I love the serenity and peaceful feeling of the UVA Lawn at summer twilight, a favorite place to walk my dogs. I took this photo two evenings before the torch rally on Friday evening August 11, 2017. The following day, I watched in horror (live stream) at the violence during the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA. Heather Heyer was killed as a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of protesters.
I joined DKOS several weeks later. I needed a community and I found one. I get chills whenever I see photos of videos of the hate filled faces at the torch rally at UVA. I kept thinking I could have been there. I was there just 2 evenings earlier. I park in the same area where the white supremacists gathered.
On Saturday, August 12, 2017 the police stood down while the white supremacists & protesters clashed. People were injured. It was ugly. It was brutal. The police did nothing. The clergy linked arms and formed a wall of support, until they were told it was not safe for them to remain there. Our Synagogue is on one corner near the park, where the rally was located. An armed person stood on the corner across the street. Those inside were afraid for their lives. Then James Fields drove his car into a crowd of protesters and Heather Heyer was killed. Others were injured, some have not recovered, and at least one is now disabled, trying to get disability.
That was when I realized the grave danger to our democracy posed by the current WH (I will not use his name)! If it could happen in my town? Well, not only has it happened in other towns, but it has been sanctioned by the WH. He has sown dissent & encouraged acts of violence. IT MUST END!
I got side tracked, but I wrote the diary to share the community events of today.
RECLAIM THE PARK CELEBRATION
The Charlottesville Clergy Collective is holding a virtual interfaith worship service. It will start at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, August 12, and more than 30 faith leaders will lead it.
People in Charlottesville are also hosting a Reclaim The Park celebration of anti-racist resistance. That takes place from 1 p.m. - 7 p.m. in Market Street Park.
STATEMENT IN FULL AS RELEASED TO THE MEDIA www.nbc12.com/... (Bold is mine).
This August 12, 2020, community members and clergy are collaborating to create an important space in Market Street Park. In the summer of 2017 that space was taken from us on multiple occasions by violent white supremacists. In the summers of 2018 and 2019 that space was controlled by the police. This summer, self-appointed armed and agitated vigilantes have taken to patrolling the parks and threatening community members. We are done ceding this space to others. For a total of six hours, community members will be sharing food, making art, listening to the histories of resistance against fascism in Charlottesville, dancing, holding space with each other, listening to each other's grief and rage. And we ask that others respect that space by allowing it to be ours unequivocally.
To the media: We ask that you not come at all. We will provide spokespeople for you to interview about the event and we will share our own visual media after the event that you can use for covering the story; but for many, being filmed and photographed would be an invasion. Please respect that this is a space we need and deserve. We are asking respectfully that you give it to us on our own terms. A few organizers will be available for interviews on the library steps (just outside the park) at 2:30pm and 6:00pm Wednesday.
To the police: We ask that you leave us alone. We can keep ourselves safe, and your presence will undermine our ability to gather together authentically. Charlottesville hosts block parties regularly without incident -- this should be just the same.
This event centers people who were in the streets of Charlottesville together in the summer of 2017. We appreciate that others may feel compelled to join us who are less familiar with the events leading to August 11th and 12th 2017. We will be posting community agreements in the coming days to help us hold the space together and center the folx who are still healing from the events of that summer.
This summer we reclaim Market Street Park together. In love, solidarity and rage.
I will be there in spirit with the community & clergy.
POSTSCRIPT: Several weeks after the rally, I bought 2-3 albums of old postcards. In the back of one album, I found Identity Documents for three people from a Hungarian Displaced Persons Camp, 1946. They had small, passport type photos — these were real people, Jews, who escaped the Holocaust. Through some internet sleuthing I identified two of the people, man & woman who married after emigrating to Canada. I tracked down their children & returned the documents to a son. His parents were deceased. He had never seen photos of his parents at that age (early 20s).
It was a poignant, emotional experience, especially occurring so soon after the Rally.