After coming home from work exhausted Friday night of August 11, 2017, I had no idea was going on 756 miles east of where I live. I woke up Saturday morning scrolling through Twitter to find out about the riots happening in Charlottesville, Virgina.
The city of Charlottesville has been under a lot of heat from its recent election results. The State of Virginia is a red state. However, "80 percent of its voters chose Hillary Clinton". Adding to this, the community of Charlottesville is pushing a plan to remove the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. This push for removing iconic Confederate symbols encouraged Unite the Right, a group of white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi individuals, to have a rally on Saturday, August 12th.
Events arose the day before on Friday night. A group of people marched onto the campus of the University of Virginia with torches lit and yelling out "Blood and Soil" and "You will not replace us". After surrounding around the statue of Thomas Jefferson, the group ran into counter protesters. Shortly after, the group had left campus when police arrived on the scene. The Mayor of Charlottesville took to Twitter late Friday night expressing his opinion on the matter. He expressed, as an alumnus of the University of Virginia, his disgust for the individuals that needed to express such negative views on a college campus.
Tensions rose higher before the rally on Saturday with fist fights and screaming at one another. Kicking and punching and all sorts of violence made for a brutal encounter of hate. One person was killed and nineteen were injured due to a car slamming into a crowd of counter protesters which was where the rally was scheduled to take place.
A State of Emergency was made for the area as the situation began to grow worse. Since then, the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, released a short press conference on the matter stated a quick, clear message: "Go home". He proceeded to say that what these men are doing is not patriotism but far from it. He continued saying that just because this event may have hurt others, they have made our country stronger. He finished by saying this, "There is no place for you here. There is no place for you in America."
The man who organized Saturday's rally for Unite the Rally, Jason Kessler, said that this rally is the start of "standing up for our history". Their reasoning behind this is the issue of political correctness is causing the Confederate legacy to be broken down and the right for white people to advocate for their political interests.
In Jason's defense, I understand his first two points as to why they are doing this. Although, the group has to recognize the history behind the confederate flag and what it means for the population of the United States. It shows the poor treatment of slaves and the creation of Jim Crow Laws. The last reason was for free speech. They were doing more than just that. They were out hurting people and reeking havoc on the Charlottesville community.
Are we in the era of Jim Crow Laws? The video of the car slamming into a crowd of protesters looked like the videos I watched in history class from the 1960s of African Americans fighting for their rights. You have no right to say that your rights are being taken away from you when you have no idea what it is like to live in the minority. You do not know what it is like to wake up to the possibility of going out into the world and having rights taken away from you because of how you look.
Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You just want to continue to dominate and encourage an attitude of hate and inequality as a society. Don't you see what this rally of violence is founded by? Racism. It is bigotry and ignorance of a society that the members of Unite the Right cannot comprehend. It is 2017. There is no reason for it.
I can't help but think that my kids will be learning about this in school years from now for a test. I am experiencing it first hand and will tell my kids about it. I will have to explain to them why someone would go out of their way to hurt other people for the sole reason of hating someone due to their skin color. I hope to see one day the concept will be obsolete. But it starts with us. The United States of America has to stop pinning the blame on someone else who is different than us and take responsibility and work together to make it better. For the sake of our State of the Union, it must be done.
