Tag: white nationalist

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Bad for business: City mobilizes for alt-right rally

Post author By Lisa Provence
Post date August 1, 2017
No Comments on Bad for business: City mobilizes for alt-right rally

Rapture owner Mike Rodi says the mood among downtown businesses owners is somewhat fearful and that they anticipate the August 12 Unite the Right rally could be a “bloodbath.” Eze Amos

As Charlottesville braces for an influx of alt-white nationalists, 43 business owners have demanded the city enforce its regulations for special events, pastors are calling for 1,000 faithful around the nation to stand with them and the Central Library has announced it will close August 12 for the Unite the Right rally in next-door Emancipation Park.

Organizer Jason Kessler has applied for a permit for his March on Charlottesville, but a lot of questions are unanswered about whether the five-hour demonstration from noon to 5pm to protest the removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee is an exercise in free speech or a special event that requires insurance—and a place for protesters and counter-protesters to go to the bathroom.

City spokesperson Miriam Dickler says she expects Kessler’s permit to be approved this week, and notes that as a constitutionally protected demonstration, liability insurance is not required.

On his permit application, Kessler said 400 would attend the rally, but in other media, he’s said thousands would attend, and groups like the National Socialist Movement have RSVPed on social media.

Kessler also checked the no-amplification box on his application, but he mocked the KKK for showing up July 8 without amplification. During a press conference surrounded by his security detail, the Warlocks Motorcycle Club, he said there would be music at his event.

“Just having a musician does not make it a special event,” says Dickler.

Downtown business owners sent a letter July 27 to police, fire and parks and rec chiefs, as well as the Virginia Department of Health, saying the event poses a “significant risk to people and property” and will result in a major loss of revenue if the city doesn’t enforce its regulations.

“The mood is somewhat fearful,” says Rapture owner Mike Rodi. “We anticipate this could be a bloodbath.” A lot of businesses are weighing whether to close, and police officers have suggested doing just that to nervous proprietors, according to the letter.

“Most retailers lost $2,000 in revenues from the KKK,” says Escafé owner Todd Howard. “We’re losing money based on choices of Charlottesville administrators.”

“There are a lot of unknowns,” says Rodi. On the Saturday night after the KKK rally, his business lost $4,000, he says.

Rodi is undecided about whether Rapture will be open August 12. “If this summer hadn’t been the worst ever, it would be a good time to go to the beach,” he says. Too many weekends with people posting on Facebook to stay away from downtown have been “heartbreaking,” he says.

Congregate C’Ville issued a call for 1,000 clergy and faith leaders to join them in standing up to hate, and say nationally prominent figures like Cornel West and Traci Blackmon plan to attend.

“I am coming to Charlottesville to stand against white supremacy and bear witness to love and justice,” says West.

At a July 31 press conference, local pastors said those answering the call for direct, nonviolent action realize this is a “critical moment for our country,” says organizer Brittany Caine-Conley.

The religious group is planning prayers throughout the August 11-13 weekend, including a mass interfaith service at 8pm August 11 at St. Paul’s Memorial Church, and 6am and noon prayers in the park.

And the clergy isn’t the only group that’s put out a call for support. Black Lives Matter is urging activists nationwide to say “#NoNewKKK” and Showing Up for Racial Justice wants supporters to #DefendCville.

The National Lawyers Guild has held legal observer training, and Legal Aid Justice Center will have a session on Protests, Police and Your Rights August 7. SURJ has a local attorney advising on Know the Process: Arrest/Court 101 August 8 and scheduled nonviolent direct action training August 10.

Kessler did not respond to C-VILLE’s inquiries about the port-a-let situation, but according to Dickler, three have been requested for the anticipated thousands who will attend the rally.

