Posted on 08/15/2017 4:52:30 AM PDT by csvset
As an attendee of the Unite The Right rally and scheduled speaker, I have serious questions about the actions of Virginia police on Saturday. It appears that police created a dangerous situation which was entirely avoidable. I will explain in detail the facts of what happened
One does not need to support any of the positions of the alt-right to be concerned about what this means about the state of free speech in America.
This is Lee Park in Charlottesville, as it was laid out for Saturday’s rally. The red lines indicate the position of metal barriers. The rally had a legally issued permit, revoked by the city a week before but reinstated by a Federal judge the day before the rally. The barricade layout was as police described to organizers it would be, and speakers received a briefing on this the day before. Virginia State Police commandeered the north side of the park. No one was allowed in that half of the park except a few rally people handling the audio equipment. Police also controlled the streets around the park on three sides: Jefferson St. to the north, 1st St. to the west, and 2nd St. to the east.
Market St. to the south was an uncontrolled chaos full of antifa. The south end of the park is a small hill. Exits 1 & 2 were both short concrete stairways. Speaker and rally attendees arrived via Market St. from the east, protected by police.
When I arrived I was funneled into Exit 1 and up into Pen 1. Shortly after I was able to get around the State Police dividing the pens to the south and made my way into Pen 2, which contained the audio setup for those planned to speak at the rally.
Both exit stairs were defended by rally attendees with shields, and antifa skirmished with them at each stairway. Contact between the two sides was isolated to those positions and relatively under control from my vantage point. Within Pen 2 people felt relatively relaxed and we chatted and socialized while waiting for noon for the rally proper to start.
Shortly after all rally attendees were present in the park, word began to spread that a State of Emergency had been declared, presumably by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. At my position in Pen 2, people were confused by this. It seemed unnecessary and preemptive since the rally seemed fairly well under control at this point. It was about 11:30 a.m., and the rally was not scheduled to start until noon.
After some minutes of confusion and rumors, Virginia State Police got on a loudspeaker and announced that we had been declared an unlawful assembly. We were instructed to leave the park, and told that anyone refusing to do so would be arrested.
Attendees began attempting to leave via exits 1 & 2 and were set upon by antifa as they attempted to do so. After a quick consultation, a small group of rally headliners and attendees decided to engage in civil disobedience and get ourselves arrested, myself included.
We told our security teams to leave the park to avoid arrest, while Virginia State Police began forming a shield wall at the north end of the park. The pens were nearly empty at this point, except for those planning to be arrested and a few people still attempting to run the antifa gauntlet at the stairs to escape from the park
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The VSP shield wall began advancing south, and we linked arms and held our ground. We told police we refused to leave and planned to engage in civil disobedience. We were respectful and informed them we would not resist arrest but we refused to leave the park willingly.
The shield wall advanced on us and began to shove our line. We stood firm and held our ground for a few minutes. Police on the line did not say a word and refused to arrest us while shoving with their shields and swinging them at us.
After a few minutes of shoving, our line was pepper-sprayed from a cop behind the police shield wall, and our resistance crumbled. Being near the end of the line, I was not sprayed directly. The spray drifted in the wind onto my arms and face but my eyes remained clear.
We retreated through the western barricade but police on 1st St. would not let us onto the street forced us to retreat south. We’re pushed through the barricade at the south end of 1st St. and onto Market St., which was lined on both sides with mobs of screaming antifa with no police presence whatsoever.
We ran west on Market St, running a gauntlet of antifa throwing bottles, sticks, and rocks. Two people I believe were nearly blinded by pepper spray. I followed them closely but then dropped back as the crowd hurled everything they had at another protest headliner, luckily missing with most of it.
After running a few blocks west, we reached the intersection of Market and Preston, where a shield wall had been set up by rally attendees on a grass strip alongside Market St. Casualties were being tended there, including multiple heavily bleeding scalp wounds and pepper spray injuries. Luckily all the injuries seemed superficial except one man with a very bad head injury who seems to be going in and out of consciousness.
From there the bulk of the rally attendees were able to march north and eventually reached the relative safety of MacIntyre Park, about two miles away, but many had been scattered throughout the city by the chaos of the dispersal.
