Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The New York Times reports:
The governor of Virginia declared a state of emergency in Charlottesville on Saturday as a protest of a plan to remove a statue of a Confederate general turned violent, leaving several people injured and threatening to plunge the area into chaos.
Protesters clashed in the historic college town, as white nationalists — some waving Confederate flags, chanting Nazi-era slogans, wearing helmets and carrying shields — converged on the statue of Robert E. Lee in the city’s Emancipation Park and the surrounding streets. The protest was the apparent culmination of more than a year of debate and division over the fate of the statue.
Saturday’s rally was supposed to start at noon, but the scene at the park had grown chaotic by late morning, with white nationalists and neo-Nazis facing off with Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other counterprotesters. Inside the park, which was encircled with metal barricades and the police, hundreds of white nationalists gathered around the Lee statue, chanting phrases like “You will not replace us,” and “Jew will not replace us.”
This is the Virginia statute on unlawful assembly #cvilleaug12 pic.twitter.com/dyqdEN7k71
— VA State Police (@VSPPIO) August 12, 2017
Arrests are being made following declaration of unlawful assembly at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville. #cvilleaug12 pic.twitter.com/6XAn1hYLAS
— VA State Police (@VSPPIO) August 12, 2017
Protestors at rally in Emancipation Park charge at VSP troopers. #cvilleaug12 pic.twitter.com/GwheDCi3hL
— VA State Police (@VSPPIO) August 12, 2017
Governor McAuliffe has declared a state of emergency to aid state response to violence at Alt-Right rally in Charlottesville
— Terry McAuliffe (@GovernorVA) August 12, 2017