Fifth Anniversary of A11/A12: “Almost everything that could have been mishandled was."

Despite the Daily Progress losing four reporters in recent months, local journalists have done some great work heading into the 5th anniversary of the Unite the Right rally. There's a selection of stories below. However, the degree to which city leaders and law enforcement failed to protect the community five years ago has become strangely absent from the narrative. Indeed, a Daily Progress editorial about the approaching anniversary didn't mention it at all. As the Washington Post reported after the Heaphy Report was released, “Almost everything that could have been mishandled was."

From the WP article: The City Council pushed at the last minute to have the rally moved, even though the city’s lawyers told the council that doing so would not survive a court challenge. That decision created confusion and forced police to plan for rallies at two locations. “Their decision to take this important and difficult decision away from the arms of city government most equipped to evaluate and manage this event was a dangerous overreach with lasting consequences,” the report stated.

Other breakdowns, according to the report, included a failure by the city to keep the public informed and a misjudgment by city planners that they could not prohibit the carrying of sticks, shields and clubs by marchers and counterprotesters. It also pointed to a failure by law enforcement to ensure separation between protesters and counterprotesters, and a reluctance by police to intervene in violent incidents.

“People were injured in violent confrontations that could have been but were not prevented by police,” the report stated. “Some of the individuals who committed those violent acts escaped detection due to police inability or unwillingness to pursue them.”

Indeed, one of my strongest memories five years ago was the sudden absence of a police presence when violence broke out at the park. I noticed state troopers standing along the fencing when I arrived, but when the violence started they were gone. There was also no strong police presence while the crowd in and around the park, and the armed militia members on hand, roamed around the DTM after the rally had been shut down. It was like there had been a stand-down order. It was in such sharp contrast to the way the KKK rally just a month before had been handled. It seemed deliberate. Given what had happened at UVA the night before, a torchlight march across grounds by white supremacists shouting "Jews will not replace us," how is it that there was such a passive response to the rally the next day? I have never heard or read a satisfactory answer to that question.

As for the UTR rally goers, I remember two young white men, who were presumably there to protest against the removal of a Confederate statue, heckling a group of waitresses, all in their black uniforms, who had walked up to the park to see what was going on. The men were calling the women vulgar, sexist names and bragging about their sexual prowess, and the waitresses were yelling back at them. What on earth? I felt a powerful wave of boredom and depression. It was such an ugly, ignorant gathering of humanity. Like going to a concert with no music where the people were all drunk. And then the violence started.

Less than four years later, police and D.C. officials were similarly unprepared for a rally at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Proud Boys, who emerged from the alt-right movement that was largely responsible for the Unite the Right rally [local UTR organizer Jason Kessler previously held a Proud Boys event in Charlottesville], played a leading role in the Capitol Insurrection. Indeed, while the Proud Boys officially pulled out of the UTR rally, many of their members attended, including the groups future national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy for his role in the Capitol Insurrection. In addition, Tim Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, a well-known alt-right and white supremacist media personality who attended UTR was also arrested for his role in the Capitol Insurrection. While individual organizers and attendees of UTR were hobbled and punished by being doxxed, arrested, charged, and later sued, the brand of extremism on display in Charlottesville continued to grow.

"The four years in between have shown us how much of this extremism has moved into the mainstream," Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, the nonprofit that won the civil lawsuit against the organizers of Unite the Right, told Salon. "If you look at the tools and tactics, there are many, many parallels, from the use of social media to plan the violence to explicit discussion of the use of free speech instruments like flagpoles as weapons, to the immediate finger-pointing to 'antifa, blaming them for the violence that far-right extremists were responsible for to even some of the ideology."

In moving forward I've always felt like it was important to fully understand why - not just how - law enforcement and our community leaders (UVA included) failed to understand what they were dealing with five years ago and to adequately protect the community. And it’s not about the "blame game" and "fingering-pointing" as the DP's editorial suggested, but about gaining insight into why systems in our community keep failing us.

Some local reporting leading up to the 5th anniversary of A12:

UVa looks to students to reform racist history

White supremacist attack brought unfair housing issues to forefront

Black Charlottesville residents open up about what changed — and what didn’t — after Unite the Right

It took five years, but the board of civilians that oversees the Charlottesville Police Department has its first case

Confederate groups may once again stall Charlottesville’s plans for the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee