\n<\/p>\n
Even five years later, most Charlottesville residents remember where they were on August 11 and 12, 2017, when white supremacists marched<\/u><\/a> into their home wielding torches. University students who were on Grounds remember, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Benjamin Doherty, head of library instruction and a research librarian at the School of Law, was at a church across from the University at a prayer service Aug. 11, and watched as the white supremacists surrounded students at the Jefferson statue. The next day, Doherty would join thousands of counter-protestors at the Downtown Mall as the \u201cUnite the Right” rally<\/u><\/a> commenced. They were there when James Fields drove<\/u><\/a> his car into this group of protestors, killing Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kellen Squire, an emergency department nurse, was in the ER at Martha Jefferson Hospital, triaging injured patients. His wife worked beside him as the charge nurse in the department.\u00a0<\/p>\n Christina Rivera, a Unitarian Universalist minister, witnessed the same \u201criver of hate\u201d that Doherty did as she stood with a group of clergy at church on August 11, and later would join them downtown the next day.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dr. Kathryn Laughon, an associate professor in the School of Nursing, was at church both days, too, though she is not a churchgoer. She followed a group downtown as they confronted and disrupted the white supremacists.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sarandon Elliott, a Class of 2022 alumna, was 70 miles away, just starting at community college.\u00a0<\/p>\n In different places, with different communities, each felt the ripples from that day in a different way.<\/p>\n \u201cThis really was a reckoning,\u201d Doherty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For many Charlottesville residents \u2014 especially those involved with organizing efforts or activism \u2014 the events of August 11 and 12 were not a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doherty has lived in Charlottesville for 22 years, and worked at the Law Library for 18. Their wife is a professor in the English department, and the two are deeply involved in anti-racist efforts in Charlottesville \u2014 Doherty is an organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice<\/u><\/a> and was working with them in 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have called it the \u2018summer of hate\u2019 because it really wasn’t just August 11 and 12,\u201d Doherty said. \u201cWe knew about [the \u2018Unite the Right\u2019 rally] months and months ahead of time, and started organizing months and months ahead of time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It was clear something was [brewing] as early as February, when City Council\u2019s decision<\/u><\/a> to remove the Robert E. Lee statue drew opposition<\/u><\/a> and lawsuits<\/u><\/a>. It was clear in May, when a group of protestors gathered<\/u><\/a> in Market Street Park with torches to protest the decision, a demonstration the community compared to a Ku Klux Klan rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n When members of the KKK held a rally<\/u><\/a> in Court Square Park July 8, organizers and activists like Doherty and Laughon were not surprised \u2014 it was clear to them, too, that this was only the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Laughon, who has been teaching in Charlottesville since 2004, remembers the chaos of that day, the surrealness and disorder as an estimated 1,000 counter-protestors met 50 KKK members in the park. It was \u201ctotal insanity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI came home and I said \u2018okay, we are past free speech,\u201d Laughon said. \u201cIt is clear to me that, one, this is a danger. It is a danger to everyone. This is particularly a danger to the Black community in Charlottesville, to the Jewish community in Charlottesville.\u201d<\/p>\n As news of the Aug. 12 rally began to circulate, Charlottesville residents voiced<\/u><\/a> concerns about the way the city had handled the July 8 rally, and demanded that the city revoke the permit for the August rally. When it became clear that the rally would proceed, organizers prepared and discussed how they would face the white supremacists as the city planned<\/u><\/a> to increase police presence and close roads in anticipation of the rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew things were going to be bad,\u201d Squire said. \u201cI screamed, at everyone I could, just to be like, \u2018this is going to be a much bigger deal. We need to pay attention.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Squire remembers a woman in the emergency room who was trying to get information about her family, throwing herself at him in \u201cdesperation.\u201d Doherty remembers standing outside the church on August 11, serving as security for those inside and watching students surround the statue. He regrets not joining them himself. Laughon remembers being downtown at 5:30 in the morning on August 12, knowing the plan to confront the protestors was the right one, was the one that \u201ctook away their power.\u201d Rivera remembers advice from her father, who told her never to turn her back on a person with a weapon \u2014 there was nowhere for her to turn on August 12, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the weeks following the rally, students<\/u><\/a> and community<\/u><\/a> members<\/u><\/a> would criticize the way the city and University handled the rally \u2014 \u201call hands were, or should have been, on deck,\u201d a leaked City Council memo<\/u><\/a> read, detailing concerns about police inaction, insufficient security and failure by City communications to keep the public informed.\u00a0<\/p>\n A report<\/u><\/a> conducted by then-district attorney Tim Heaphy exposed failures by University law enforcement to handle the torchlit march August 11 \u2014 even though University officials knew<\/u><\/a> about the march in advance, former University president Teresa Sullivan claimed in a video<\/u><\/a> that \u201cwe didn\u2019t know they were coming.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe University did nothing. The University simply let these white supremacists with their torches, walk right through campus and commit whatever violence they wanted to commit,\u201d Doherty said. \u201cBut those students did not put up with that.