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Klan slammed at Charlottesville, VA, Lee statue protest

The North Carolina Ku Klux Klan members only got about a half hour to protest since police feared for the racists’ safety due to the large crowd of counterprotesters. The latter pelted the Klan members with mini water bottles. Later on, police unleashed tear gas and made arrests. Photos by John Penley

Former East Village activist John Penley was in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past Sunday covering the Ku Klux Klan protest over that city’s plan to tear down an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s top general in the Civil War.

A contingent of about 50 North Carolina Klan members was met by a far larger group of hundreds of counterprotesters. The latter, at first, kept the Klan from even getting to their rally point. Then, once the white supremacists finally commenced their demonstration, police warned them after only a half hour that there were too many counterprotesters and ordered them to call it off. But it was only after the Klan managed to leave that things broke loose and tear gas was fired.

“They tear-gassed everyone,” Penley said.

Twenty-three counterprotesters were arrested, four on felony charges.

The anti-Klan group included Black Lives Matter protesters, Vietnam Veterans Against The War and other concerned citizens.

The activist, who now lives in his native North Carolina, said it was Richard Spencer and his alt-right cohort who made Charlottesville a lightning rod for racists after leading a torch-lit protest there in May in opposition to the Lee monument’s removal. Spencer intends to return there for another protest on Aug. 12, and Penley plans to cover that one, too.

“He’s the same as the Klan,” Penley said of Spencer, “but more sophisticated.”

Penley said that, this time, a fair number of the Klan’s signs were not targeting blacks as much as Jews, homosexuals and “race mixers.”

“I think they’re trying to get more people,” he said of the supremacists’ desire to increase their ranks.

A Robert E. Lee statue defender sporting a Confederate flag and hat and jumbo knife on his belt faces off with Black Lives Matter activists.

Penley was interviewed during the dueling protests by RT TV news, which, he proudly noted, identified him in a caption as a journalist for “The Village [sic] Newspaper,” a misprint of The Villager.

“Since Trump has been elected, on all levels…they’re trying to pull back the clock on white supremacy and institutional racism,” he told the Russian outlet. “The white people that voted for Trump want that stuff to come back. They feel threatened.”

 

                                                                                                              — Lincoln Anderson

Dancing to the beat of different drummers: Black Lives Matters activists, Jesus freaks and a man sporting a loincloth with half his head shaved all brushed shoulders at the chaotic rally.
Police arrest a counterprotester after the Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville because she was wearing a mask. But she said she had it on to protect herself from the police’s tear gas. On the other hand, according to the photographer, Klan members who were wearing masks were given the chance to take them off without being arrested by police.
Amanda Barker, whose husband is the imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights of North Carolina, had a lot to say to the media.
The Klan was outnumbered by counterprotesters.
Anti-hood demonstrators in the ’hood.