Four years after the deadly white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, jury selection has begun in a federal civil trial that charges the organizers with an unlawful conspiracy to commit violent acts.
On August 11, 2017, in what’s been billed as a climax to a summer of hate, several hundred white supremacists marched with tiki torches across the University of Virginia, surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson, chanting, “You will not replace us,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “White lives matter.”
At the next day’s Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville, more than a thousand white supremacists marched to a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Thousands of counterprotesters also descended on the city, including clergy, students, Black Lives Matter activists and protesters with the anti-fascist movement known as antifa. Even as fights broke out, witnesses report police did little to intervene.
Around 1:45 in the afternoon that day, self-described neo-Nazi James Alex Fields slammed his car into a crowd of antiracist counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring at least 35 others. Fields was later sentenced to life in prison.
Those now charged in the civil trial for the violence in Charlottesville include Jason Kessler, the main organizer, and white supremacist Richard Spencer, who spoke at the event. The civil lawsuit cites an 1871 law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations.
— source democracynow.org | Oct 27, 2021