Tag: Tyler Magill

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Deja vu: Local activists and leaders on how to move forward after chaos

Thousands of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. PC: Starmax/Newscom Via ZUMAPress

Two weeks ago, the far-right riot at the U.S. Capitol—fueled by President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the election—shocked people across the world. But for many, it was a familiar scene. As the country looks ahead to a new administration and beyond, Charlottesville’s leaders and activists have hard-won advice for President Joe Biden.

“[The January 6 siege] is the same horrific play we’ve seen over and over again in this country,” says community activist Don Gathers, who was at the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally. “So much of the opening act of that play looked just like Charlottesville, where the police stood by and did nothing.”

For weeks, watchdog groups and activists repeatedly warned law enforcement that Trump supporters’ plans to violently storm the Capitol—and assault, kidnap, and even kill members of Congress—were posted across social media.

Despite these warnings, the Capitol Police anticipated a crowd in only the “low thousands,” and prepared for “small, disparate violent events,” according to Representative Jason Crow.

So, like in Charlottesville, police on the scene were massively unprepared for the thousands of people who showed up to Trump’s rally. Insurgents later overpowered the police and stormed the building, resulting in dozens of injuries and five deaths.

“It’s not like they were secretive…It was all over the internet,” says community activist Ang Conn, who was also at the Unite the Right rally.

Before August 11 and 12, 2017, members of the far-right also openly discussed their plans to incite violence and threatened local residents online, as well as held a few smaller “test” rallies in Charlottesville, says Conn. Local activists continuously alerted law enforcement and urged the city to stop the event from happening, but were not taken seriously.

“The people who were supposed to be keeping the peace had all of this information given to them and they ignored it,” says Tyler Magill, who was hit on the neck with a tiki torch during the Unite the Right rally, later causing him to have a stroke.

Video evidence also shows several Capitol officers moving barricades to allow rioters to get closer to the building, as well as one taking a selfie with a member of the far-right mob. Some rioters were members of law enforcement themselves, including two off-duty Virginia police officers.

The scene at the Capitol serves as a stark contrast to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests last year, during which police deployed tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other types of force against thousands of people, and made over 10,000 arrests.

“If Black and brown folks were to do that exact same thing [at the Capitol], we would be dead,” says Conn.

Now, those who were present for the Unite the Right rally say a key to moving forward is to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Since January 6, federal authorities have arrested around 100 people, and say they could arrest hundreds more.

“This cannot be seen as anything other than armed insurrection,” says City Councilor Sena Magill, speaking solely for herself. “It needs to be very clear that people who participated in this need to be prosecuted, and not lightly. …Representatives who instigated this also need to be held accountable.”

Tyler Magill says it’s crucial to expand our definition of white supremacy. “We as a society just don’t take far right extremists seriously,” he says. “We think of it as rednecks [and] trailer park people when it’s not—it’s everybody. The people at the Capitol riot tended to be middle class and above, and the same happened in Charlottesville.”

Other activists have warned that arrests or the threat of arrests will not be enough to deter far-right extremism on—and after—Inauguration Day, pointing to white supremacist calls for violence online.

“We know that they’re not finished,” says Gathers. “I’m fearful for what may happen on the 20th of January, not only in D.C. but really all across the county.”

And though Biden’s inauguration, and the end of Trump’s term, will be a cathartic moment for many, Conn emphasizes that it won’t solve our problems overnight. After the inauguration, she anticipates more white supremacist violence across the country, and says she doesn’t expect President Biden to handle the situation in the best possible manner. Instead, she fears the new administration will ramp up its counterterrorism programs, which are “typically anti-Muslim and anti-Black,” she says.

“The change of the administration doesn’t change the fact that the system of white supremacy is embedded in the fabric of what we call America,” she explains. “We cannot expect [anything from] an administration that condemns uprisings stemming from state violence against Black and brown folks but calls for unity without resolve.”

Gathers also does not agree with the calls for unity made after the riot. “You can’t and shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, and that’s who we seem to be dealing with,” he says.

However, both activists hope that now more people will not only see white supremacy as a serious threat, but actively work to dismantle it.

“We’ve got to figure out how to change not only laws, but hearts and minds,” says Gathers. “If what we saw [at the Capitol]…and in Charlottesville in 2017 wasn’t enough to turn people around, I’m not sure what it’s going to take.”

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Slight snag: City Council candidates, new PAC launch campaigns

The signs were already printed for Michael Payne and Don Gathers when Gathers learned he could not immediately join the ticket because of health concerns. Photo by Eze Amos

It wasn’t your typical launch party. Supporters of local activists Don Gathers and Michael Payne gathered at Kardinal Hall January 8 for the official tossing of the hats into this year’s City Council races. But Gathers made a different kind of announcement: A doctor’s visit three hours earlier had convinced him to postpone his campaign start.

Gathers still has recurring issues stemming from an October 14 heart attack, and said that because of those, he needs to delay the announcement of his campaign, to focus on taking care of “the temple the Lord blessed me with.”

The health advisory threw a bit of a wrench not only into the already printed “Payne Gathers” signs, but also into the unveiling of a new PAC, Progressives for Cville, led by Jalane Schmidt, a UVA professor and Black Lives Matter organizer .

