City Council   8/21/2017

And the rest of us.

The New York Times.

you

This is just how I proposed.

OK.

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of Charlottesville City Council.

Good to see so many folks here.

We will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mr. Fenwick?

Here.

Mr. Bellamy?

Here.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

OK, we typically begin our meetings with awards and recognitions, then go to announcements.

We are each going to do, there will be announcements tonight as we go in a round robin.

I'd like to begin the whole meeting tonight with a resolution by council regarding August 12th.

and we'll end with a moment of silence.

Whereas the Charlottesville community became the target of hateful white supremacist groups on August 12th, 2017.

So we're gonna...

So what I'm gonna have to do now, what I'm gonna have to do now is, I usually do these rules before we get to the matters of the public.

We'd like to have this meeting tonight.

And here's the rules.

Improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council may not use this platform to A.

Campaign for public office, B.

Promote private business ventures, C. Use profanity or vulgar language or gestures, D. Threaten violence toward council, city staff or members of the public,

E. Engage in behavior that intimidates others.

F. Interrupt other speakers or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

Any speaker who violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If their marks or conduct persists, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant in arms to escort the individual from the meeting room.

The mayor may also order the expulsion of any person for a serious violation of these rules, disruptive behavior, or any

words or action that incite violence or disorder subject to appeal to city council.

Any person so expelled shall not be readmitted for the remainder of the meeting from which expelled.

So I'm going to introduce everybody here to our, to officers Curtis and

Sprouse.

Sorry, my eyesight's going.

I also, this will be my first meeting using my reading glasses.

I would, so we are going to have to enforce these rules tonight to get through this meeting.

There's a tremendous amount of emotion here.

This community has been through a horrible amount, but we'd like to get through it.

We've got a lot of people want to speak their mind.

We have some important public business tonight, but these gentlemen are public servants and they

We don't want them to make your acquaintance, but they will have to under our rules.

So the way that this works is if you're called to order for any disruption, you're not allowed to speak without the recognition of the chair of the meeting.

This is the way that we get through this civilly and we hear from folks and we get through our business.

There's no questions from the floor.

Ma'am, I'll have to call you to order and you've been here and you know the way the City Council runs.

You're going to have to be expelled and I don't want to do that, Ms. Hudson, because we want you to be here.

And the same thing will go through with folks speaking up here if there's a lot of disruption when somebody's up here for their three minutes and they end up having to sit up here for six or seven minutes or we have to

Call a pause to the meeting.

That's not good for anybody.

So we're going to get through this with civility and the rules that we have.

And these are the gentlemen who are sergeant at arms.

So that's the rules that I'm going to have to use to run the meeting.

So what I would like to ask for everybody is what's worked well for us in the past is when you, there's a lot of emotion here.

So if you really agree with what somebody's saying, everybody on camera will see you.

If you put your,

Thumbs in the air, you do a sign like that.

If you really disagree with what somebody's saying, you can do thumbs down or whatever else you want to do.

I'm just saying this is... Alright, so that's... And I have to call you to order, so if there's... And I... Trust me, this is no fun for...

Which I'd really like to, alright so we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to suspend the meeting.

Anybody who's called to order, and there's eyes and ears right here with our Sergeant at Arms, my colleagues, if there's any hesitation about supporting this, please, okay, that's one, and you're gonna be removed from the meeting, okay?

That's just what we have to do to get through this.

There will be lots, we are doing a town hall meeting on Thursday night, where there will be tremendous opportunities to vent fully and to be heard, it'll be mediated, we're doing it with a skilled, with a community relations service,

the federal government it will be so that you're okay and that's just what we had to do so any further violations or rules we will have to have people okay so that's one so you're and this is okay so you've been called to order and Ms. Walker even called to order and I'm just gonna we're gonna have to start removing folks

I'm going to finish reading the resolution of the people who perished here.

Whereas the Charlottesville community became the target of hateful white supremacist groups on August 12, 2017, and whereas many Charlottesville residents, including Ms. Heather Heyer,

turned out to rebuke that ideology by exercising their peaceful rights of free speech and free assembly.

And whereas Ms. Heyer was struck down by a vicious vehicular attack at the corner of Fourth and Water Street, along with 19 other peaceful demonstrators, and whereas Ms. Heyer tragically died from her wounds that day, and whereas Virginia State Police Lieutenant H.J.

Cullen and Trooper Pilot Burke M.M.

Bates were working with the Charlottesville Police and their brothers and sisters and the Virginia State Police

to help ensure the safety of everyone in the city on August 12, 2017.

And whereas...

I'm gonna have to call whoever did that to order.

Okay.

And whereas Lieutenant Cullen and Trooper Pilot Burke were instrumental in providing air support from their helicopter for the police on the ground during and after the rally at Emancipation Park, and whereas their aircraft crashed in Albemarle County later in the day,

Killing both troopers in the line of duty as they bravely served our community.

Therefore, be it resolved on behalf of the City of Charlottesville and all of our citizens, the Charlottesville City Council sends our deepest condolences to families and friends of Ms. Heyer, Lt. Cullen, and Trooper Pilot Bates.

Thank you.

We all have a range of them.

Let's begin with announcements of routine business, and let's move on to our statements.

City Council announcement, August 21st, this is a scam alert.

The Charlottesville Fire Department has received reports of citizens receiving phone calls from people collecting donations for the fire department in wake of events on August 12th, 2017.

No city department will ever seek such donations.

If you wish to contribute to a fund in response to 8-12-17,

please visit www.cacfonline.org.

Cacfonline.org.

Upcoming council meetings.

The first city council meeting in September will be held on Tuesday, September 5th at 7 p.m. due to the Labor Day holiday at City Hall in the council chambers.

Holiday Closing for Labor Day City offices will be closed on Monday, September 4, 2017 in observance of Labor Day.

Our offices will reopen on Tuesday, September 5, 2017.

The Charlottesville Area Transit Service, CAT, will operate on a normal schedule.

Trash and recycling will not be collected on Labor Day.

These services will resume on the next working day and continue a day behind through the rest of the week, including Saturday.

That's my team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge and also express our sincere condolences once again to Sister Heather as well as the two police officers who lost their lives

I have a couple of brief announcements that I'd like to read.

The first one being the HEAL Charlottesville Fund.

In recent months, the Charlottesville community has experienced a series of terrorist acts in intimidation by white supremacists intended to instill fear and send a message of hatred and bigotry.

These acts have deeply hurt, shocked, and frightened many residents.

The Community Foundation has established the HEAL Charlottesville Fund to support both immediate needs and longer term reconciliation efforts.

Depending on the level of resources available, the fund will support some or all of the opportunities below.

Immediate assistance in stabilization, acknowledgement, community dialogue and reconciliation, restoration and healing, fund leadership and decision making, as well as communications.

For more information and to donate to the HEAL Charlottesville Fund,

Excuse me, to the Hill Charlottesville Fund.

Please go to CACFonline.org.

Before I go to my next announcements, I think it's also important for everyone to understand what we went through last week, as well as in the days thereafter was very serious.

Please, please, please look to looking to get mental health help in some capacity.