At that point the police had completely lost control of the city. The State of Emergency order meant that any public gathering was de facto illegal, but antifa were still allowed to roam freely bearing weapons and attacking people. This chaos ultimately led directly to the vehicular incident that killed a woman and badly injured more than a dozen others.
My conclusions are that police wanted this to happen. It’s clear that VSP had specific orders to drive us out of the park to the south, into the teeth of violent armed antifa counter-protesters.
Police could have easily separated the barricades and removed all rally participants to the north, away from antifa and into empty streets fully controlled by law enforcement. We were driven into a hostile situation intentionally. It’s impossible not to believe that the authorities issuing these orders knew exactly what would happen and that they wanted rally attendees to be harmed and possibly killed.
There was an assumption that police would allow a retreat to the north in the event of a rally cancellation, no one imagined the police would choose to facilitate a clearly violent situation and force the two sides into uncontrolled contact. This looks like it was done with the intent to deny civil rights of a legal protest, in direct defiance of a federal court order. We were set up and trapped, then pushed into a kill zone full of hostile armed enemies. Every injury at this event was due to to the nonsensical withdrawal order of the police.
National Guard (or possibly feds? It’s unclear) had a viewing post atop the funeral home at the corner of 1st and Market, equipped with several cameras. That video will corroborate my story if released
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I got out relatively unscathed, my relatively mild (but still very painful) pepper spraying was my only injury. I was lucky, but many others were not so lucky. Serious questions need to be asked about who gave this order and why the rally participants were not extracted to the north, away from antifa. The opposing sides could have been kept apart very easily, but police chose not to keep the sides apart.
Governor Terry McAuliffe and the Virginia State Police have blood on their hands, and they must be held to account for that.
I read somewhere on FR yesterday that one of the leaders was an Obama activist and Dem operative who became very pro-Trump last November. If so, it is likely that the leadership includes several well-funded agent provocateurs who have attracted a number of people who lack judgment. If this is true, and if the diagram and the above accout is accurate, the theory that both sides are funded by the same people who hope to provoke some kind of explosion by putting these groups, both of which probably included a decent percentage of unstable people, together in close proximity is the only one that I have heard put forward that seems to make sense.
That was because Ole Terry declared a state of emergency an hour prior to the demonstrators finding out about it.
All at once, they were criminals. See how that works?
Typical commie behavior.
Whole thing was a set up to make sure there was violence.
I wouldn’t even identify TEA Party members as “alt-right”.
Apart from the Pauls (Ron and his son) who are Libertarians running until the Republican Party (and often taking outrage at the GOP), I can’t think of many candidates put up by the TEA Party who made it to office who weren’t conservative Republicans.
TEA Party figures may have been outside of the Rockefeller Country Club wing of the RINO Party but they held core values of the “generation Reagan” Republican ideal.
And TEA Party rallies were peaceful family friendly affairs.
There are Libertarians in the “alt-right”. There are also Reform Party people in the so-called “alt-right”. Was Ross Pee-rot a right winger? Was Gov. Jesse The Meathead Ventura a right winger? They were Reform Partiers as was Donald Trump (who has at least done more to shore up the Republican Party than the RINO establishment did for decades). Donald Trump was not a “Conservative” but he does stand up for America apparently over Globalism and he has offered some verbal pushback to the creeping Socialist tide.
As political rallies go, what is the message of these “unite the right” people? Co-opting a larger political party? Can they show their voting records to convince me that they are on the right to begin with?
I don’t swallow the line I’m being told and the media never once pointed out the presence of Mao-Che-Stalin loving Communists at virtually every Leftist rally for the last 20 years.
Trump has praised the cops so much he’ll never be able to condemn their actions.
Mccauliff decided to override a federal judge’s ruling. And he’ll get away with it. And state police ALWAYS do what the governor tells them to do. Think Bill Clinton and the ho’s.
There are already conspiracy theories that the car was a false flag event and that the chopper was downed to kill witnesses to what actually happened.
Regarding the copter crash...
Richmond.com had an article yesterday on this helo subject yesterday (now vanished). From an overall perspective, the article tried way too hard to make the point that the Guv had no use of that copter that day, it was Richmond-based hardware and was the protective crew that “normally” flew “terry” but it didn’t this day, he originated somewhere in NoVa. The article included an awkward and unnecessary reference to a condolence from Fairfax county (Sheriff?) that attempted to substantiate that travel, but that was probably normal professional courtesy for loss of a fellow LEO.
