The University of Virginia student group known as U.Va. Students United went ahead with its planned rally yesterday on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville race clash, and since no white supremacists showed up participants voiced their fury at the UVA administration … and the police.
The group marched to “demand justice” for the “transgressions of white supremacy,” but as The Cavalier Daily reports, this wasn’t all. At the beginning of last evening’s event, flyers were handed out listing Students United’s demands which include waiving medical expenses of anyone injured at Charlottesville last year, and a “lifelong no trespassing bans for all white supremacists” involved in that march.
In addition, some flyers blasted the “heavy” police presence stating “Last year they came with torches, this year they came with badges.” Translation: Cops are tools of white supremacy.
“When we figured out there’d be metal detectors … it was just too much for us,” a Students United spokesperson said. “At some point we just came to the determination that we were not going to have [our people] in that space because we knew it was a betrayal of our community … being basically cattled by the police, surrounded by the police and it wasn’t going to go well with our people.”
Grace Hale, a protester and American Studies professor, said she found the increase in police presence from last year “depressing.”
“Is it somehow to make up for the fact that they really didn’t do much at all last year to protect the anti-racist, anti-Unite the Right protestors?” Hale said. “I feel like it’s upsetting. It’s too much.”
As the rally persisted, demonstrators shouted chants including — “Hey, hey UVA, who will you exploit today”, “Cops and the Klan go hand and hand” and “No justice, no peace, abolish the police.”
Students United had planned to carry out the original intentions of their rally from the new location on the triangle of grass by Brooks Hall, including speeches, poetry recitations and live music, the spokesperson said. However, when police approached the area in riot gear, members of the crowd became agitated and the direction of the rally quickly changed.
“A lot of people just don’t get that the trust between the people and the police just is broken,” the spokesperson said.
Even though the “official” rally ended around 8pm, many demonstrators continued on towards downtown. Apparently, this is when an NBC news crew was attacked by protesters:
— mallen (@mallen2010) August 12, 2018
Not to mention, some of the “peaceful” rallygoers were caught carrying not-so peaceful items:
Not @TheOnion #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/C9sWInd363
— George Kaplan (@En_vis_age) August 12, 2018
Read the full Cavalier Daily article.
MORE: U. Virginia group to ‘demand justice’ for white supremacy
IMAGE: Daniel Kuhn/Flickr.com
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