There's nothing wrong with talking to someone about your issues, and I think we've all been through something

It's very traumatic and we need to take that very seriously.

So please reach out to local psychiatrists as well as psychologists.

Take care of your mental health because you can't help the community if you don't take care of yourself and your mental first.

Moving forward, I have a couple of other announcements.

On a happier note, school starts back on Wednesday, so we want to make sure that we welcome all of our young people back to school.

For anyone who is interested, as has been our tradition,

We are looking to have at least 50 brothers of different hues, persuasions, races, creeds, religions, or whatever, to meet and greet our young people at Beaufort Middle School Wednesday at 8 a.m.

So again, as we've been doing in years past, when the kids come up, we line up in a line, we shake everybody's hands, encourage them to get their year started,

and I think right now we really could use all of the people that we can get so male or female if you want to join us that'll be we'll be at Beaufort Middle School Wednesday morning 8 a.m. so please come out and we'll be shaking hands and giving high fives.

There's a tradition that a former city councilwoman started in other communities and she would do this the beginning of every school year and we want to continue to keep it going and what she would hand out donuts and juices

to all of the kids in the different public housing sites.

So we're asking if anybody would like to help us participate in that.

We're going to do it again.

We're going to start on Wednesday, August 30, if you can.

Meet me at West Haven at 7 AM.

Just bring donuts, bring juice, bring fruit.

And we'll be handing them out to all the kids as they get on the buses.

And then we'll be following that up on the following Wednesday, which will be September 6,

at South First Street where we'll also be handing them donuts, juices, and fruit.

So again, we have three events if you want to help out.

The first one being back to school greetings at Beaufort Middle School.

That's at 8 a.m. this Wednesday.

The next one being on, excuse me, August 30th will be at West Haven at 7 a.m. Before the kids get on the bus, we'll be handing them donuts and juices.

And then the following on Wednesday, September 6th at South First Street, we'll be handing the kids donuts and juices before

They get on the bus and with that being said, I'll reserve the rest of my comments until later on in the evening.

I just do want to say that we have heard a lot of the comments from a lot of people about not only what transpired on the 12th, but just how things have been going.

Trust and believe it will be addressed.

There will also be a resolution that will be discussed tonight about the removal of the Jackson statue.

But we will get into that during other business.

But please believe that will also be addressed.

And I'm glad that my colleagues are now on the right side of that fight and we're moving forward.

I have a proclamation for Women's Equality Day.

We read this every year.

It is a very long proclamation and I'm not going to read it aloud all this year as I have in other years because this is going to be a long meeting.

We want to get to business.

This is a proclamation declaring Women's Equality Day, whereas this year is the 97th anniversary of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote in 1920, and whereas in 1848, 169 years ago in Seneca Falls, the need was recognized and proclaimed, but after great effort, there is still no reliable protection in the U.S. Constitution for women against sex discrimination in general.

Whereas in past years, laws and policies in the Commonwealth of Virginia have unjustly discriminated against girls and women in general, and against particular classes of women, such as in matters of reproductive rights, sexual assault, marital property, and sexual harassment.

And although some laws and policies have been somewhat eased, such improvements can be, have been, and are being reversed.

and whereas in some institutional policies, whether overtly discriminatory or factually, facially neutral, in public, voluntary and private institutions still have inequitable effects on women.

Policies such as those dealing with insurance, pensions, family medical leave from employment, job promotions, occupational choice, recreation opportunities and access to medical care, including reproductive and abortion services and stereotypes still exist which limit women's roles and activities.

Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia does hereby proclaim August 26, 2017 as Women's Equality Day in remembrance of all those women and men who have worked to develop a more equitable community which acknowledges both the real similarities and the important differences between men and women with liberty and justice for all.

And we urge all citizens on August 26 and thereafter to treat all distinctions and classifications according to gender as initially suspect

to require that the burden of justification for any distinction according to gender be borne by those who wish to discriminate and to examine all facially neutral criteria for gender discrimination.

So if there is more, it will be on our website, but I believe that we have Charlotte Gibson and Abby Guskind here to accept on behalf of Charlottesville's National Organization of Women.

There they are.

On behalf of Charlottesville National Organization for Women,

Mayor Baum used to be the president of Virginia Now.

We'd like to thank you all.

You first passed one of these proclamations in 1976.

So you have a long history of supporting that and trying not to discriminate.

And so we thank you for recognizing the historic significance of women getting the vote and the importance of going forward and continuing this work.

and also nationally as well as in our own community.

We will be celebrating at the Northside Library on Thursday at 6.30 and everyone is welcome.

We're showing a short movie.

We will have food and have a good time.

So I am pleased to say something positive and thank the kindness of many people in this community.

It took 70 years for women to get the vote.

And in the end, there are a lot of women, a lot of men work towards that.

And male legislators passed it.

And next, I hope that we will put sex discrimination in our US Constitution so the courts can consider it at the highest level of scrutiny like we do for race.

Thank you.

Will you find me next to the woman?

My next announcement actually follows up on what Councillor Bellamy talked about, the fact that our community has been traumatized and many people are really finding it hard to sort of not jump every time they see a car, not scrutinize people on the street, trying to feel safe in their community.

Counseling isn't the only way to do that, but it is one thing that can help us.

The Community Mental Health and Wellness Coalition has offered to provide brief crisis intervention assistance on Thursday and to connect people to available resources, including volunteer pro bono counselors through their Help Happens Here website and information system.

I've got several different things here, so I'm reading from all of them.

It's www.helphappenshere.org.

There's also an information and referral line.

It's 434-227-0641.

And residents can call after hours and leave a message that will be returned within one business day.

But it's open and live people will answer from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

All calls are confidential and can be anonymous if you prefer not to identify yourself.

There's also the Jefferson Madison Regional Library has partnered with Resilient Charlottesville to offer counseling in response to the events of August 12th.

You can drop by Central Library during the following times to speak with a professional counselor.

August 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th from 9 a.m. on tomorrow it ends at 9 p.m. on the 23rd at 9 p.m.

August 24th ends at 6pm, August 25th ends at 5pm, and August 26th ends at 3pm.

There's also a tele-mental health for people of color, specifically Namira Islam from the Muslim Anti-Racist Collaborative has offered this.

The phone number is 248-974-9623.

So those are all available, and I hope that those will be available on our website as well.

But you can also, in the meantime, contact the Women's Initiative, which has gotten me all this information, at thewomensinitiative.org, and they have it on their website.

We also have a police investigation tip line and email.

We're encouraging people to email cvillerallyatcharlottesville.org, or call 434-970-8255.

3280 with any information about incidents from August 11th or 12th or any time around that time that they feel need investigation.

There are a lot of investigations ongoing and we will be soon coming out with information about that.

Thank you.

Again, just to begin with something that would be a hopeful note and it involves our children.

Alex Zahn's Children's All People Matter Rally's mission is to connect people, particularly children, and to respect individual differences and expressions while improving the lives of everyone.

Mr. Alex Zahn, children's advocate and creator of My Help List, is coordinating the rally for children to share their thoughts, fears, and ideas about moving forward as a result of August 12th.

That's going to be Saturday, August 26th at 1 o'clock

at the Washington Park that's on 1001 Preston Avenue.

