Charlottesville Virginia

[Rita]

From an actual resident of Charlottesville:

"There seems to be a perception from people outside of Charlottesville that what is going on here is two opposing groups coming to town and fighting some ideological battle that has gotten messy. That is not what is happening here. What is happening here is that several hate groups from the extreme right have come together under the "unite the right" banner here in our town and basically started acting as terrorists. This may seem like an exaggeration but it's not.

A church service was held over because they had surrounded the building and police had to disperse them. People had to be escorted to their cars. My friend was there with her daughter. Everywhere they meet, businesses close. We had drive by shootings yesterday from a van marked kkk.

A car plowed into a huge group of people. I'm sure you saw that on the newsfeeds. What you probably didn't see is that some of those people were on their way back from helping to repel a white supremacist march to predominately black housing development a few blocks away where they were attempting home invasions. I guess they were unfamiliar with the neighborhood. The residents repelled that one before antifa got there but there is some video of the alt-right folks getting run off on the daily progress twitter feed, if you're interested.

So, basically, what I'd like you to understand is, this IS NOT two side egging eachother on to unavoidable violence for more attention. This is one side of terrorists declaring that they can and will hold a town hostage (they've been saying it for over a month now, actually) and the town responding to that threat. The car that killed and injured people yesterday? Ohio tags. The medic tents (which treated both sides... turns out the alt right erst didn’t bring any medics. Guess they planned on doing all the injuring), water bottles, snacks, shade tents (all volunteer, donations, none shut down by police... all manned by that radical left you keep hearing about) yeah, we all live here. I saw a lot of people I knew yesterday, none of them were speaking for unite the right. None of them were escalating violence, most of them were offering some kind of aid and defending."

 

[Rita]

A thoughtful report and reflection by a participant at Charlottesville. Some of what Brian Mclare writes:

"I have not seen the faith community come together in such a powerful and beautiful way as they did in Charlottesville.

I met Catholic lay people, but I didn’t meet or see any Catholic priests. Two Episcopal bishops were present, and they had encouraged priests of their diocese to be involved. Along with those of us who participated in an organized way, it was clear that many ad-hoc groups of Christians and others came to protest, some with signs, some giving out water and snacks to anti-racist protestors.

The courage of the clergy present inspired me. In public gatherings and in private conversations before Saturday, participating clergy were warned that there was a high possibility of suffering bodily harm.

We have very urgent practical work to do, including 1) pre-empting the continuing development of white supremacist and Nazi-Fascist groups through preventative measures, 2) building relationships among groups that oppose racism and Naziism – both religious and secular, 3) improving planning and coordinating among these groups, and 4) addressing the ways that white supremacists and Nazis are seeking to use us as foils to win over conservative people through fear and division (which is the strategy behind Unite the Right). What is needed in all these areas (and more) will be the subject of many future conversations.

http://brianmclaren.net/what-i-saw-in-charlottesville/

 

[PoppaJ]

FALSE: Black Lives Matter Protesters Chant for 'Dead Cops Now' in Baton Rouge

I could post links to YouTube with the subject of "Republican Traitors" or anything else and have multiple hits so what? Tell me what any of this, besides simple deflection, has to do with f**king Nazis marching and chanting hateful racial and anti-Semitic slogans in Amercia? Why is the right so desperately trying to provide cover for these people and this idiot President?

 

[Jimmy T]

I wonder if Trump and his supporters realize that he is the one responsible for all of the civil war memorials being taken down and/or destroyed. This is all happening under his watch. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

 

[Kaydence]

In public gatherings and in private conversations before Saturday, participating clergy were warned that there was a high possibility of suffering bodily harm.

Clergy was warned, yet they went to a convention of hate mongers, racists, antifa, BLM, KKK and nazi protesters.

I just can't wrap my brain around the fact people knew there would be violence and went anyway....to do what? Did they think this was going to be an ethnic cleansing and everyone would throw down their beliefs and come away filled with the holy spirit and embrace one another? Delusional much?

This nation was stolen from Native Americans and reconstructed after a brutal and bloody war. Americans hunted, imprisoned, raped, and murdered Native Americans and we continue to this day to stake claims on religion, history and anything else that offends our sensibilities. We can't rewrite history, we can't ignore how we got here...to continue to do so, shows us unequivocally that we have learned nothing from the mistakes of the past. Removing anything that offends your personal sensibilities (like monuments and flags) isn't going to change our nation or how it was founded.

Learning to live and tolerate our differences and ignore hate filled rhetoric won't make it go away but it damn sure means you're not going to be a victim of your own stupidity either. Going to a convention of hate in my opinion was just downright stupid! Giving hate and ignorance a platform...stupid! Removing statues and flags won't make our history go away and you don't get to rewrite it as if we are a kinder gentler nation either...we are not and never have been.