“My concern was for Don,” says Schmidt, citing Gathers’ contributions to the community through his church, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, and the Police Citizen Review Board—from which he resigned following the launch. “I want him to thrive and be healthy.”

The political action committee came about because “there’s a lot of money that flows into a lot of races for entities that have business before City Council, like developers,” says Schmidt. “We can trace a line between donors and their businesses getting favorable hearings,” both on a local and state level, she says.

Progressives for Cville is looking for small donors to support candidates who align with progressive policies and goals, specifically racial inequity and affordable housing, says Schmidt. She’s not sure how much it’s raised so far, but on the ActBlue page set up last week, there was one $500 donor.

And the PAC is looking at candidates by platform rather than party, says Schmidt. Both Payne and Gathers are running as Democrats. And although Mayor Nikuyah Walker won in 2017 as the first independent to get a seat on council since 1948, Democrats “are the biggest platform in town,” says Schmidt.

There have been other offshoots from the main Democratic party trunk. Kevin Lynch and Maurice Cox were elected to council In 2000 as members of Democrats for Change. “It was frustration with the status quo” that had made the party the establishment, recalls Lynch. Dems for Change had a lot of living wage supporters, environmentalists and architects like Cox, who thought the city’s growth plan was “antiquated.”

And in 2017, a group of Dems that included two former city councilors launched Equity and Progress in Charlottesville, which supported Walker’s independent run.

Payne, 26, grew up in Albemarle and graduated from Albemarle High. He’s is a frequent commenter at City Council meetings—he recently asked the city to divest from fossil fuel holdings—and says the affordable housing crisis spurred him to run. Payne works for Habitat for Humanity Virginia.

And while he refrains from saying who he’d like to see replaced on a council where Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, and Mike Signer are all at the end of their terms, he says, “Given the events of the past three years, new leadership is needed.”

Gathers, 59, points out that a “high level of toxicity” existed in the city well before 2017, when white supremacists targeted Charlottesville with the KKK and Unite the Right rallies.

“That poisonous tree of racism just branches out into so many areas,” he says.

Gathers says he hopes to get his health concerns worked out before the March 11 deadline for filing signatures with the party for the June 11 primary.

Another candidate came forward the next day. Sena Magill may be best known as the wife of Tyler Magill, the UVA librarian and WTJU radio host whose confrontation with Jason Kessler became a meme, and who suffered a stroke after being assaulted that weekend. She announced her run January 9 at City Space, at an event attended by Councilor Heather Hill, former councilor Dede Smith (who denies rumors that she’s running), and yet-to-announce candidate Lloyd Snook.

Sena Magill says her experience working at Region Ten will help her work anywhere, even City Council. Photo by Eze Amos

Magill, 46, grew up here and spent 16 years working with Region Ten and PACEM. She says she’s running because “I’m tired of seeing my home in the news for all these negative reasons.”

She listed climate change first on her platform, and wants to tackle it on the local level with solar panels on government buildings, electric buses, and better bike paths to make the city “carbon negative,” which drew applause from attendees.

Schools and affordable housing are also on Magill’s platform. She cites Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that puts food and shelter foremost before any other issues can be addressed.

The question many have asked her is, who in their right mind would want to sit on City Council given the current tenor of the meetings where those standing before—or on—council can be jeered by attendees and sometimes by those on the dais.

Magill compares the meetings to a pressure cooker where steam needs to be released and says she won’t take it personally. “I expect to cry if I lose the election and I expect to cry more if I win,” she jokes.

So far, none of the council incumbents have revealed their plans for reelection, but the race seems destined for a Democratic primary June 11, when councilors traditionally secure their seats—unless there’s a wild-card independent like Walker.

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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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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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Meme-able Magill: August icon recovers, keeps fighting back

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

During the August weekend that scarred Charlottesville, one man was in the thick of the major events, and became both a casualty and a meme of resistance to hate.

That man was Tyler Magill: a UVA alum, longtime WTJU DJ once known as the Velvet Facilitator and a local fixture in the community.

Before hundreds of white supremacists wielding tiki torches marched across UVA Grounds August 11, Magill, a UVA library system employee with access to Alderman, went there to observe the events—and became way more involved than he planned.

When the alt-righters, in town a day early for the Unite the Right rally, began encircling about 30 counterprotesters at the university’s Thomas Jefferson statue on that Friday evening, Magill says he joined the minority, mostly made up of young people, though he didn’t know any of them.

“Shell-shocked, not thinking, I ran down to join them, only hoping to be a witness, and hoping that even if [the white supremacists] were prepared to hurt, to kill 30 people, perhaps they wouldn’t kill 31,” he wrote in a widely read letter to university President Teresa Sullivan, who has been criticized for her handling of the neo-Nazi rally.

As the counterprotesters were surrounded by white-polo-shirted men with fash haircuts, Magill says they were doused with a liquid, and at some point, he was whacked in the neck with a tiki torch.

Four days later, he became thick-tongued, his reflexes slowed and he lost about half of the vision in his right eye—signs he was having a stroke, believed to be the result of blunt force trauma to his carotid artery. Though he still has a small blind spot and little energy from the August 15 health crisis, he says he’s grateful to be recovering as quickly as he has.