The highlights will include our children voices, positive messages towards unity, drum call brother wit, on the move exercise with Myra Anderson, iDance Ministry, a tribute to the Heather Heyer legacy, and a special feature with children creating, designing, and displaying their unity signs.

There will be a Be Still contest with handouts, prizes, and more.

For more information, you can contact Mr. Alex Zahn, 434-202-0773, and his email is alexzahn, all one word, all lowercase, at i-c.net.

The next meeting announcement that I have is about the Route 29 hydraulic small air plan concepts.

They're going to be presented into the public on August 23rd, that's this Wednesday.

It's going to be at the Charlottesville High School and it'll be an update about the hydraulic panels work and they're seeking public input.

So the Route 29 Solutions Hydraulic Planning Advisory Panel with the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization will hold a public meeting to provide the community with an update and to get feedback.

The 12-member panel began working on this process in March, and there are draft concepts for public review and comment.

It'll be held at 6 o'clock on August 23rd at Charlottesville High School.

Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center.

The consulting team is Kenley Horan Associates and that's the same group that has been working on the Belmont Bridge and the Michael Baker International will provide an overview of the current draft.

The reason why the small area plan is really important is because we've discovered that in this area which is around Hillsdale Drive and Hillsdale Drive is being built right now but it's kind of a

Old Shopping Center, Seminole Square.

There's 100 acres of parking lot and it's really not being used well.

A lot of those stores are empty.

And so this is a plan to figure out a way to start redeveloping that site so that it could be more housing, more jobs, more access to more housing.

So these are important and we're going to be getting some idea of the build out numbers so we know how much housing is going to be available to us and then we can determine how much can be affordable.

Okay, thank you.

One other announcement before we get to statements.

Community Recovery Town Hall.

On Thursday, August 24th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center at 1400 Melbourne Road, the City of Charlottesville will be partnering with the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice to begin a road to recovery for our community.

Representatives from CRS will work closely with a working group of area residents

to develop a vision, develop a robust community engagement plan and create recommendations for an action plan.

The working group will be comprised of people from all walks of life in our community and will begin meeting in the next couple weeks.

In addition to the formal meetings with the CRS,

and CRS has worked with, its mission is to work with cities that have dealt with racial and ethnic strife and civic disorder and they worked in Ferguson and Baltimore among others.

They've been around since the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

It was created in 1964.

The city will be creating ongoing opportunities for our community to speak with city officials, ask questions, make new connections and work through this experience in a wide variety of ways.

As these are scheduled, they will be announced to the public.

Okay, now we're ready for our statements in our round robin.

And Page, if you could, Mr. Rice, if you could keep five minutes for everybody.

So up to five minutes for these statements from Councillors.

Go first.

Go first.

Mr. Fenwick.

Because this is not going to take five minutes.

Heather Heyer, Lt. J. Cullen,

Trooper Pilot Burke Bates, DeAndre Harris.

Those three people lost their lives and DeAndre is seriously injured.

There are 21 others who are injured as well.

I will try to list those as we get information from the hospital and that will be on SeavilleCitizen.com.

I wanted to write something inspirational tonight.

We're gonna suspend, guys, guys, everyone, the right, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.

We're gonna have to suspend the meeting.

The right place for this is gonna be Thursday night.

This is gonna be Thursday night.

I'm gonna have to call you to order.

I'm going to start expelling anybody.

Ma'am, you've been called to order, called to order, called to order, and I'm going to ask the officers to identify anybody who speaks out without being recognized.

You have one chance, then you have to be called to order, then you'll be removed.

Folks will do this.

We don't want to do this.

We want to get through the meeting.

We have 20 spots for Matters by Public.

We also have a whole open-ended Matters by Public after the meeting.

We also have a town hall meeting on Thursday.

What's the alternative?

For everybody just to shout and scream?

But that's not the rules.

We don't do that just from the floor.

Well, you understand you all can't be seen on camera and that the council wants these rules to be maintained.

This is not the way to go about it.

So, okay, so ma'am, you're going to have, sir, you've been called to order, so you'll have to be removed.

And we're just going to have to do this.

We're going to suspend the meeting.

Hey!

Hey!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Lisa!

Fuck you!

I would like to be able to talk.

I would like to let you be heard.

I have an idea.

Can I share it with you?

Hey you!

Hey you!

Hey you!

We have about two to three hundred people here so we have to give everybody at least a minute I don't care where you are everybody's gonna get to talk we're not talking all we're doing is listening okay

All of the council has come back.

Because we have nearly 300 people here, we have to go for one minute so that everybody can have the opportunity to speak, okay?

So please, line up if you will, and again, we cannot go over one minute because everyone has to have the opportunity to talk, okay?

Can we hear that?

Thank you.

My name is Louisa.

I'm a resident of the city.

I watched the police not do their job all Saturday.

They watched us all get hurt and terrorized.

I want to tell you guys that you need to push to have Kessler, Spencer, and all of the other leaders of the alt-right and the police investigated.

Next person, please.

Hold on, hold on, I'm going to set your timer.

First off, for the three people that was just taken out of here, it was just a court case in general district court where Kessler had a disorderly conduct and it was thrown out.

So, that's freedom of speech.

How much are you going to wear on your hands?

How much?

Because you invited those Nazis here because you let them show off here.

So you made them feel welcome, and they felt welcome enough to come here and take somebody's child.

They going to come back.

20 seconds.

You got 20 seconds left.

You done?

You finished?

Hold on, Nicole.

Let me start your time.

Just one minute.

And if those were two black girls up there, you would have watched those police drag them two black girls footballs down.

So when y'all are talking about governing, you all just started this meeting doing everything wrong.

Why did you think that you could walk in here and do a business as usual after what happened on the 12th?

and why when you are repeatedly told if you're feeling the pulse of the city, if Mike is such a, I mean he's disconnected from the community, if we are asking that someone else speak besides him, then you all need to handle that.

Thank you

My name is Gail Weatherill, I'm a 35 year resident of Charlottesville and I came here tonight to ask for an independent citizen inquiry into the decisions that were made by the leaders of law enforcement for

the officers on August 12th.

I'd like to know why Fridays After Five or the Dogwood Festival has tighter security.

On August 12th, I went to McIntire Park to see who these people were.

They were angry.

They told me, they said, I'll cut you, bitch.

I swear to God, I will.

And you know what?

There was not a single law enforcement officer in sight.

Not a patrol car.

Nothing.

If something had happened to me, how would you explain to my children

That's how that happened.

All right, guys, so we can let Ms. Parker go.

My name is Ms. Parker.

My name is Rosa Parks.

Ms.

Parks.

We have a town across swamps.

We even came through the Underground Railroad.

We came over here being slaves.

That time is up, Mike.

Because you are fake.

You was in our church.

You and the governor praising y'all's police officers like they was doing something.

July 8th, they did more shit than they did on Saturday.

I was hit with a tear gas grenade for no reason.

Getting pushed across the street with your fat ass police.

So therefore, I have a fucking problem.

And you got one fucking cop?

Hold on, hold on, hold on, let her talk, let her talk.

One more second.

