Ah, Charlottesville. The only time we make it into the national news is when we’re being named the best city in America, or when we’re having a white supremacist rally. Unfortunately it’s been a lot more of the latter here recently.
A name you may be hearing in the news today is “Jason Kessler.” He is the organizer of the rally today, a small town grandstanding right-wing blogger who is almost certainly relishing the national media attention he is receiving today.
He is probably a new name to most people today, but Charlottesville has known him as our local Joker for close to a year at this point, during which time he has ignited a series of very serious and mounting local crises in our otherwise decent city:
The Tweets
It all started when Kessler, eager to make a name for himself, exposed a series of old racist and misogynistic Tweets from our vice mayor, an African American and Democrat, Wes Bellamy. On content, the tweets were blatantly indefensible, and roundly condemned by members of local and state government. Bellamy resigned from the Virginia Board of Education position he had been given by Governor McAuliffe, who said he was “horrified” by the Tweets.
“Your Days are Numbered”
The first City Council meeting after Bellamy’s Tweets were made public was absolutely brutal. It was packed with both Bellamy critics and defenders, and Kessler made a remarkable display of swagger at his apparent victory over our beloved vice mayor. The City allows members of the public to make comments before the Council on local television, so Kessler went up there with music playing on his speaker (for some reason), publicly roasted Bellamy, other Councillors and just liberals in general for a few minutes, and then said right to Bellamy: “Your days are numbered,” which was interpreted by the Council and the police in the room to be a threat. Council meetings were never this chaotic.
The Statue
The dramatic and tragic fall of our well-liked vice mayor became a crucial rallying cry for a drastically outnumbered but energized far-right. At the time he was exposed by Kessler, Bellamy was waging a battle against the eye of this hurricane, the local statue of Robert E. Lee. Various Cville residents had been calling for its removal, and out of the five members on Council, Bellamy was the most receptive to the call. I attended a few extremely contentious City Council meetings- Kessler was there for at least one of them- where protesters from both sides filled the room to capacity and bitterly argued over whether Lee represented glorified racism or respectable heritage.
The Infowar Begins
There is some sort of law here that allows a form of removal from office for a member of Council if enough signatures from Charlottesville residents are collected. Kessler took it upon himself to try to completely finish off Bellamy’s political career, assuming that the law meant he had to receive signatures equal to only 10% of Bellamy’s voters from the last election. He was eventually able to complete this task, scrabbling up about 600 signatures, only to be informed that he had to receive 10% of all voters, meaning he needed 1,000 more signatures in addition to what he already had. Yet, even though he decisively lost on the issue, as there was little hope for him to get this many signatures when Donald Trump himself only received 13% of the vote here, his position was successfully elevated among the national extreme right. He was featured on Infowars and began establishing real connections and a following through his online presence, and thus started attracting outside interest towards the battle around the statue.
The Vote
In one of the first missteps the City Council made on the matter of the statue, the first vote relating to the removal of the statue was a deadlocked 2-2, with Bellamy being one of the yes votes and Mayor Mike Signer being one of the no votes, with Councilor Bob Fenwick abstaining. Apparently Fenwick wanted leverage on other Council issues in exchange for his tie-breaking vote, but this only exacerbated the situation. In a later vote, Fenwick voted yes, breaking the tie (he was recently decisively defeated in the Democratic primaries, although I think that’s mainly just because he didn’t really seem to bother to campaign). Thus, the statue was set to be removed to another location, much to the anger of both those interested in “preserving cultural heritage” and those concerned about the cost of removal (around half a million dollars).
Renaming the Parks
In another issue where I believe the City Council made the problem worse, they renamed Lee and Jackson Parks “Emancipation” and “Justice” parks, respectively. I think this just fed into “anti-SJW” trendiness that has been firing up the Right and some of the Left recently. I feel like they could have renamed them in a more tactful way, perhaps something like “Douglass Park.” After all, Frederick Douglass is an abolitionist who ”is being recognized more and more” as our president said. I do not believe the City was wise to rename the parks with what they did.
“Punching Nazis”
In an example of the rising tensions, one of our Democratic candidates for Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney this year, Joff Fogel, got into a confrontation with one of Kessler’s goons about a week before the election. A man got up in Fogel’s face and called him a “communist piece of shit” only to have Fogel “lightly push him with an open hand,” to which Kessler gleefully yelled in response, “Oh my God, this guy just assaulted my friend” (never minding the fact that Kessler himself has been arrested several times for assault). So what happened? In an insane display against someone who is 72 years old and clearly not aggressive, five police officers raided Fogel’s home in the wee hours of the morning, where he was arrested and charged. The whole situation showed that Charlottesville was changing, not in a good way.
The North Carolina KKK is Imported to Charlottesville
You may have heard about the KKK rally that happened in Charlottesville a month ago. It turned out to be a pretty epic flop on the side of the racists, with a mere 50 KKK members showing up late to their planned “rally,” only to be greeted by thousands of largely peaceful counter-protesters. But that was just a warm-up to the gathering of a larger and more legitimized right.
Kessler Embraced by the Mainstream GOP
Things were only made worse when Jason Kessler successfully married himself to the modern Republican Party. Our Congressman Tom Garrett (R-VA05) rarely meets with his constituents (although I did have the pleasure of getting a completely nonsensical answer from him to my question about healthcare when he visited my school several months ago). In fact, he promised a meeting with our local chapter of the Sierra Club, but when they showed up, staffers informed them that he wasn’t actually going to be there. That was the trend whenever a constituent group asked to meet with him. However, he made a very generous exception for Jason Kessler, taking time to meet with our right-wing provocateur:
As I’m typing this, Garrett is offering on his Twitter a rather hollow and late condemnation of the racism and violence that he helped to legitimize.
”Unite the Right” Picks up Steam
Using his newfound connections from the Bellamy scandal and the Lee Statue fight, Kessler began building up his grand display of American nastiness, and the City of Charlottesville seemed to be helpless in the face of it. Presumably assuming it was going to be just another KKK-sized rally, the Council granted Kessler the right to hold a rally on our Downtown Mall. As it became clear that Kessler was gathering an army of thousands, the City this week desperately tried to revoke the permit and move the rally to a more safe location. This was another grave mistake for several reasons. First of all, Kessler is not the type of person willing to listen to reason, especially from the City government only a few days before his epic grandstanding begins. Secondly, it became an issue of free speech where groups like the ACLU and Rutherford Institute were actually forced to step up to bat for Kessler. The City should have acted much earlier on this, or even better, not allowed the permit at all, instead granting it in a safer location. Instead, our local businesses and restaurants have greatly suffered from the pressure this rally has put on them, and the City did little to help them.
Today
At this point, I really have nothing to add other than what you’ve already seen. The only thing I can say is that it wasn’t like Charlottesville, a liberal bastion, was suddenly besieged as the central battleground between the alt-right and the rest of us. This had been coming for a long time and now our people and our businesses will be left picking up the pieces well after these “outside agitators” go home.
Could It have been Prevented?
Given how strongly both sides feel about the statue, I do not believe this could have been prevented. I think that City Council helped to exacerbate the situation, both with the crisis of our vice mayor, and bungling the rally problem as it grew into a much bigger threat. If you think there was a legitimate way this uniquely American carnage could have been stopped in its tracks entirely, I would be interested to hear.