Friday Night, 9:19 p.m.
I was sitting in my apartment, polishing off a pizza and working on an article about Federal Judge Glen Conrad’s decision to overrule the city of Charlottesville and keep the next day’s “Unite the Right” rally in Emancipation Park. As I was combing through court documents, I received a text from The Cavalier Daily‘s managing editor.
“Come to Rotunda. On the side with Jefferson statue.”
I immediately slipped on my off-brand Birkenstocks — a footwear choice I would later regret — grabbed my camera, and hopped in my car. I drove as close to the Rotunda — a building designed by Thomas Jefferson that serves as the campus’s iconic centerpiece — as I could get.
When I arrived, my co-editor was at the top of the Rotunda’s steps with two other reporters. One of them introduced himself to me and said he was from BBC Brasil.
That was the moment I realized Saturday’s rally was a far bigger deal than I had anticipated.
We decided to follow a group of people who were holding unlit tiki torches. Many of them were wearing white shirts and khakis, which seemed to be the unofficial dress code for the alt-right. We ended up at a field next to U.Va.’s tennis courts, where hundreds of people holding tiki torches were gathered in a line, ready to march. The crowd was comprised entirely of white men and women of all ages, and I even saw a few children that looked to be as young as 12. What was most striking to me was the averageness of their appearance — there was nothing that set them apart from the non-white supremacists in the community. I immediately grabbed my iPhone and began to Facebook Live everything I was seeing.
The protesters lit their tiki torches. Then, the march began.
I walked and ran right alongside these people, continuing to live-stream while also attempting to take photos and process my surroundings so I’d be able to help write an article about this later. Chants of “You will not replace us!” thundered across campus and roared in my ears.
There were plenty of journalists in attendance from all over the country and the world, but this is where being a student journalist at U.Va. created a different experience for me. This march was taking place at a place I felt personally connected to. Their footsteps matched the same path I had taken to walk home nearly every day for two years. In the same place as our famous line for the dumpling truck, they had formed a line of their own. They marched past the same spot on the Lawn where my friends and I had relaxed on a unseasonably warm Friday last spring and up the same stairs of the Rotunda where I had posed for pictures before attending a formal in February. I stood at the top of the steps, looking out at a view I had seen dozens of times before, except this time, it was filled with the glow of torches, the sounds of angry chants, and people who disliked me just because my skin color is a darker shade than theirs.
Once the march reached the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the Rotunda’s north side, things got out of hand when a fight ensued between the alt-right protesters and counter-protesters — with pepper spray and tiki torches as the weapons of choice — and the rally was broken up by police. I went to speak with a group of U.Va. students who were holding a banner that read “VA Students Against White Supremacy” and were chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
“This is not something that we ever thought we would see in our lifetime,” one student told me. “It’s wild.”
“This is not Charlottesville,” another student said. “This is not our country. This is not our town. This is not us. And our country needs to know that.”
I left to head back to our newspaper’s office with my managing editor and another Cavalier Daily writer.
Saturday, 11:40 a.m.
My co-editors and I arrived to the Downtown Mall. The first thing I noticed was a group of police officers standing in two lines, side-by-side in riot gear. Our editor-in-chief had texted our group chat to tell us that a state of emergency had been declared, although the rally wasn’t slated to actually begin for another 20 minutes.
My news editor and I ran up the street to Emancipation Park. Like the night before, I immediately began to live-stream the scene on Facebook. The protesters and counter-protesters were yelling unintelligible words at each other. The protesters waved Confederate flags and Nazi flags while the counter-protesters held signs, some of which included quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about spreading love instead of hate and others which called Jason Kessler, the rally’s organizer, a “racist sewer.” The counter-protesters were adults of all ages and races, with some choosing to take a more passive approach to the protests by simply holding their signs while others actively engaged with the alt-right verbally and physically. A parked Charlottesville Police Car was covered in pink paint. Chemicals filled the air. A man was using a water jug to flush the chemicals out of another man’s eye.
A group of white supremacists tossed a smoking stick towards a group of counter-protesters, and the counter-protesters picked it up and threw it back. A man set a Confederate flag on fire. I coughed and coughed, gasping for fresh air but only having more chemicals sucked into my throat. At the time, it was unclear what I was inhaling, but I later learned it was most likely pepper spray.
Despite the anarchy, I took as many photographs as I could — of signs, of people, of destroyed property, of the cloud of chemicals hanging in the air. I wanted pictures that would make people miles away experience what was happening directly in front of me.
Once the rally was declared an unlawful assembly and everyone was ordered to leave the area, my Cavalier Daily colleagues and I headed to McIntire Park — the park where the city wanted to move the demonstration — to see if we could locate the “alt-right” protesters who had dispersed.
There was a sizable amount of protesters at McIntire Park, but no police presence. Richard Spencer, a popular figure in the alt-right movement, addressed the crowd, condemning the actions of the police who had forced them from Emancipation Park. We used this time to tweet updates and get our bearings. Despite a much calmer atmosphere, I still felt uneasy. A photographer tried to take pictures of some of the protesters.
“Put that camera down or I will shove it up your ass,” a protester yelled at him.
Saturday, 1:47 p.m.
“Car just slammed into multiple protesters,” a text from our EIC said.
My news editor and I immediately jumped into my car and drove back downtown. When we arrived, we saw police officers and ambulances on the scene. I snapped a picture of paramedics putting a man on a gurney and into an ambulance.
The atmosphere was solemn and tense. We were told that the injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening. I was placed on a call with CBS so they could interview me on their show about the scene, but I still worked to take photos and mental notes.
Around 2:45 p.m., my news editor and I prepared to leave downtown. All of the victims who needed medical attention had been taken to the hospital. Things had calmed. No one was protesting any longer. The Virginia State Police updated us with everything they knew at the time. Everyone was attempting to process what had happened.
Over the next several hours, we continued to report although we had left the scene. We learned that a woman had been killed in the crash. We learned that police had located the attacker and had arrested him. We learned that a Virginia State Police helicopter had crashed, leaving both people inside of it dead.
—
We received many “thank-yous” from students and student groups for our coverage. U.Va. students may not follow local media outlets on social media, but many of them do follow us and The Cavalier Daily, and we provided them — and many others across the country — with a first-hand look at the events unfolding in our college town.
This was the most difficult story I’ve had to cover to date. It is still taking me time to process everything I witnessed Friday night and Saturday — I vomited in my sink when I saw the video of the car ramming into the counter-protesters, and I cried while reporting at Heather Heyer’s impromptu vigil on Sunday evening.
Despite the challenges I faced during the rally and the ones I’m still facing now that it’s over, I have no regrets about attending. This white supremacy movement is not going to disappear — if anything, it’s growing larger, as protests are planned in San Francisco and at U.C. Berkeley and the University of Florida. As students and citizens, it is important to expose the hatred that exists in this country and face these people without fear. Intimidation will only embolden them. They did not intimidate me. Don’t let them intimidate you.