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U. Virginia group to ‘demand justice’ for white supremacy

The spectre of last year’s Charlottesville, Virginia clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters continues to be siphoned for all its worth as, one year later, a University of Virginia group plans to “demand justice” for the “transgressions of white supremacy.”

Although the area around U.Va.’s North Plaza of the Rotunda will be restricted to the public, the group U.Va. Students United intends to voice their demands at that very spot.

“We will not let the University continue to erase the events of [Aug. 11, 2017] and their complicity in aiding white supremacy,” it posted on its Facebook page. “Please stand with us to let the University know that students and the community are on the frontline [sic] of confronting and dismantling white supremacy.”

Last summer we saw an insurgency of white supremacists at our University and in our city. We stood up to face them and were met with unprecedented violence. Over the past year we have continued to fight for racial justice in the courts and on the streets. This summer, we are preparing for the anniversaries of August 11th and 12th through direct action training, political education, and community outreach.

According to The Cavalier Daily, some 400 people have expressed interest in attending. More from its story:

In an email to the U.Va. community, Patrick Hogan, the University’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Gloria Graham, the University’s associate vice president for safety and security, announced the North Plaza would be closed to the public from 5 p.m. on Aug. 10 through 7 a.m. on Aug. 13. …

The administration’s email noted that, while white nationalist organizer Jason Kessler has withdrawn his motion with a federal judge for a rally permit, both the University and the City of Charlottesville are preparing for potential white nationalist demonstrations. Hogan and Graham also write there will be an “increased police and security presence both on Grounds and in the community” for the weekend of Aug. 11.

Graham has reached out to Students United several times, according to University spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn, in an effort to prepare for the weekend.

U.Va. Students United also offers a link to a #FightWithCville “toolkit” for student activists who are unable to attend the rally — because, it says, “White supremacy DOES NOT ONLY exist in Charlottesville. Therefore, it is up to everyone to mobilize and dismantle white supremacy in all communities.”

This toolkit “invites” activists to uphold various “principles” such as refusing “all attempts at moral equivalency between fascists and anti-fascists,” noting that police and the Ku Klux Klan “go hand in hand” (policing is a “historically and inherently racist institution”), and believing that “civility is tyranny.”

In the kit’s “Demands for Your City or County” section it tells organizers to deny First Amendment rights for white supremacists, to give reparations to black victims of gentrification, to refuse any cooperation with ICE, and to take down “all Monuments/Flags to the Confederacy/Colonialism and other Racists.”

Last September, U.Va. Students United threw a fit when a campus fraternity hosted a “cops and robbers” party: Partygoers’ costumes “make a joke of mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex, systems that disproportionately brutalize people of color.”

Read the full Cavalier Daily article and #FightWithCville Toolkit.

MORE: Educators waste no time with social justice lessons after Charlottesville

MORE: U.Va. Students United rips fraternity’s ‘cops and robbers’ party

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