Let her talk.

Bet your ass had none to cancel the motherfucking kids from school back to school because your fucking officers was at another goddamn funeral.

Y'all should have had these fucking kids.

Last time I was here, I handed you 21 pages of threats, including the types of terroristic threats that we saw.

I told you then that we did the work because you could not.

Because you were too incompetent to do that work.

Well, we continue to do that work.

You want to call yourselves the capital of the resistance?

The resistance was the medics who saved lives!

The Resistance are the citizens who are identifying the perpetrators of hate crimes.

The Resistance is the clergy who stood there non-violently and the community who came to their defense when the Nazis were unmoved by pleas of non-violence.

You want to call yourselves the capital of the Resistance.

Charlottesville is not the capital of the Resistance.

All right, y'all, so will you let Brother Tracy talk?

I'm outraged.

I'm outraged because I sat there and I watched police just stand by while you let citizens get attacked.

You let citizens get murdered.

That girl, I knew that girl.

You let her get murdered.

There was nobody blocking off the streets or anything.

No cop there in sight.

If you guys can't do your job and protect these people, because this is my extended family right here.

If you can't do it, I'm going to get somebody together and we're going to do it.

And if they come back, they will not be walking out.

I guarantee it.

I guarantee it.

Freedom of speech, sir.

Five years ago, we had a talk about freedom of speech.

You said that I couldn't espouse my views because it was a family gathering.

But neo-Nazis can come.

Yes, yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

And the only thing I'm saying is, I'm comparing it to that time because I was not allowed to say what I was going to say.

What I was going to say was, we need healing, all right?

Thank you.

KKK and neo-Nazis can come here and say whatever they want, but a citizen from here can't.

That's ridiculous.

Thank you, brother, Tracy.

Thank you, brother.

Round of applause, mixed up.

How y'all doing?

I hope not so good, for real, for real.

We want you out.

And you are not coming back.

For now, whatever city council members that want to sit in this chair, we own you.

Don't forget that.

We are y'all bosses.

You don't go by any views that we have.

You got Prospect, Garrett, First Street, all of them.

Let me tell y'all something.

Let me tell y'all something.

Saturday night when all of that happened, the buses stopped running at 9 o'clock.

Did anybody know that?

So you got people that's working out there all through the nights and they gotta catch the bus at 1145.

Nobody, they walking by themselves unprotected.

Do y'all care?

Do you really care?

I think not.

Do you care about anybody that got something to say?

You ain't even listening, you just looking at me.

Looking at me dumbfounded, like when you are out of here, I hope it represents to every other council member that we are here.

We ain't going nowhere now.

Mr. Gallas, Lord forgive me for what I'm about to do.

Tonight I am filled with righteous indignation.

I am morally outraged.

This shit has got to stop.

And it's got to stop now.

Somebody's got to be held accountable, somebody's got to be answerable for this weekend.

Teresa Sullivan's got to answer why she let those clowns

Why she ever let those girls march on UVA and put the students and the buildings and the lawn in jeopardy like she did.

Chief Thomas has the answer why there was no barricade between the protesters and the Nazis.

Why they were ever able to occupy that park at 830 and 9 o'clock when their permit called for 12 to 5.

Somebody's got an answer to this.

I might stop short of saying that the blood of those three lives, I don't give a damn about that many of them.

Tom, there you go.

Somebody's got to be held accountable for not only the blood of those three lives, but for every injury that happened this past weekend.

And I won't be damned if I see another one of my brothers or sisters get beaten or die.

Something is going to happen, as Malcolm said, by any means necessary.

These people are tried and they're fed up with this foolishness.

and dammit if you all decide to let them come back ever again it is on your heads and on your heads whatever happens.

Be it to us or be it to them.

I just hope that there's some room left and there's some dirt left here in Charlottesville because as the young folks say it's going down for real.

And I'm calling on each and every one of you all

to stand up tonight.

Stand up tonight.

Let not only the counselors know, let Albemarle County know.

Let your neighbors know.

Let every neighborhood in town know.

Brother Don, let him go.

Please forgive me.

I do not talk like that.

I'm sorry.

I promise you I'm sorry.

But I can't cry anymore.

I can't be the peacemaker anymore.

It's time for a change.

And we as black people and we as people of color and all those who stand with us, we've got to stop praying to God that he'll send us someone.

We've got to realize that we are that someone.

If we want a change in this city, we have got to be the change.

God bless you.

Thank you.

I ain't even got a lot to say.

All I'm going to say is that we warned y'all.

We warned y'all, and we told y'all.

We told y'all numerous times that this shit was going to happen.

And y'all did nothing.

Y'all had multiple opportunities to intervene, and you did not intervene one time.

We told y'all exactly what y'all needed to do, and y'all did nothing.

We told y'all that they were coming here to commit absolute destruction on people of color, black communities, and y'all did nothing.

Y'all did nothing at all.

And they absolutely succeeded.

They absolutely succeeded in terrorizing our communities.

Again, you did nothing.

We told you all this.

They came here to absolutely wreak havoc, and you did nothing.

There were several opportunities.

Again, every step of the way, every step of the way, months and months and months and months of time, y'all had chances to do something, and you did nothing at all.

And I'm disappointed in all of y'all, and I want all of y'all gone for that very reason.

Let me continue.

Let me continue.

So, it took Heather Dyne, dozens of people,

Dozens of people.

being sent to the hospital, dozens of people having to deal with mental trauma that they may never be able to shape.

All of this shit because y'all didn't want to listen to us.

And now y'all want to listen to us now, now y'all want the statues gone.

This is something that y'all want to do now.

Shit that y'all been sold for several months.

Do y'all see yourselves as heroes?

Do y'all see yourselves as our saviors for doing things that we told y'all to do for forever?

Now it's different because somebody died.

How many times did we tell you this shit was going to happen and you did nothing?

Y'all gonna do nothing like y'all been doing thus far?

Do our concerns not matter to you?

Do our lives not matter to you?

You can say something after you answer that question.

Go ahead.

Yes.

We tried really hard to get the rally out and a federal judge, a federal judge forced us to have the rally downtown.

I'm just going to say we did try.

So this is what I want to know.

What are y'all going to do when they come back?

Because they are coming back.

Because they've already said so.

What are y'all planning to do when they come back?

Because those statues are still there.

That's their beacon.

They coming back.

What are y'all going to do?

I want to know that.

That's in our business tonight.

If we had gotten to our statements, we were talking about it.

This is what we want.

This is what we want.

Mike Signer, Kathy Galvin, Al Thomas, gone.

Because we need leaders in this community who will protect us, who actually care about our lives.

Thank you.

My name is Johnny Knuckles.

It's not enough to change your mind and want the statues gone now.

White liberal intellectualism is complicity and it's bullshit.

Take the statues down tonight.

Challenge the Commonwealth of Virginia and the federal government.

Take them down.

I have a question.

If we take them down, will you charge us?

The statute describing the punishment for defacing a memorial State of Virginia code says if we don't plan to steal them, it is a class three misdemeanor.

Will you charge us with a class three misdemeanor to go outside right now and take down the Confederate soldier statue?

Answer!

Answer!