We are one race...the human race. The sooner we learn to live and embrace what we personally believe and stop trying to change what everyone else believes the better off we will be. People are gonna hate. Let them. You don't have to be an active participant in it. Walk away, be the bigger person, let our history be YOUR PERSONAL lesson that you never want to go back where we came from and let those monuments and flags be a constant remainder of what we should never be again but still are in so many ways... Charlottesville just showed us that while we may have come a long way we have much much farther to go.

 

[Lake View Too]

Uh... nice speech, but the monuments and the flag glorify insurrection and treason. They don't discourage them. They are re-inforcing and glorifying a terrible era in this country. Anybody waving a Confederate flag isn't thinking about the carnage and hatred associated with it.

 

[Kaydence]

Uh... nice speech, but the monuments and the flag glorify insurrection and treason. They don't discourage them. They are re-inforcing and glorifying a terrible era in this country. Anybody waving a Confederate flag isn't thinking about the carnage and hatred associated with it.

I don't agree with you. They are a reminder that we have not come far enough. Putting them in a museum won't change our history. We can change ourselves and how we view the world around us but the fact is we have a dirty, rotten history with lives lost and bloodshed on both sides.

I guess my thought is that there are folks that want to honor the dead sons husbands and fathers of their ancestors regardless of how you feel about it. You can't wipe out their sacrifice anymore than you can wipe out OUR history.

 

[Rita]

I'm trying to get this link to work. It didn't in above post.

"As I wrote last week, I accepted an invitation from the Charlottesville clergy to come to their city the weekend of the Unite the Right rally, to join them in witness against white supremacy, Neo-naziism, racism, and associated evils, which are counter to both the Christian gospel and American democracy.

Free speech is a protected right and we were not protesting against the rally’s right to speak; rather, we were using our right to free speech to bear witness for a better message of conciliation and peace, and we were supporting the clergy of Charlottesville to stand against the incursion of white supremacists like Richard Spencer.

Here are some initial reflections based on my experience – on the white supremacists and their message, on the clergy and faith community, on the other anti-racism protestors, on the police, and on next steps."

This link works:
What I Saw in Charlottesville
.

 

[James Bentwood]

I don't agree with you. They are a reminder that we have not come far enough. Putting them in a museum won't change our history. We can change ourselves and how we view the world around us but the fact is we have a dirty, rotten history with lives lost and bloodshed on both sides.

I guess my thought is that there are folks that want to honor the dead sons husbands and fathers of their ancestors regardless of how you feel about it. You can't wipe out their sacrifice anymore than you can wipe out OUR history.

I guess you haven't been paying attention to the flood of reporting in recent weeks about when and why most confederate monuments were erected?

The real story behjnd all those Confederate statues

1895-1915: With blacks disenfranchised and Jim Crow laws safely in place, Southern whites begin a campaign of terror against blacks. Lynchings skyrocket, the KKK becomes resurgent, and whites begin building Confederate statues and monuments in large numbers....

Yes, these monuments were put up to honor Confederate leaders. But the timing of the monument building makes it pretty clear what the real motivation was: to physically symbolize white terror against blacks. They were mostly built during times when Southern whites were engaged in vicious campaigns of subjugation against blacks, and during those campaigns the message sent by a statue of Robert E. Lee in front of a courthouse was loud and clear.

No one should think that these statues were meant to be somber postbellum reminders of a brutal war. They were built much later, and most of them were explicitly created to accompany organized and violent efforts to subdue blacks and maintain white supremacy in the South. I wouldn’t be surprised if even a lot of Southerners don’t really understand this, but they should learn. There’s a reason blacks consider these statues to be symbols of bigotry and terror. It’s because they are.

 

[Rita]

Bullshit. BLM are the Black Panthers V2. It isn'the Fox News it is reality.

"In recent weeks, we’ve received a number of requests to name Black Lives Matter a hate group, particularly in the wake of the murders of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Numerous conservative commentators have joined the chorus. There is even a Change.org petition calling for the hate group label.

In our view, these critics fundamentally misunderstand the nature of hate groups and the BLM movement.

Generally speaking, hate groups are, by our definition, those that vilify entire groups of people based on immutable characteristics such as race or ethnicity. Federal law takes a similar approach.

While it’s no surprise, given our country’s history, that most domestic hate groups hold white supremacist views, there are a number of black organizations on our hate group list as well." - from SPLC

BLM gets a clean slate. In fact the pastors who reported from Charlottesville praised how well the young folks from BLM worked with them, comported themselves and how helpful and passionate they were.
They too often take the wrap for anarchist types who aren't part of their nonviolent group.

Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group

.