen white supremacist and neo-Nazi individuals and groups, alleging they conspired to commit violence in Charlottesville.

Tyler Magill, who had a stroke a few days after being whacked by a tiki torch during the August 11 march through UVA’s grounds, Marcus Martin, who was struck by defendant James Fields’ car, which broke his leg and ankle, his fiancée, Marissa Blair, and the Reverend Seth Wispelwey are among the plaintiffs suffering physical and emotional trauma, according to the suit.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs include Roberta Kaplan, who represented Edie Windsor in the landmark Supreme Court case on gay marriage, and former federal prosecutor Karen Dunn with Boies Schiller. In a 96-page complaint, the plaintiffs allege an unlawful conspiracy to intimidate, harass and injure blacks, Jews, people of color and their supporters.

The suit cites Andrew Anglin, publisher of the Daily Stormer, who wrote of an “atavistic rage in us, deep in us, that is ready to boil over. There is a craving to return to an age of violence. We want a war.”

Organizer and new Identity Evropa CEO Eli Mosley promised,”They will not replace us without a fight,” according to the suit.

Says Kaplan, “The whole point of this lawsuit is to make it clear that this kind of conduct—inciting and then engaging in violence based on racism, sexism and anti-Semitism—has no place in our country.”

tylerMagill et.al. v. whiteSupremacists

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Stand up: Heather Heyer’s legacy lives on

Susan Bro, mother to Heather Heyer, spoke during a memorial for her daughter August 16 at the Paramount Theater. Heyer was killed the previous weekend when a vehicle drove into a crowd of counter-protestors after the Unite the Right rally. Photo/Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

Droves of community members clothed in shades of purple poured into the Paramount Theater August 16 to remember Heather Heyer, a local activist and paralegal who lost her life to what some have called an act of domestic terror the weekend before.

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what. You just magnified her,” said her mother, Susan Bro. The crowd of hundreds erupted in applause and sharp whistles as nearly every person stood in support.

Heather was killed August 12 when a participant of the alt-right’s infamous Unite the Right rally plowed into a crowd of peacefully protesting pedestrians on the Downtown Mall with his Dodge Challenger.

“I’d rather have my child, but by golly, if I have to give her up, we’re going to make it count,” Bro said and encouraged those in attendance to notice the injustices going on around them and stand up for those who need it, just like Heyer always did.

Heather Heyer’s grandfather, Elwood Shrader, addresses hundreds of people at her memorial. Staff photo

Also among the list of speakers were her grandfather, Elwood Shrader, her father, Mark Heyer, her pastor, cousins, friends and co-workers.

All spoke about how the fiery 32-year-old was filled with love and passion, but never backed down from an argument.

“She wanted to put down hate. …She could tell if somebody wasn’t being straight and she’d call you on it,” her father said.

“It didn’t matter who you were or where you were from, if she loved you, that was it,” he added. “You were stuck.”

Diana Ratcliffe remembered Heyer’s infections smile and eyes that glittered. She read a letter she wrote to her “baby cousin” in the aftermath. “Did I tell you that you come from a long line of stubborn and passionate women?” she said. “Your patience was heroic,” and she, too,  said Heyer never gave up on people.

Her coworkers echoed the same sentiments, and said Heyer treated her clients at the Miller Law Group—many of whom have shared their condolences—with the utmost care.

“She cared about everyone she spoke to,” said Alfred Wilson, her supervisor, and she always stood her ground. He remembered a time the two were leaving the office one evening and her boyfriend was outside waiting for her. “You didn’t tell me you worked for a black man,” her boyfriend said. Heyer, unsurprisingly, broke things off after that.

“Everyone who knows her knows that she cursed like a sailor sometimes,” said co-worker and close friend Freda Khateeb-Wilson, and the audience laughed while she recounted Heyer’s everyday battles with the office printer.

Governor Terry McAuliffe and Senator Tim Kaine sat in the front row next to Heyer’s family. Both were quick to give their condolences and denounce the white nationalist rally that thrust Charlottesville into the national spotlight and brought the community face to face with hate.

Marcus Martin, left, pushed finace Marissa Blair out of the way of the car that killed Heyer. Andrew Shurtleff/Daily Progress

“Maybe if you didn’t stand up, or if you didn’t talk so loudly, or if you weren’t so bold, they wouldn’t have heard you and you’d still be here,” Khateeb-Wilson said. “Thank you for making the word hate real, but thank you for making the word love stronger.”