Can you answer?

You've got to take them.

Can you keep going?

Okay.

Alright, let's get this moment.

You want to get in line, sir?

Well, unfortunately, we're not doing things how we normally do them tonight.

This is an unusual meeting.

All right, we're not going to be able to continue.

The chief should be here to stand in this fire and not leave his sworn officers here to do that duty.

Brian Moran, who compared this to a hockey fight at one point, should be here to stand in this fire and not leave his sworn officers to stand in this and do his duty.

And one thing that the City Council could do to honor these people positively is to pass some sort of resolution

to honor the people in this community who stood up that day and to honor the people who came from outside of this community who protected our parks, who protected our citizens, who took blows, who stood up, who stood in the fire, who did the work that our officers could not do or would not do and I don't blame our sworn officers, I don't

Blame the people who were ordered not to do things because the leadership and the planning and the people who told them not to do that.

You knew that there were 1000 officers that were in that were here in town.

There were command post who were planning

for all of the things that were expected.

They knew what was coming.

They knew the violence that was here.

You could go to public Facebook posts and prepare for this rally.

You knew what was going on.

The leadership has a lot to answer for.

You all know what to look into.

Do it.

Be accountable.

That's your job.

Yes, sir.

Can we allow the next lady to speak?

On Thursday, July 6th at 4.49pm, I called the Charlottesville PD and I emailed the Charlottesville City Council.

To see that I saw that the Klan and then later Nazis were coming to our town and to report them as terrorists.

The response that I received was that the current interpretation of the Constitution allowed their freedom of speech despite their imminent threat to life and limb.

Now, and this continued for the next month and a half.

I asked if you would issue a permit to ISIS.

The response that I received in writing was yes.

Now, it does not flip past me that today is the day we're commemorating that women got the vote.

Now I'm a math teacher, but it doesn't take a math teacher to count to seven and see the four people that the Constitution didn't recognize when it was written.

If any other terrorist organization, domestic or international, applies for a rally in the city of Charlottesville, I ask you to do what the evolution of this country, which is

that when the law is wrong, we stand up to change it.

Please stand up against the wrong interpretation of the Constitution that for some reason is protecting Nazis and not your citizens.

Stand by your citizens first, please.

Thank you.

OK.

Like many people here, I stood some 30 feet from where Heather was killed in a terrorist attack.

I watched here for weeks while people came in and gave detailed evidence of specific threats that these organizations had developed.

In their chats, they discussed specifically running over protesters with cars.

Why is it that city council cannot recognize white terrorism for what it is, the form of terrorism that's killed more people in this country than any other form ever has or ever will?

Why did you not take it seriously?

Why was traffic diverted there?

Why was traffic diverted there?

Why did the police stand back and in the words of Cornel West have to rely on anti-fascist counter protesters to avoid being severely beaten and possibly killed?

Why were police present when DeAndre Harris was beat in a parking garage right across from the police station?

And what I would say is the reason people are here tonight doing this is not just because of this event, it's because for months

People have come here and you sit here and you don't listen.

You listen to your donors, you listen to the community you're around, but you're not listening to the entire Charlottesville community.

And I would just say, Mayor Signer, your political career is over.

Quit the political games.

We're not idiots.

We know that you dragged this city along for months to avoid responsibility on making a decision on the statute issue.

We're not idiots.

Quit the political games.

Your political career is over.

You can stand on the side of justice now.

Take down the statutes immediately.

Don't get away from public assistance.

If there's an injunction, you can settle it afterwards.

And it's deeper than that.

The statute is a symbol.

but the council needs to take action on implementing a new plan for public housing and redevelopment in the state.

It needs a full independent investigation of all the decision making that went into the police actions on August 12th and July 8th.

It needs a full investigation and public accountability from the Charlottesville Police Department on why they failed to investigate properly the disappearance of Sage Smith.

It needs a new effort to give the citizens of Charlottesville oversight and control of policing strategies, including when the Charlottesville Police Department advises weapons-grade equipment and its use of policies like stop and frisk.

That's just the beginning.

And if you're not going to do it, this body's not legitimate.

Thank you, brother.

Hold on, y'all.

Hold on, y'all.

I'm Rose Hill Parker now.

So what are y'all's notion or ideas?

Yeah.

Why torches were surrounding our church, surrounding them UVA students, burning some man's neck with a torch and now he had

What do y'all do at nighttime that y'all sleep so well?

Why are us citizens with mental health issues for the rest of my life?

Like he said, I wasn't that long.

I could have been killed because we was right there.

And not only did we see the shit, we seeing people's bodies flipping upside down, cars running back over them.

But do you have a proper mental health that's going to take care of all of these people in Charlottesville?

Because I had region 10 and I only had a goddamn council for one year.

So y'all talk about mental health?

What the fuck is mental health if you can't help the goddamn people with y'all strength in there?

And what are y'all gonna do with the people that's following us, trying to intimidate?

We get people followed.

We got people coming after us.

We know it's two white cars, two black with a yellow caravan, a burgundy car, a burgundy truck.

Thank you.

It is painful for me to be here tonight.

I know it's painful for everybody to be here tonight.

It's painful for the counselors to be here tonight.

What we saw last weekend was ugly.

It was ugliness coming to our town and showing its ugly face.

It was violence coming to our town, showing its violent face.

And it impacted a lot of you people in this room, a lot of people who are not in this room.

We need to fix that.

In order to do that, all of us in this room, I heard some true things that pained me to listen to, to hear about the city.

A lot of my life trying to make this place a better place and I know, believe it or not, these guys have put time into it too.

In the interest of community care, Steelers fan, if I have your keys, come find me after I speak.

You want to hand them to me?

Oh, you got it?

I am here to present a set of demands from Solidarity Seaville, a network of community defense racial justice activists across the city.

These demands are updated from demands that were presented to Charlottesville on July 8th.

You've had these demands, these are issues that racial justice activists and community members across the city have been working on, in some cases for years.

These are demands for you and because you should resign immediately.

These demands represent the agenda for the real leadership that this city needs urgently and deserves years ago.

These are the demands.

Number one, drop all charges against community hero Veronica Fitzhugh.

Number two, drop all charges against the 22 people arrested protesting the KKK on July 8th.

I don't have to die because I better be no charges for anyone tonight.

3.

Initiate immediate development of affordable housing for extremely low-income people and fulfill the positive vision of resident-directed redevelopment from the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents.

Number 4.

Apologize publicly for police negligence to the families of Sage Smith, say her name.

Sage!

Sage!

Sage Tinsley, say her name.

And Quinn Woodfolk, say her name.

Quinn Woodfolk!

Quinn Woodfolk!

Quinn Woodfolk!

Quinn Woodfolk!

Quinn Woodfolk!

Quinn Woodfolk!

and commit to an expansion of the investigations of FaZe's murder and Sage's disappearance.

Number five, cease the targeting of black families by social services.

Number six, end militarized police units like the Jefferson area drug enforcement and its successors.

Number seven, stop discriminatory stop and frisk.

Number eight, end money bail and release people being held without bond before their trial.

Number nine, remove all confederate monuments.

I see that fucking smirk on your goddamn face.

