Disgusted By Events in Charlottesville, Virginia

I was thoroughly amazed to see robed and hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend.  I guess I've been living like a mushroom....  In the past few years, I have read of small gatherings of Klansmen in what I considered to be small, rural, "backwards" towns and communities.  I really was stunned to see so many KKK members appear in Charlottesville.  The large groups of people carrying flags emblazoned with swastikas amazed me.  The young men, and the few women I saw, astounded me.  I felt as if I had been caught in a time warp and taken back to the 1920s and the 1930s in the Deep South.  The hatred that was being radiated by those two groups, the armed militias, and the hangers-on was palpable.  It was frightening.  And it ended up being deadly.
   I was brought up being proud of my Virginian heritage - the island of Chincoteague on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, always has been a part of the Commonwealth of Virginia; except during the Civil War.  Chincoteague did a thriving seafood business with the cities sited on the Atlantic Ocean from Ocean City, Maryland up to Boston, Massachusetts.  When the state of Virginia seceded from the Union, the men of Chincoteague voted to stay in the Union, with Maryland.  (I have to admit that half of the young men on the island fought on the Confederate side, and half on the Union side.  My family was heavily involved in the seafood trade, and the young men were in the United States Army and Navy.)  The men on my father's immediate side of the family fought for the Union, too - volunteering in Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio regiments.
    I know my Virginia history very well - the colonial leaders, the leaders of Bacon's Rebellion (one of my many-times great-grandfathers was hung at Jamestown in 1676), the members of the Continental Congress, the five Presidents from the Commonwealth. I know about the campaigns in Virginia during the Revolutionary War, and during the Civil War.  I have pored over history books, private letters, and reports from soldiers and officers during those wars.
   I was astonished when no policing action was taken against the protesters who marched across the campus of the University of Virginia carrying "Tiki torches" as they made their way, and chanting racial slurs.  I was especially upset when photos and videos showed the protesters attacking quietly standing counter-protesters with mace, pepper spray, and other chemicals.
   On Saturday, when I saw the armed militias marching along with people carrying the swastika flags, and beside them, the white robed members of the Ku Klux Klan, I was disgusted, dismayed, appalled, and angry.  These people had clubs in their hands.  They were carrying wooden shields.  Some of the protesters were wearing better body armor than the police; most were carrying better weapons than the police; and they also had police-grade riot shields.  -  And that's the main reason why our law enforcement officers could not confront these people - there would have been a terrible carnage just due to the fire power of the guns belonging to the protesters.
   Yes, the protesters had a permit to gather and protest in Emancipation Park, where the statue of Robert E Lee stands.  But they had a permit for a peaceful gathering.  Their actions Friday night showed they were not a peaceful group.  A judge signed an injunction to stop the gathering at 9 a.m. and the gathering was supposed to begin at 12 noon; but protesters had begun gathering before 8:30 that morning.  At 10:30, police reported that the protesters had clashed with the counter-protesters and that two people were injured.  At 11:35, law enforcement officers announced publicly that the event was now "an unlawful assembly" because of the previous violence and the judge's injunction. The protesters, and the counter-protesters, were told to disband and go home.
   People began fighting instead.  Luckily, no one was shot.  With the outbreak of violence pouring into multiple streets around the Park, Virginia Governor McAuliffe declared a state of emergency. The crowds of protesters and counter-protesters are separated.  The Unite the Right group is still pretty much contained in Emancipation Park; the counter-protesters (for unity and not division) are marching down a street more than 700 feet away.  At 1:40 p.m., a car suddenly accelerates into the crowd, then reverses, striking more people, and quickly disappears.
   A 32-year-old paralegal, Heather Heyer, who was attending her first march, was killed outright.  At least 19 others suffered injuries, five of whom were in critical condition in the hospital later that evening.  It has been announced, at this time, that all will recover - except Heather Heyer, who was buried today.
   The nasty man living in the White House has yet to say Heather Heyer's name.  He has yet to apologize for the blood on his hands.  He thanked Heather's mother for being very nice to him, when he made his first Twitter announcement.  Verbally, he said that the problems were caused "by many sides; many sides" on Saturday.  On Monday, 45 read a speech directly from a teleprompter, and anyone could tell that he hated reading those words out loud - he did not want to place the blame on the white supremacists he has curried, nor the neo-Nazis he has groomed, nor the anti-Semites he has egged on.  Yesterday, he went off script again and said the counter-protesters were as much to blame as the Unite the Right supporters....   The man needs to be certified and placed in a rubber room in a straight jacket.
    Thank goodness the FBI is investigating the whole thing.