“I have no right to be alive, certainly not to be ambulatory in full possession of all of my faculties,” says Magill on a recent afternoon in which he had just returned from getting a CAT scan and was resting in bed. “But I’m coming out of this relatively unscathed,” he adds.

Doctors haven’t recommended when he should return to work, he says, but the university allows him six months of short-term disability leave, and he’s used six weeks so far. He says his job at the library is fairly physical, and he can only do about an hour of light activity right now before he requires rest.

A GoFundMe page has raised about $130,000 for his expenses, but Magill says he has good insurance through UVA and knows of other victims from that deadly weekend who need more help than he does.

That’s why, in his letter to Sullivan, he called for the university to pay off those victims’ bills in full.

“These people’s lives are in shambles because the University failed to take action on Friday night,” he wrote in his letter. “The University emboldened the fascists with [its] lack of action, and set the stage for the 12th. The University must acknowledge its complicity and make amends.”

Sullivan asked Magill to sit in the president’s box at Scott Stadium for the September 24 Concert for Charlottesville, championed by the Dave Matthews Band. That’s where he passed her the letter, which he says is set to be published soon in the Washington Post.

“You will be leaving and that is for the best,” he wrote. He says he hasn’t received a response—and isn’t expecting to.

While lying in bed, Magill says, “As much as I can, I sympathize with the problems that a modern university president has—so much of their job isn’t the classic university president job, so much of it is just raising money,” he says. Despite her own personal beliefs, she has to cater her statements to “a fairly conservative, if not reactionary, donor base,” he adds.

UVA president-elect James Ryan will take her place next year. “I would just hope that Mr. Ryan would weigh things a little bit more carefully,” Magill says.

An iconic photo from the weekend of the Unite the Right rally shows Magill rushing event organizer Jason Kessler with his hands in the air at Kessler’s August 13 attempted press conference.

Laughing, Magill says the photo shows him “being really big,” but in reality, he knew there was a sniper atop a building overlooking Kessler’s conference, and he wanted to approach the white nationalist while showing he wasn’t armed.

The library worker calls himself a “tourist” in the mess of alt-right protesters and counterprotesters, and says he doesn’t belong to any activist group.

He’s not a “shining example,” of how to confront white supremacy, but he tries to be, he says.

“We all need to try every day and not expect to get any reward for it,” he says. “The reward is in the doing.”

And for plenty of people, the terror of that weekend isn’t over. Magill says he’s been in “therapy up to [his] eyeballs.”

“Now I’m another middle-aged white person wearing sweat pants just walking down the street not doing much,” he says. “There’s plenty of people out there who still feel like it’s August 12 all the time.”

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‘Repairing and rebuilding:’ UVA takes back its grounds

Community members placed their candles at the foot of the Thomas Jefferson statue where white nationalists surrounded about 20 counterprotesters during their August 11 tiki torch rally. Staff photo

The Lawn was illuminated in soft white candlelight last night as thousands of community members retraced the steps of the August 11 white nationalist tiki torch march from the University of Virginia’s Nameless Field to the Rotunda. Their message was of love and peace, and taking back what belongs to them.

“I think it’s important after what happened,” says UVA fourth-year nursing student Talia Sion. “It’s a message of positivity, light and hope. We love Charlottesville, we love our community and we’re reclaiming our Grounds.”

Sion wasn’t in town for the alt-right’s August 12 Unite the Right rally, but she says she was “horrified” as she watched the violent scenes playing out in her college town in the national spotlight. “It’ll definitely affect our community, but as students, we take it and it makes us stronger. We grow from it.”

Sion, a Jewish student, marched with third-year Truman Brody-Boyd, who also practices Judaism.

Brody-Boyd, who usually wears a kippah, says he helped facilitate first-year orientation this summer, and no more than three weeks ago, he recalls telling a group of incoming students how welcoming the Charlottesville community is.

“I’ve never felt uncomfortable,” he says. “I’ve never felt unsafe. To see all of that come crashing down last weekend was an incredible wakeup call.”

Watching from Williamsburg as the “terrifying” events unfolded last weekend, Brody-Boyd says he felt “powerless” and marching the same steps hate took less than a week ago was the first step of “repairing and rebuilding.”

He’s been in town since Monday, but says he planned to move into his Jewish fraternity house last Sunday until the national chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi decided to close it for the weekend. Yesterday morning, he says his fraternity brothers met with a security advisor who showed them which windows and doors to reinforce.

“It made me feel more confident, but it’s sad that it needs to occur,” he says. “I feel safe and secure again.”

On the backside of the Rotunda, people sang, “lean on me when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend,” while some continued to march around to the front, where hundreds of white nationalists surrounded and beat down approximately two dozen protesters who linked arms around the Thomas Jefferson statue last Friday.

Last night’s marchers placed their dripping candles at the foot of the statue, where a poster featuring Tyler Magill—the Alderman Library employee who feared for the students’ safety and joined them and suffered a stroke August 15—sat among the flames.

Only one word was written on the sign. “Resist.”