Tags alt-right, alt-white, Congregate C’Ville, Cornel West, General Robert E. Lee statue, Government & Courts, Jason Kessler, protest, unite the right, white nationalist

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The man who confronted white nationalists in Lee Park

Post author By Lisa Provence
Post date May 24, 2017
No Comments on The man who confronted white nationalists in Lee Park

Jordan McNeish was playing music on the mall when he heard chanting and encountered a group of white nationalists in Lee Park. Staff photo

The initial police officer on the scene at the May 13 Lee Park demonstration of Richard Spencer’s alt-right gang described between 100 and 150 people carrying tiki-style torches, some of whom were in an argument with a man who was yelling at them to “leave my town,” according to a Charlottesville Police release.

That man was arrested the next night.

Jordan McNeish was charged with disorderly conduct at the Sunday, May 14, protest against the white nationalists who chanted “we will not be replaced,” “blood and soil” and “Russia is our friend,” the night before. His arrest, he says, goes back to Saturday night.

McNeish was playing music on the Downtown Mall when he heard the chanting, he says. He left his guitar with a friend and walked over to Lee Park to see what was going on. He encountered what looked “almost like a frat crowd,” he says.

He says he was expecting a group like Virginia Flaggers, who defend Confederate symbols like the Lee statue or Confederate battle flags as part of their heritage.

But instead of encountering heritage-not-haters, he came upon white nationalists.

“I asked them what they were about,” he says. “They said, ‘I’m white, you’re white, we’re here for white culture.’”

McNeish says, “I didn’t think they would be that extreme. They told me with such eagerness.”

And his reaction, he says, was, “that’s more hate. I told them to get out of my town.”

McNeish, 28, says he didn’t see any cops or any media when he approached the group, which he estimates at 30 people, although he says it could have been breaking up. “I was by myself,” he adds.

And for his trouble, he had a couple of lit cigarettes thrown at him Saturday night, he says. “I had blood on my nose.”

He was again playing music on Mother’s Day when he saw the candlelight gathering in Lee Park and learned it was a response to the night before.

“I saw Jason Kessler with a loud speaker being obnoxious,” he says. He doesn’t want to go into too much detail about the disorderly conduct charge in which police say he spit on Kessler, but he does say, “I didn’t realize a cop was behind me.”

Photos from the event also show McNeish slammed to the ground by police. McNeish says he doesn’t recall a lot about the sequence of events, but that “it looked worse than it was.”

“When people resist arrest, force is used,” Charlottesville Police Major Gary Pleasants said at a press conference the next day. He also defined disorder: “When you do something that leads to a breach of the peace.”

Kessler, too, was charged with disorderly conduct, as was Charles W. Best, 21, who also was charged with concealed carry of a switchblade and felony assault on law enforcement for allegedly clocking a cop on the head with a thrown cell phone.

McNeish’s previous claim to local fame was when he started the Jefferson Area NORML in 2012 and convinced City Council to pass a resolution to ask the governor and General Assembly to reconsider pot penalties and consider regulating marijuana like alcohol.

That came after McNeish spent six months in jail for a felony conviction for possessing 2.6 ounces of pot in 2009 when he was 20. In Virginia, possession of more than half an ounce is a felony distribution charge.

“I used to try to get attention for activism,” says McNeish. “Now, not so much.”

Tags Jordan McNeish, lee park, white nationalist

News

Lee Park scene of white nationalist demonstration, counterprotest

Post author By Lisa Provence
Post date May 15, 2017
No Comments on Lee Park scene of white nationalist demonstration, counterprotest

Protesters gathered May 14th in response to tiki torch-carrying white nationalists assembling in Lee Park the day before. Photo Eze Amos

A group led by UVA grad Richard Spencer, head of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, converged on Charlottesville Saturday and held a tiki-torch procession that evening that sparked a candlelit counter protest Sunday, along with denunciations from Mayor Mike Signer, Delegate David Toscano and the local Republican party chair.

TorchProtest_PeterHedlund_@phedlund — White nationalists gather by tiki-torch light under the statue of General Robert E. Lee. Photo PeterHedlund_@phedlund

The event thrust Charlottesville into the national spotlight again over a controversial vote by City Council to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee. And it resulted in another arrest for local blogger Jason Kessler, who was charged with disorderly conduct following the Sunday demonstration after police ordered everyone to leave Lee Park at 10pm.