That article had words saying the copter was “monitoring resources and movements” of protestors, or some such generic language. That article included snippets of a timeline that said the copter took off from C-Ville airport at 4:02 or 4:04 pm. Some observant person posted a comment to the article that said “what movements were there to monitor on the ground at the airport”, and pointed out that someone must have been picked up or dropped off to be on the ground at the airport and not doing the “monitoring” mission. A plausible airport appearance would be a possible routine refuel, but that was not mentioned.
Fast forward to today. Richmond.com article(s) about the helo crash now present a timeline that ignores the previous mention of landing/takeoff at c-ville airport, and gives some details much closer to crash time. Plus statements of “no distress calls”. Plus another separate article trying to cast doubt on functionality of this aircraft with a huge headline of previous damage to this helo in 2010.
Bottom line is that this crash HAS to be involved with what went down behind the scenes to foster and encourage the conflict and vehicle attack, it smells too much not to be.
Why are the details of their timeline being partially obscured and shifting around? What may these guys have seen while on the ground at the airport? Arrival/unloading of any Black SUVs? Did the NTSB “special crew” (TWA Flight 800 investigators) get to have dinner at home Saturday evening, or were they already motoring to C-Ville?
There is not only a cone of silence around the helo crash, there is some active disinformation.
Enquiring minds, ya know.
The naivete, ignorance and lack of preparation by the "white nationalists" reinforces that belief that they are of low IQ and inferior beings.
Someone rented the space from the funeral home....
Call George Webb...Time to do door-to-door interviews.
Here is an account of happenings from a FReeper, if you haven’t seen it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3576803/posts?page=1
Misogynistic, nationalistic, homophobic, white supremacistic, xenophobic, fascistic, nazi...or more simply put...white, hetero, male Trump voter.
Freeper’s account.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3576803/posts?page=1
Misogynistic, nationalistic, homophobic, white supremacistic, xenophobic, fascistic, nazi...or more simply put...white, hetero, male Trump voter.
In other words...RAT rednecks.
This is what I said the very next day.:
Maybe I am missing something, please Help:
The white guys had a Permit to Protest and Rally, all legal like. Correct??
The ANTIFA Brownshirts showed up Without a Permit and began to Protest ILLEGALLY. Correct??
The Police Department REFUSED to Enforce the Law against the ANTIFA Brownshirts for TRESPASSING, Disturbing the Peace, and Holding an Illegal Protest. Correct??
The Police Department willfully and knowingly steered the ANTIFA Brownshirts into the same area as the White Guys. Correct??
I believe I am correct on all 4 points.
WHY HASN’T THE US ATTORNEY ARRESTED AND CHARGED THE POLICE CHIEF AND ALL OFFICERS THERE WITH MURDER,Maybe even the Mayor and Governor if it can be shown they took part in this, under the Felony Murder Rule??
THEY SET THIS UP just as if they Conspired to commit the MURDER themselves and they all belong in PRISON FOR LIFE!!!
And people wonder why I would never trust or believe anything a Government Employee EVER SAYS.
Not the way the media and the left (I know, redundant) portray us.
This is the money post of the day!
“Whole thing was a set up to make sure there was violence.”
Taxman Bravo Zulu!
What a slime ball. Ooops. Falling into a liberal ploy...putting him in the same box as other slime balls.
Oh, yeah...he is.
Agreed 100%. We were told, and understood, they wanted someone to tee off on them.
Apart from the World Wide Web we’re familiar with, there is also something called Usenet, which consists of ‘newsgroups’ available in a different format. Newsgroups are devoted to specific interests or topics, and are either moderated or unmoderated.
The unmoderated newsgroups begin with the prefix ‘alt.’, so ‘alt.right’ is used to mean those on the right side of the political spectrum who do not follow the leadership of established conservative thinkers, thus ‘unmoderated’.
I am in full agreement. Every conservative rally I have ever gone to was peaceful and respectful in nature. You could bring children to them.
I went to the demonstration in Washington DC back in September 2012, the “March on Washington” with hundreds of thousands of people. There was no foul language. There were people with kids. They kept things clean and orderly.
It isn’t that way at leftist demonstrations, I can assure you of that. The foul language, rude behavior, and piggish consideration for the cleanliness of the area never surprises me, but continues to astonish me.
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