Charlottesville, Virginia Protests

Charlottesville is an independent city in the county of Albemarle in the state of Virginia in the United States of America.  It is the commercial center of Albemarle County, and is home to the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson.  The city is rather small, and sits at the "gateway" to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River Valley.  It is 71 miles from the capital of Virginia, Richmond, and when Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe were the Governors of Virginia, they each commuted from their homes near Charlottesville.  Charlottesville was formed in the year 1762, and the city was named after Charlotte, the Queen Consort of King George III.
    I was born in Virginia, and even though my family moved around quite a bit, since my father was in the US Navy for 22 years, I always considered myself a Virginian.  My mother was born in Virginia, and I can trace her family ancestors in Virginia back to the late 1500s.  Dad's family, on the other hand, were farmers; first they stayed near the northeast coast, and then they spread inland until they reached the Indian Territories, the Cimarron Strip, of Oklahoma.  I am very proud to be from the Eastern Shore of Virginia - from the tidal islands in the Atlantic Ocean on the DelMarVa peninsula.  (DelMarVa?  It's a combination of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia - and we say that we are "Delmarvelous!" The land is east of the great Chesapeake Bay, and one of my favorite recent bumper-stickers read, "There is no intelligent life west of the Chesapeake" - and that was specifically aimed at Washington, D. C.)
    Today, I am shaken in my belief that being a Virginian is good.  I was raised to expect, accept, and love diversity in all things - people, beliefs, habits, and ways of life.  The one thing I was brought up to dislike, and disrespect, was prejudice against any one thing or person.  I was taught to learn as much as I could about my own differences from others, and to always respect their beliefs - unless their beliefs were damaging to other people.  Accept, learn, and grow, I was told.
    I also grew up in the Southern states of the US - Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida.  I grew up with segregated schools, which my parents deplored - until 1970, when Florida schools were forced to integrate.  I had no problem with that - I had gone to mixed-race churches most of my life, and half of my friends, away from school, were African-American.  We lived on the poor white side of town... Big deal.  My high school class graduated 398 students -  150 were white, 5 were South American, and the rest were African-American.  I was, and am, proud to have been in the second graduating class from Eastside High School.  We had great teachers and a great curriculum.
   Back to Charlottesville, Virginia....  The latest Census results are 7 years old: the city itself had 43,475 residents living in 17,778 house holds, and with 7,518 designated families.  Of these residents, 69.1 % are white; 19.4 % are African-American; 6.4 % are Asian; 5.1 % are Hispanic; 3 % are of 2 or more mixed races; 0.3 % are Native American; and 1.8 % are "other" races.  This does not count students at the University of Virginia.  There are currently 16,736 undergraduate students enrolled at UVa, and 7,147 graduate students.
     Today there was death and destruction in Charlottesville.  Early this year, the City Council voted 3 to 2 to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a Virginian who commanded the Confederate States Army and who then retired to run the Virginia Military Institute, after the resounding loss of the Civil War in these United States. The Lee statue has stood for many years in what was originally named Lee Park.  The name was changed, some years ago, to Emancipation Park.  The removal is scheduled for this autumn.
     A couple of months back, a permit for a rally for today's date was approved.  The rally was for white nationalists to protest the removal of the Robert E Lee statue, and was called "Unite the Right."  They were joined by openly armed nationalist militias and the Ku Klux Klan today.  Last night, hundreds of nationalists marched through the University of Virginia campus, stopping at the foot of the Thomas Jefferson statue, chanting, "You will not replace us!"  More than 20 people were injured in scuffles during the night.  Last night and today, there were also a lot of anti-Jewish chants and baiting of people who looked Semitic.
   Today, while the Unite the Right groups were gathering at Emancipation Park, hundreds of counter protesters were peacefully marching less than 700 feet away.  A 20-year-old man named Alex Fields, from Ohio, drove his 2010 gray Dodge Challenger into the peacefully marching crowd at a high rate of speed.  He then put the car into reverse and proceeded to strike more people.  A 32-year-old woman was killed, 5 people are in critical condition, and another 15 are being treated for injuries caused by the motorist. (Who was captured and arrested.) Another 20 people have been injured in clashes between the two groups.
    The rally at Emancipation Park was scheduled to start at 12 noon.  At 11:40, the Mayor of Charlottesville and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia declared a State of Emergency, and told everyone to go home.  An injunction against the rally had been signed by a judge at 10 a.m., following the night before's damages and fighting.
    Two hours later, a Bell helicopter crashed with two Virginia State Troopers aboard.  Both were killed.  So a peaceful rally for "Unite the Right" ended with 3 deaths, 5 people in critical condition, and more than 60 other injuries.
   And what did that pompous orange-faced bleach-blond Pricktator say?  That he condemns "the hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides" in Charlottesville.   The man is a moron who delights in stirring up trouble - and his pals Steve Bannon, David Duke, and Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader, help him do it.  -  Where was darling Jared Kushner during all of this?    This administration is totally rotten throughout.