You ain't doing a motherfucking thing that's going in one ear and out the other.

I should know, I used to do that when I was a kid.

But I got smart.

What we need, you don't do.

So if you want us to take over, we will, because we sure the fuck don't need you.

You might as well put Mayor West in that motherfucking chair, because you don't do a goddamn thing.

Okay, that's a threat.

We have a...

I'm tellin' you how it is, bruh.

It seems pointless.

We do have kids watching.

All right.

All right.

All right.

Town Hall on Thursday night.

Alright.

Got you.

No.

No.

Can we continue?

I'm not sure.

Excuse me, hey, so we already know what he's coming up here to say, right?

And we already have heard it before, but there's a ton of people in line to have something real to say.

Mr. Hayden, I restarted your minute.

Mr. Signer, it seems to me we should change your name to Dr. Frankenstein because you've created a monster and the villagers are storming the castle now.

That's what's happening here.

You're going to need to take control of this meeting.

Mr. Bellamy, you have 15 seconds remaining.

Shut your motherfucking mouth.

You don't have to be like that.

Don't speak to her like that right now.

Colleagues, I would like to cancel this meeting.

Colleagues, Colleagues, Colleagues, Ms. Akers, Ms. Galvin, Mr. Bellamy, Ms. Fenwick, I would like to cancel this meeting.

I'm canceling this meeting.

We will come back.

Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night Thursday night

Show me how it works.

I'm sorry.

I understand that.

The police officers are going up top.

Let me just say this, let me just say this

What's going on, y'all?

Y'all just took them three women out of here, and they started me.

What the fuck y'all mean?

Hey!

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

What's the matter?

I think it's clear up here who's gone.

Who's been one of the major issues since he became mayor.

Mary Signer, if you're still anywhere in or near the building you just truly revealed your true colors.

It's hard to respect the office or the person when you conduct yourself in that manner.

The community is hurting and you need to hear what these people have to say.

So if you're anywhere nearby, you need to come back in here, take this dose of medicine, and deal with the illness that you put on this community on this past weekend.

And I'm still not letting it go.

Those three people that were dragged out of here do not need to be arrested.

It's one thing if you want to escort them out, but you should not have arrested those people.

Mr. Hayden gets dragged out religiously and yet he's not arrested.

So why is it when people of color and the people that support them come up and have an issue, they're treated differently?

This is the funny thing that we're talking about from this past weekend.

I beg of you, I implore you, please get those people back here.

Please don't charge them with anything.

Thank you.

And one thing, we don't want Mike to come back.

That's like a virus invading your body and asking it to tell you why it's there.

You want it eradicated.

It's not a virus.

It's more akin to trying to put a turd back in your toilet.

We don't want him back here.

This is ridiculous.

We have about 20 people remaining.

The sister's been waiting.

Thank you.

Thank you for everyone who's already spoken.

And I was out there with you all, with all of you on August 12th, and the police did not protect me.

The police were nowhere when the terrorist car sped past me and hit my sister, breaking her leg.

She's at home right now, but if she were here, this is what she would say.

I haven't for one second regretted being there on Friday night at UVA or on Saturday despite being injured.

It was the only right thing to do.

And I'm sorry.

I don't want cookies right now.

I don't want another heal Charlottesville initiative right now.

I want some real justice.

I want affordable housing.

I don't want picnics.

I want affordable housing.

I want justice for undocumented workers in this city.

I want the end to police brutality here because it's happening and we can see it.

We are going to heal.

All of us there, we're all going to heal.

We're going to be fine, but this city needs to change.

Hi, my name is Lisa Drain.

I'm the mother of Rebecca and a Charlottesville citizen.

I was in the church Friday night.

I stood across the street to watch my other daughter get encircled by Nazis and white supremacists when she was trying to protect the statue.

I saw them threaten her.

On Saturday morning, I marched with the clergy.

I marched with the students to Emancipation Park.

I saw the police stand by.

and do nothing while we were essentially maced and shouted at and choked.

and then my daughter was hit by a car and I had to watch the video of the car hitting her flying up on the hood and then pounding down on the sidewalk.

She got a concussion.

She had stitches and she has two broken legs.

Instead of starting UVA this week as a fourth year, she will be in the hospital having surgery on her knee and may not walk

correctly again.

But I have two things to ask you.

One, I want you to revise the injury number.

Every time we see the reported of 19 injured, that is incorrect.

Those are the numbers from the UVA hospital.

My daughter went to Martha Jefferson.

There were at least a dozen people at Martha Jefferson.

that have not been counted.

We have called NBC 29.

We have called the Daily Progress.

Nobody has revised those numbers.

We want our daughter and other people to be counted.

19 is not the number.

At least 30 went to the hospital and many more were injured that did not go to hospitals.

Please revise that injured number.

I don't know but I'm not putting out one penny of my money for any of the mental health or medical medical expenses that we're gonna have.

Let the mother finish.

Let her finish.

Everyone, can the mother finish?

Let her finish.

The last thing I want to say is the reason my two daughters and I were out there protesting and putting our bodies on the line is because we knew that so many others could not

They didn't feel safe coming out.

We did it.

But it's not about statues.

It's not about the statues.

We were out there because our community is hurting.

We want to see changes in affordable housing, in police brutality.

You're delaying this right now, so could you leave real quick so we can get back to what we're doing here?

Can you go out there so we can get back to our community talk?

You brought murderers to our town.

Hold on, hold on.

You want to know what August 12th did to me?

I have PT fucking SD from that shit.

I had to jump the fuck out of the way of that car.

I had to wash the fucking bodies, fly, from the fucking hood, getting hit by the fucking car.

I can't get this shit out of my fucking head.

Sorry doesn't bring Heather back.

Sorry doesn't bring the bones of the engine back.

Sorry doesn't get the PTSD out of my motherfucking head.

This shit fucking hurts.

We told y'all over and over again not to allow this shit to happen in my fucking town.

Y'all did it any fucking way, right?

Now we got a death, we got a fucking, every fucking couple of minutes I see these bodies flying in my fucking head.

Every couple of minutes.

This is what that shit did to me.

I can't sleep.

I can't sleep.

I can't eat right.

I can't, I see blood on the fucking ground.

Every fucking day.

I went over there and helped her daughter out to make sure she had that fucking concussion.

I helped get her off the fucking ground.

This is what this shit did to me.

This is what it did to our city.

We told y'all.

Do not allow that shit to happen.

From now on, we're going to fucking police these fucking streets.

Let him go.

And why?

Why not?

You just showed us how weak you are.

You just showed us.

You are not a leader.

And that has been clear since the first day you sat in that chair.

You get up, you wanted to disrupt the meeting because you can't handle it.

The change that needs to take place in this town is going to require people and power that can handle it.

That has never been you.

You showed your weakness and you need to go.

You need to leave.

You don't get to come back.

You don't get to show up when it's convenient for you.

You don't get to make rules.

You don't get to make statements when it works for you.

You need to go.

Wherever you were going to go and you were hoping everybody followed you, which is one of the major issues in this city, all the work I've done, there have been people in charge like you, leading people no fucking where.

Sir, I just have to answer this.

No legal role.

No role.

No role.

No role.

Colleagues!

Colleagues!

Colleagues!

Colleagues!

Colleagues!

Can we please stand?

All of us.

The way our town works, we can't blame, and listen, everybody I've been clear, right, on how I feel about people over the years.

The way our town works, the people who are actually in charge, we can't blame our police.

Pete, or the city manager.

There are people pulling strings in this town all the time, preventing people who are authentic from doing their work.

And that is part of the change that we need to demand.

When we see people in place, preventing them from doing their work, we need to demand that they go.

People like Mike have been in charge for a long time.

Brother, you want to go?

It's the loudest brother to go.

We got about 12 more people.

My name is Eddie Jackson.

You can be next.

Wes, I know you.

Our wives work together.

You've met some of my family already.

You guys probably know the name Marcus Martin.

He's in the infamous photo of flipping over the car.

That's my wife's twin brother.

So you're talking about affected by this.

My whole family was affected by it.

I have two little boys, a four-year-old and a one-year-old, and I'm trying to figure out

If you couldn't protect this city, who's going to protect my kids?

I'm having a hard time explaining to my little boys why Uncle Marcus is flipping over a car.

They can't grasp that.

So how can you help us understand that?

One more time.

I don't know where that camera at, but wherever that camera at, you need to look at these people like right now.

Well, you want to see them?

You want to see them?

That's good.

That's good, because they need to look at them.

They need to look at them.

But to be honest with you, this is to the people that's watching.

You see all of us out here without y'all, they're going to be sitting in this chair for the next 20, 30 years.

The ones who's watching your screen right now on Instagram, on Facebook, wherever you're watching the TV, if you don't come out here and talk with us, what are we going to do?

You.

You.

Your career is done.

I want you to know this.

You're going to have to go work a nine to five like we do and see how it feels.

But this goes for all of y'all.

This goes for all of y'all.

I want y'all to know that.

I want y'all to know that.

So this camera that's watching all of these people, this is us.

We the people.

We the motherfucking people.

And this is our city.

Our city.

So this goes out to everybody who's watching and everything.

Thank you.

I don't have a whole lot to add.

It hasn't been said already.

I was there 10 feet, saw the bodies flying.

I saw a young girl who couldn't have been more than 100 pounds soaking wet, crawling on the ground, bleeding.

She couldn't get up.

She collapsed.

I didn't know what to do.

I was scared, scared of shit.

I had no idea what to do.

Did I looked around for any cops or anybody that could maybe help?

Nothing.

I swear it was at least five, ten minutes before anybody.

The only people they cared were the medics that were with the counter protesters.

That's who saved those people that day.

But you know what I did see right after that?

You know what my first memory of law enforcement was after this happened?

This MRAP with the armored individual pointing a gun at us.

Pointing weapons at the victims, pointing a gun at the people who had just been victimized, who have to live with what they saw for the rest of their lives.

I'm not the same person I was before that day.

I'm not.

I've changed.

I can feel the change inside of me.

All right?

But you know what the bad thing for y'all is up here?

Hold on one second before you go.

If there's anyone else, please come in line.

We're not stopping it.

So if y'all can, if you want to speak, just please feel free to come in line.

We're not doing a limit.

We're not saying there's only x amount of people.

So let's come in.

We're going to make sure everybody gets their voice heard, OK?

All right, you good, sir?

OK. Mr. Signer, what you just did was a disgrace.

We were all saying, don't go.

I mean, at this point, we want you gone, but this woman here was trying to get you to stay.

I was up here saying, what are you doing?

Where do you have to be right now?

And you left.

That's a disgrace.

You cannot be a leader of this town.

You can't.

But that's not what I wanted to say, because I had thoughts before you did that, but I just had to say that.

But my concern is with why I live in Charlottesville, there was a Nazi rally in our town, someone died, and I wake up after last Saturday and I see that statues are coming down overnight in Baltimore.

Statues are coming down overnight in Texas.

Lexington.

Why do these cities have more moral clarity than we do when we just had a murder and a Nazi rally in our town?

I would like to use the rest, I don't know if I have much time left, but I would like to use the rest of my time to look you each in the eye and ask you again, because someone was asking earlier, can the statues come down tonight?

The statue in Lee Park.

Can it come down tonight?

And we want an answer right now.

I know there's all sorts of inequities in the public housing and everything that's very important and everyone spoke to that eloquently, but this rally started over the stupid statue that is a monument to

White supremacy and it was meant to disenfranchise and to intimidate.

Mr. Bellamy, as the person who tried to make the motion two years ago to remove the statues, can I at least give

some answer, it's not probably the answer you want and I accept that.

In Texas they're already down.

In Baltimore they're already down.

I wanted these statues down six years ago.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

So to your point, right, you know how much I want them going.

We've been legally told if we as council, right, as individuals, if we say, yo, go out there and take them down tonight, we're going to be personally sued, okay?

We're going to be, my wife has told me, we ain't bringing in no more personal lawsuits to my house.

So I'm sorry.

No, it's not through the city.

We will be personally held liable, and we will receive a class six felony.

That is true.

Mr. Brown, may you clarify?

People will get hurt.

You guys don't do nothing.

Will each of you commit to doing everything you can to get them down?

Absolutely.

I'm with it.

Each of you, will you?

Yes?

100%.

City Council's already voted to take down the Lee statue.

Okay.

We got a resolution for Jackson tonight.

I agree.

I'm with you.

What about you?

This year, we finally had three votes.

If you hold a legislative session, a special session, you're still going to get the same amount of Republicans who are going to say no to taking out a statue.

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

Let him have his minute!

I don't like the Nazis at all, trust me.

I don't want them here.

I don't want any of those protesters here.

It's ridiculous.

I'm just here to condemn all the violence that happened, especially on the right.

They want you to have a reaction.

You have to be smarter than that.

You have to have a measured reaction to this.

We've been following a simple protocol.

If anybody will give you a minute, is anyone willing to give you your time?

No one has given you their time, sir.

Everyone, sir, no one has given you their minute.

Where are the police?

Where are the police?

We need... Come on.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

No one is giving you their time.

Ladies and gentlemen, can you please have a seat?

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Next up, Mr. Collins.

Good evening, I'm Brandon Collins.

It's hard for me to gather into words the things I'm thinking.

I, like pretty much all of this town, am completely rattled by these experiences.

I disagree with the last speaker.

These people came here to do harm to the city of Charlottesville and to the people of Charlottesville.

They were explicit about it and you guys knew it.

And that hurts.

All trust and confidence that I ever had in this government and those who already lost that trust and confidence a long time ago, their suspicions were confirmed.

You guys have not cared one cent for the well-being of people in this town.

You know who has and who has shown leadership in this town are the people of Charlottesville who showed up.

The ones who showed up, who brought mail-ops and water and their cell phones and their security folks and their fighters from out of town and their clergy from the churches they belong to.

Those are the people that stood up for this town and this city council and this city management did nothing

to protect us.

You were warned.

You had the same intelligence that everybody else did.

You knew people would get beaten in the streets, and that's what happened.

There was a terrorist attack, and that's not the only violence that happened.