\u201d<\/p>\n That sentiment \u2014 that it came down to the students, to the organizers and activists, to resist the white supremacists who marched into Charlottesville Aug. 11 and 12 \u2014 was shared by Rivera and Laughon, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t watch those videos of August 11 \u2014 [the students] were just so f\u2014ing brave,\u201d Laughon said. \u201cAnd then they were back out on August 12.\u201d<\/p>\n Rivera said she realized after the rally that institutions like the University and police department did \u201cnot have any kind of a priority\u201d in her safety \u2014 instead, she prioritized working with the \u201cvery strong core\u201d of activists and organizers who \u201cunderstood what it takes to get liberation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As Charlottesville and the University grappled with the traumatic effects of that summer, organizers and students continued that work. Students assembled<\/u><\/a> to demand that the University take responsibility for its failures. A year after the rally, anti-racists held a series of demonstrations<\/u><\/a> in solidarity with the community, and community members continued to hold the City accountable<\/u><\/a> for its actions. On Grounds, students questioned<\/u><\/a> the presence of Confederate monuments. In 2021, four years later, the community watched<\/u><\/a> as Robert E. Lee and Thonas \u201cStonewall\u201d Jackson were finally removed from their pedestals.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s the legacy of this activism that rings true for students and graduates like Elliott. She said it wasn\u2019t until she was on Grounds that she understood how much the history of the University would affect her day-to-day life \u2014 and how she was able to take that history and learn from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Elliott was involved with the Black Student Alliance, chaired the Young Democratic Socialists of America at U.Va<\/u><\/a> \u2014 and its national coordinating committee \u2014 and directed U.Va. Mutual Aid<\/u><\/a>, a student-run collective that provides no-strings-attached grants to students in times of crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened that weekend, and especially seeing how, again, the University is complicit in so much harm\u2026 that’s why I wanted to do the work that I did at the University,\u201d Elliott said. \u201cIt was very important to me to build power, especially for the Black working class at U.Va.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hard but important to maintain that institutional knowledge as student activists and organizers turn over every four years, Elliott said. But it is \u201c100% students\u2019 responsibility\u201d to analyze the University, to hold the institution accountable and \u201cturn [knowledge] into power.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rivera, too, encourages students \u201cto not create a fictionalized version of the offense,\u201d and to critically examine the narratives the University offers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those narratives include the way the University interacts with the Charlottesville community, Squire said, and encourages students to be \u201ca part of making things better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t forget U.Va.\u2019s role in this,\u201d Laughon said. \u201cWe have, as a University community, a particular duty to recognize our complicity in that event, but also just in white supremacy and the continued need to confront that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Laughon, who is also the director of the PhD program at the School of Nursing, said she takes an hour at the start of each orientation with new students to discuss anti-racism in the classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside of the classroom and away from Grounds, activists agree there is still far more work to be done to uproot the hate that embedded itself in Charlottesville\u2019s history in 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to stay focused on pulling up those roots of white supremacy,\u201d Doherty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Affordable housing, for example, is an issue the community has been focused<\/u><\/a> on in the wake of the attacks as low-income citizens are pushed out<\/u><\/a> of their neighborhoods. Low-income and non-white neighborhoods also struggle with access<\/u><\/a> to healthy foods, a problem Charlottesville citizens in the Food Justice Network<\/u><\/a> are trying to address. Rivera and Doherty both mentioned efforts<\/u><\/a> to divert police resources back to the community, which have been ongoing for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Disrupting and facing white supremacy head-on, made a difference in August 2017, Doherty said \u2014 and it will continue to make a difference as Charlottesville citizens fight for a more equitable city.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a terrible, horrible, racist legacy of evil, but it’s also that legacy of courage,\u201d Laughon said.<\/p>\n Congregate Charlottesville, a local, faith-based grassroots organization, is raising money for community members with ongoing needs arising from Aug. 11 and 12. You can donate to the fund <\/strong><\/em>here<\/strong><\/em><\/u><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n (function(d, s, id) { Even five years later, most Charlottesville residents remember where they were on August 11 and 12, 2017, when white supremacists marched into their home wielding torches. University students who were on Grounds remember, too.\u00a0 Benjamin Doherty, head of library instruction and a research librarian at the School of Law, was at a church across from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[45],"tags":[10410,785,10411,697,10408,573,473,10409,574,57,677],"class_list":["post-25711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ripple","tag-activism","tag-august","tag-cavalier","tag-change","tag-charlottesville","tag-community","tag-daily","tag-inspired","tag-members","tag-ripples","tag-whats"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ea5b2444-b6ef-4c50-a96f-e8e6f98a5fe2.sized-1000x1000.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25713,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711\/revisions\/25713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/egrowonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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