The Spencer-led alt-right group, clad in white polo shirts and khakis, a response to “antifas” in black, according to Kessler on his blog, met at McGuffey Art Center and marched to Jackson Park at Court Square, passing a Festival of Cultures being held in Lee Park.

“I’m here to say no to the city of Charlottesville,” said Spencer in an NBC29 interview. “You are not going to tear down this statue and you’re not going to replace us.”

It’s not clear who organized the event and from where the attendees hailed, but many appeared to be from out of town, including Nathan Damigo, who allegedly punched a woman at a Berkeley demonstration and is the founder of white nationalist group Identity Evropa, and Atlanta attorney Sam Dickson, who has represented Spencer and who calls himself a “racial communitarian activist” on his website. Spencer did not respond to an email inquiring about the white rights gathering.

The Jackson Park event was mostly peaceful until the end, when members of Showing Up for Racial Justice and others began shouting at the white nationalists as they left Jackson Park and followed them down Jefferson Street.

At the 9pm event, which Kessler called a “funeral procession for the dead,” but which Mayor Signer compared to a KKK rally, the group chanted “we will not be replaced,” “blood and soil” and “Russia is our friend,” the latter, explains Kessler, is because “Russian people are a white people.”

Police estimated that crowd at around 100 to 150, according to the Daily Progress, while Kessler put it at over 200. The first officer to arrive found a single male yelling “leave my town” to the white supremacists, and the demonstration broke up when police ordered everyone to disperse.

“We reject this intimidation,” tweeted Signer. “We are a Welcoming City, but such intolerance is not welcome here.” Signer has since been the target of anti-Semitic trolls on Twitter.

House Minority Leader Toscano joined in on Twitter: “Outrageous protests in Charlottesville this evening by apparent white supremacists. Unacceptable!”

And Charlottesville native/gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello tweeted, “Get your white supremacist hate out of my hometown.”

“We won, you lost, little Tommy,” replied Spencer.

“Actually, you lost,” Perriello said. “In 1865. 150 years later, you’re still not over it.”

Charlottesville GOP chair Erich Reimer was quick to denounce the alt-righters. “Whoever these people were, the intolerance and hatred they seek to promote is utterly disgusting and disturbing beyond words,” he says in a statement.

Hundreds showed up to “take back Lee Park” in a counter demonstration at 9pm Sunday organized by SURJ, Black Lives Matter and others, according to the Progress.

The statue of Lee was draped with a banner that read, “Black Lives Matter. Fuck White Supremacy,” which was later torn off the statue by a bullhorn-carrying Kessler.

Emerson Stern, who was photographed with Spencer Saturday afternoon at Jackson Park, live streamed the Sunday event, and was surrounded by people demanding to know why he was filming. He said he was assaulted by a woman, and his phone was knocked from his hands several times.

He calls the reaction to his documenting the event ironic. “I’m black and I was threatened and assaulted by white liberal demonstrators,” he says. Stern says he agrees with Spencer on the monument issue. “I believe that the Lee statue should not be removed,” he says.

Stern has footage of counter protesters locking arms and blocking Kessler, while shouting, “Black lives matter.”

After police announced the park closed at 10pm and participants were leaving, Kessler, 33, was arrested for not obeying officers’ commands to leave and for inciting others with his bullhorn, as was Charles William Best, 21, for assaulting law enforcement, a felony, and Jordan McNeish, 28, for disorderly conduct for spitting on Kessler, according to police.

On Monday, Perriello held a press conference at Lee Park, where at least a dozen police officers were stationed around the park. He called for a state commission on racial healing and transformation, and the elimination of the Lee-Jackson state holiday as “something that’s dividing us.” Said Perriello, “We believe these are the last gasps of a dying racist ideology.”

MORE PHOTOS FROM SUNDAY’S COUNTERPROTEST: