The white supremacist violence there began Friday night as hundreds of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white nationalists descended on the city and participated in a torch march. Yes, burning torches, in a surprise march across the University of Virginia campus, surrounded the statue of Thomas Jefferson on Friday night. They were chanting “Blood not soil” [sic], a well-known Nazi—”Blood and soil,” a well-known Nazi phrase, “You will not replace us” and “Jew will not replace us” and “White lives matter.”
Cornel West talking:
I knew I was going to hear a powerful sermon by my dear sister Reverend Dr. Traci Blackmon, and we heard one. We heard poignant words by Professor Jalane Schmidt. And I had a few things to say. It was a beautiful moment—all colors, all religious traditions, Muslims, Jews, Christians, black, white, red, indigenous peoples. And we should never downplay the vicious attack on gay brothers, lesbian sisters, bisexuals and trans folk, that was part of the chanting that took place the next day.
But what happened was, they held us hostage in the church. We could not leave after the service, because the torch march threatening the people who were there. And so, in that sense, I said, “Hmmm, boy, these neofascists, they’re out of control. Where are the police?” And who would think that our dear sister Heather, my dear comrade, who also was with IWW—you know, that’s very important. She was an organizer. She stood with us on Saturday. She paid the ultimate price. And many of us may have to pay that ultimate price.
Rev. Traci Blackmon talking:
I was giving the interview for Joy Reid—and thank you for having me here. And I also want to echo my condolences, my deepest sympathy to the family of Heather and to the family of the law enforcement officers who also lost their lives in this unnecessary, tragic event. Joy Reid had invited me on her show to talk about what had happened at the church the night before. And they were not aware of what was happening in Charlottesville until I began to make some calls to let people know that Charlottesville was under attack. They immediately sent a team out to cover. And their news team was stationed inside the perimeter of the events that were happening Saturday. And so, I was asked to come and do an interview. And with the permission of local people on the scene, the community organizers from Charlottesville—I asked them first—I was given permission to do that interview. And in the midst of the interview, we began to hear pops. And I didn’t know what those pops were. I still don’t know what those pops were. But the security that was there rushed me off from the camera. I really didn’t know what was happening in that moment.
Cornel West talking:
You had a number of the courageous students, of all colors, at the University of Virginia who were protesting against the neofascists themselves. The neofascists had their own ammunition. And this is very important to keep in mind, because the police, for the most part, pulled back. The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists who approached, over 300, 350 antifascists. We just had 20. And we’re singing “This Little light of Mine,” you know what I mean?
Antifa” meaning antifascist and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that. Meaning what? Meaning that you had the police holding back, on the one hand, so we couldn’t even get arrested. We were there to get arrested. We couldn’t get arrested, because the police had pulled back, and just allowing fellow citizens to go at each other, you see, and with all of the consequences that would follow therefrom.
So, in that sense, you know, I think what we’re really seeing, though, Sister Amy, is the American empire in decay, with the rule of big money, with massive militarism, facilitated by the scapegoating of the most vulnerable, of immigrants, Muslims, Jews, Arabs, gay, lesbians, trans and bisexuals, and black folk. The white supremacy was so intense. I’ve never seen that kind of hatred in my life. We stood there, and nine units went by, and looking right in our eyes. And they’re cussing me out, and so forth and so on. They’re lucky I didn’t lose my holy ghost, to tell you the truth, because I wanted to start swinging myself. I’m a Christian, but not a pacifist, you know. But I held back. But that kind of hatred—but that is just the theater. It’s big money. It’s big military. And it’s the way in which this capitalist civilization is leading us toward unbelievable darkness and bleakness. And the beautiful thing is the fightback. It was a beautiful thing to see all the people coming back. But they had more fascists than anarchists, more fascists than fightback.
Rev. Traci Blackmon talking:
I think it’s important that we not leave this moment without contextualizing what happened in Charlottesville in a larger narrative, that has been promoted by this current administration. Some of Donald Trump’s remarks I appreciate—the fact that he says it’s been going on a long time in this country. Racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia has been going on in this country a long time. But what is happening under this current administration is permission to hate. The hateful rhetoric of our current administration, not starting with Donald Trump, but starting with the eight years of the GOP laying a groundwork for it to be permissible to denigrate and to hate people based on their targeting of a black president, a president that they didn’t like before any decisions were made, a president that they met together against on the day of inauguration. So I’m not making this about the personhood of Barack Obama. I’m making this about white supremacy in this country. That laid a groundwork for the election of someone who ran, basically, on a hateful agenda. And the hateful remarks, the rhetoric that this president speaks and tweets, has created an environment where those who hate have permission to be safe in public spaces.
The thing that troubled me the most about my encounters this weekend was the fact—I’m from Birmingham, Alabama. I was raised there. I’ve seen Klan rallies before. The very last Klan rally that I witnessed in person, I was five years old, standing on a sidewalk watching the Klan rally go down the main street of Birmingham, Alabama, in the city. I don’t remember my fear. I remember my puzzlement in that moment. And emblazoned in my memory are those hooded sheets that they wore, as some were—road horses and some carried crosses and some carried flags. What sticks out for me is that we are now in a country and in a time where I witnessed masses of white supremacists walking down the main streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, emboldened enough to take the sheets off. These white people were wearing button-downs and polos and baseball caps. And I began to weep, knowing that it was quite possible that some of the people who were marching with these torches, shouting “Blood and soil!” shouting “You will not replace us!”—a ludicrous notion of white fear that has been strengthened and emboldened by an administration that is filled with hateful rhetoric
And we now have a president who will not even to declare, will not even denounce white supremacy right out. It is unconscionable.
Reverend Cornel West talking:
I’ll just say that it’s very clear that Brother Donald Trump has neofascist sensibilities. His failure to condemn white supremacy and domestic terrorism means that he’s complicitous in effecting consequence. It was very important to keep in mind that even under Barack Obama, as brilliant as he was, it was still the rule of big money, massive militarism. The racism coming at him was vicious, but the inequality, the inability to speak to the issues of class makes it easier for right-wing populism, neofascism to flow. We’ve got to be critical of the system.
Jalane Schmidt talking:
for the weekend of this Unite the Right rally, yes, I did have 24-hour security, and I didn’t stay in my home. I stayed in a safe house. And I did this because I’ve been identified by various figures in the alt-right, I’ve been identified publicly, and I was advised by, you know, kind of more experienced activists, leaders and organizers that I should take extra precaution this weekend. So I did.
I mean, just through meetings, getting together and also doing preparatory trainings in nonviolent direct action so that we could prepare ourselves for the eventuality of possibly being assaulted. And so this was—and also training for responding in live gunfire situations. So we had both sorts of training.
Traci Blackmon talking:
I appreciate the fact that these Republican leaders have spoken out against this incident in Charlottesville. But again, I want to caution against making it just about this one incident. Those same Republican leaders have, time and time again, promoted policy that alienates the other. Those same Republican leaders have promoted policy that emboldens the idea that white Americans are under threat and that other Americans do not deserve some of the same things that white America has. And so, while I applaud their words, that are direct, and I still expect the president of the United States to be a leader and to speak to this, to this issue, I also caution against not paying attention to the actions of even those Republican leaders where it matters, when they are instituting policy. The ban against immigrants, the healthcare reform bill, those things that have been situated to target people, the trans ban, all feed into the moment that we saw in Charlottesville and that we will continue to see across this nation if our leadership does not denounce white supremacy outright.
Cornel West talking:
Jeff Sessions, he’s part of the problem. You know, to ask him to engage in investigation is like asking a wolf to somehow oversee the plight of the lambs.
– Jefferson Beauregard Sessions himself, his first two names are named for Confederate generals.
He comes out of a legacy of white supremacy so deep. And, of course, he’s tried to make his efforts, and we appreciate it, but to think that somehow he’s got moral credibility on this issue, I think, is ludicrous, is laughable. I think we have to be very clear about what we’re up against. The crucial thing is, we’ve got to be able to unify, come together, fortify the efforts against the neofascists, against the big money, against massive militarism and especially against the xenophobia that highlights the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable among us are trans of color. And then, from there, you’ve got the poor. From there, you’ve got immigrants, especially brown, indigenous peoples, black peoples, working people and, of course, women and so forth. But to be very clear about the vulnerable ones. And I say this just as a—following the biblical imperative, what you do to the least of these, the prisoners and so forth.
Jalane Schmidt talking:
– some 52 percent of the residents of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, 14,000 people in all, were enslaved during the Civil War, that some 52 percent of the residents of Charlottesville—that’s at the time—enslaved.
At the time of the Civil War, the outright majority of our community here in Charlottesville and Albemarle County was enslaved. That is true. And that’s why some of us have been organizing to remove these Confederate statues, because these statues lie to us on a daily basis, from the very central gathering places of our community. Neither Generals Lee nor Stonewall Jackson ever came to Charlottesville. And it’s a testament to the perverse success of these monuments to misrepresent our past that so few people knew prior to this process, or still know, that the majority, the outright majority, of our community at the time of the Civil War was enslaved. And, in fact—I mean, if any general deserves to be in a central place, it would be General Sheridan, who rode in on March the 3rd, 1865, and liberated the slaves in the area. And we have many accounts, documented accounts, from Union soldiers who were part of the liberating forces of the Union army about the responses of enslaved persons and how jubilant and relieved and grateful they were. That’s—that was the majority opinion. That was the majority response to the end of the Civil War in Charlottesville, not these two generals that never even came here, so that this is part of our struggle, is to unearth the narrative and revise the narrative that’s been—that we tell each other, that we’ve been told about our community.
– removal of these statues. you’ve got the Robert E. Lee statue that’s going to be removed, General Robert E. Lee. You now have the park, Lee Park, renamed Emancipation Park, and Jackson Park renamed Justice Park
there are a range of people who would prefer to maintain the statues in place, everybody from, you know, the neo-Nazis and KKK and alt-right folks who were here this weekend to the folks I call the kind of bow-tie racists—I mean, you know, the kind of people who are, you know, attorneys with the local bar association or historical preservationists or this sort of thing, who support keeping these monuments for various reasons, for reasons of historical preservation.
You mentioned some elderly African-American residents. This has been much exaggerated, I must say, this cadre of people. They do exist, certainly. African Americans are not a monolith, as are no people. But that is a small minority that white officials who prefer to keep the statues like to use as what I call a black fig leaf, in order to represent so-called black opinion. It is not the majority opinion.
And so, these folks that make the argument that we need to keep the statues in order to, you know, kind of not sandblast or, you know, airbrush our past, you know, in a kind of like Soviet version of history where, you know, you’d see a picture of the politburo one year, and, you know, there’d be all these individuals, and then you’d see a picture from the next year, and, you know, the person would be airbrushed out. So this is the argument that these preservationists make, that you’re just trying to airbrush history.
As I’ve already mentioned, this history is a lie. It was revisionist history from the very time of the installation of the statues in the 1920s. It covers up our history. And to say that this—these statues can switch from being kind of laudatory history, as they are intended to be, to now being sort of a cautionary tale, a reminder of the Jim Crow past, is still to have these statues in place for the benefit of white folks. You know, what was kind of first a sort of whitewashed history, a sort of lost cause history that effaced the painful violence of slavery—you know, this was the—as these monuments had been put in—would now be cast as sort of a cautionary tale about racism and white supremacy. But I, as an African American, and other people of color and other vulnerable populations, we do not need a daily reminder of our oppression. We get plenty of reminders of—you know, daily monumental reminder, that is. I get plenty of reminders in other ways, with microaggressions and just the sorts of structures that are set up that minimize the contributions and value of the lives of people of color.
Cornel West talking:
we know that Donald Trump was lying. I mean, he’s been normalizing mendacity for decades. He knows about David Duke. He knows about white supremacists. He knows about the Ku Klux Klan and so forth. He knows that’s his social base. He brought in Steve Bannon, who’s very much a part of what people call the alt-right but is really just neofascism in contemporary garb. That’s why he brought in Bannon. So, I mean, the mendacity, of course, is on steroids when it comes to Donald Trump.
But our concern has to be not fetishizing and giving him magical powers, but trying to empower those of us who are willing to fight. We need prophetic fightback, progressive fightback. It’s got to be multiracial, but it’s also got to be critical to capitalism and the empire, along with patriarchy and white supremacy. White supremacy certainly is at the center, but it can’t just be a matter of talking about race isolated from these other very ugly realities.
this is a massive awakening. We’ve already seen an awakening taking place in the last few years. It will intensify. We’ve seen marvelous demonstrations in a variety of different cities in the country, in the empire. We see young people seeing other young white supremacist young people, saying, “That’s my generation. I have got to be on the right side. I’ve got to be on the moral and just side.” So I think that we have to have a real sense of commitment to being a hope in such a bleak moment. And we can turn things around.
– antifascists, the antifa, actually saved the clergy’s lives
I just want to salute those young folk. They were courageous. They were willing to sacrifice. There we were, most of the clergy in their clergy garb, completely defenseless, would have been crushed, as I said, like cockroaches. To have the young people step in—and, yes, they were fighting, yes, they were reacting to the violence coming from the fascists—and to have antifascists coming together in that way also is a sign of hope.
– the image of the torches, the mainly young white men walking through the campus, only difference is not with hoods this time, but walking with their torches through the University of Virginia?
That it’s gone back to the Klan in the ’20s, Kristallnacht in the ’30s in Germany, the Belgians in the Congo in the early part of the 20th century, the Turkish mistreatment of the Armenians and the Kurds. We’ve seen this all around the world. We just have to be fortified. We can’t just stay woke. We’ve got to stay fortified.
Traci Blackmon talking:
The movement will continue to resist, as Dr. West just said. We will continue to resist this platform of hatred, this platform of isolation, this platform of othering people. It is something that we cannot—that’s what we talked about Friday night, before all of this broke down, that we cannot let hate win, that love must always trump hate. And I believe that that will be the case still. It has always been the case. It will continue to be the case.
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Cornel West
professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University.
Traci Blackmon
executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ.
Jalane Schmidt
an organizer with the local Black Lives Matter movement and an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.
— source democracynow.org 2017-08-15