Washington, DC, will be center stage next weekend as Unite the Right plans to mark the one-year- anniversary of the Charlottesville, Virginia, riot that led to one woman’s death and months of acrimony over the violence that broke out after a protest over the removal of a Confederate statue from a local park.
Counter-protesters, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa, plan to demonstrate on the same weekend.
Jason Kessler, one of the Unite the Right organizers, had applied for a permit in the same park in Charlottesville but was denied by the city, According to NBC, the National Park Service has approved a permit for the group to protest on Aug. 12 at Lafayette Park across from the White House.
For now, Black Lives Matter and others said they will be assembling blocks away at Freedom Plaza for their counter protest.
USA Today reported:
When white nationalist groups clashed with left-wing counterprotesters last August in Charlottesville, Virginia, one woman died and several more people were injured.
This August, similarly opposed groups will converge on Washington, DC.
Far-left activists, including anarchists, anti-fascists (known commonly as Antifa) and Black Lives Matter groups are planning a major counterdemonstration on Aug. 12 that will coincide with “Unite the Right 2,” a “white civil rights” rally in Lafayette Square marking one year since the events in Charlottesville.
“All of their rallies are resistance to our progress,” Makia Green, an organizer with Black Lives Matter D.C., said in the USA Today report. “They are not simply debates.”
”White supremacist rallies have left a trail of blood in D.C.,” Green said.
In a June report in the Washington Post, Kessler said in an email interview that he chose D.C. “because he wants Trump and elected officials to know about ‘the civil rights abuse by the Charlottesville government that led to the violence at last year’s rally.’”
“The rally is for white civil rights, Kessler said, because ‘white people are being denied the ability to organize in political organizations the way other groups do, free of harassment, to face the issues important to us,’” the Post reported.
USA Today reported that the counter-protesters would gather beginning on Aug. 10 “to prepare activists for confrontations with white nationalists and any possible violence.”
And, the USA Today report said, counter-protesters said they would not work with police.
“Police are here to protect white supremacists, to protect the murderers, to protect the fascists,” Black Lives Matter D.C.’s Green said.
Green said she expects 500 to 600 people, while Kessler said in his permit request that 400 people might attend.
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