If you look at the videos, Mr. Signer, because you weren't there, you cannot experience it.

Those videos scratched the surface.

The pain you're hearing tonight barely scratched the surface of what happened in this town, and you guys let that happen.

And that's all I'm going to say, because you're going to hear a whole lot of criticism from me

Moving forward, I sent you emails.

I didn't get a response.

I got one response from Wes that said thanks.

About shutting down the streets, about protecting black neighborhoods near downtown.

The only police interaction with protesters on Saturday was when they were confronting black residents from Friendship Court who had beaten back violent Nazis from coming into their neighborhood.

Confronting them, of all people, as you did this evening, when people are expressing their pain, the only thing the police have done in regards to any of this is to kick people out of these chambers and lock them in vans.

All right?

Who's the Nazi here?

Right?

Donald Trump is saying there's two sides.

We heard this two sides argument from this city council for months ahead of this.

It's disgusting and no word should come out of any of y'all's mouths moving forward without first saying you're sorry and without first figuring out how you're going to make amends.

I'm sure you'll all be happy to hear.

Most of the time the apathy and inaction of the powerful

hurts people slowly.

It's the slow burn of the African American community of Charlottesville dwindling from 53% at the time of emancipation to what it is today.

It's the slow burn of housing price increases across the city and the county as poor and working class families are pushed out because they can't afford to live here anymore.

But what we saw last week

was when the inaction and apathy of this body hurt quickly and it hurt us deep.

These people behind you, together, we are going to heal.

We are going to move forward.

We are going to protect our community and protect our people.

I want to talk to the folks out here.

The first thing I have to say is I told you so.

I went

to the city manager's office.

I didn't get to speak to him.

I got to speak to the assistant city manager.

And I said, I'm a child of the 60s.

I've seen this movie before.

And I know how it ends.

It ends in death.

I told you so.

Second, drop the charges on anybody that is a member of Antifa.

The charges?

On August 12th they earned the dropping of any charges that were put on them on July 8th.

Third, I don't accept this idea that the police were outgunned.

I didn't see the Nazis having any tanks.

I didn't see them wearing near the kind of protection that your police did.

I didn't see this idea that our police were outgunned is nonsense.

And I'm not buying it.

Fourth, remove those statues.

I want to translate for you what the Nazis mean when they say, we're going to hold a rally in your town.

What they're saying is, we are going to commit as many hate crimes as possible in as small time as possible, in as small area as possible, and we're going to do so many that we're going to get away with almost all of them.

And so far,

They are!

How few of the Nazis have been arrested?

How few of the rest of the Nazis have even been indicted?

Thank you.

You ready, sir?

My solution to the problem is love.

Hate can never equate hate.

King, Gandhi, never equated this type of action.

Now, my point here is love.

Agape, Philo, and Aris.

Now, to address the mental health issues of myself, I do have PTSD.

I have severe and traumatic brain injury from concussions suffered in football.

I received mental health from Region 10 for that.

My PTSD was triggered when Heather Dyer was struck by the car.

Now,

We, I had a mutual friend that has passed away and I'm gonna read this.

To the family of Sarah and Elaine Campbell, sorry for the loss of your life.

I met this effervescent, vibrant, chipper, adventurous young lady when we were studying for the SAT Prep in the summer of my junior year in high school.

We began to date.

Wavy black velvet locks of hair tightly rowing down the middle of her back, slightly blowing with the wind, the lock of her hair touching her rose-petaled lips.

As she smiles, that smile moving my heart to pump sweet vermilion, beating ever fastly as we looked each other and went outside in the blue aces and danced in the rain.

Thank you for giving me an awakening to the possibilities of the future, to love.

Make me cry one more time.

Thank you for your chipper spirit, your beloved friend filled with tears and sweat.

I want to say two things.

I want to say two things.

One because it needed to be said and it hasn't been said yet.

This is not new.

This is not news.

This has been happening for hundreds of years.

Nothing new here.

Wake up.

The second thing I want to say is I have, since the rally, been driving around chasing Nazis out of the neighborhoods in my area.

Monday morning, 10 a.m., I went out to get eggs.

I just wanted to get eggs for breakfast.

We were out.

I wanted pancakes.

I drive to the store.

I'm going home, and some assholes are driving around Rose Hill neighborhood, and I'm probably terrifying people just as much as they were chasing after these guys.

This isn't okay.

We will protect our friends.

So, my question is how do you feel as a man, and women, to allow this group, considered a gang, because that's what they are, to come into our community to disturb their peace.

I have to explain that to my four year old,

Why these people standing down here calling them niggers, calling them this and that.

I have to explain to my 14 year old who clearly understand what's going on because I don't leave her and the dog about nothing.

Why this was going on.

You and City Council need to put your dicks out your pants and put your pussies down.

Step up and be men and women and take control of your city.

Because see, as I sit on the South First Street property, I watch your police officers come through and you know, because I come to you.

Another thing, stop being a bouncer for them.

I watched them come into my community over a simple dice game and want everybody gone, everybody gone.

But you can go downtown as I sit and watch on CNN because I wasn't there only because I had to make a dollar to make me and my kids ends meet.

Sit on the television and watch this young man get beat and your officers turn like this, right?

What?

What?

What?

Are y'all serious?

Guess what?

If it was your kids, like Heather, what would you feel?

How would you feel?

Because see, not all of us are scared.

And another thing, things can turn a different way.

And if we take justice in our own hands, I don't think you're ready for it.

Because if you don't remember, now you will about the Watts riot.

Is that what you want for your city?

I just want to tell you all, thank you.

I love you all.

I've been here for 30 years.

I'm a white, privileged, Jewish woman.

I've never been rattled to my core.

all of the neighborhoods that the police did not go into to save you or your children.

I was sitting at the police station because I was helping out and volunteering for people that got arrested.

I watched what the clergy members give me and my community so much love to be in St. Paul's, to watch those Tiki Church partners march!

and their students in our community was beyond, beyond.

You all talk about getting rattled to not sleeping.

I'm not sleeping.

I don't even like the way I present myself to people because I don't know how I'm gonna behave because people that look like me will fucking show up and then they get mad because they're like,

Well, I'm not a racist, but I don't want to, well, too bad.

You've got to show up.

You've got to show up to make something change.

But I have never heard.

Nobody protected the temple.

Nobody protected those people.

And I was marching with Rabbi Rachel and Rabbi Tom and just all of the clergy, all of them.

Hey, sir, can you get some tissues?

They are protected and told to give private security.

How do you invite Nazis into town?

That is an assault.

You left our city unprotected on Friday night.

You let this happen.

How does the First Amendment and the Second Amendment go together?

It's a bad Brown email.

No, you don't want to respond.

You've got to whitewash it all first.

Because you can see and you know yourself and everybody who's observed knows that there was a problem with police protection and police action and inaction on the 12th.

This is the floor for everybody in here.

There will be an opportunity to talk about what happened on the 12th.

We've tried to, and every time we've tried to say something tonight, we've been drowned out.

It was bizarre to me that you put together an agenda for tonight that didn't include what happened on the 12th.

You thought you could go ahead and talk about parking meters or street lamps or trees on West Main Street.

How divorced from reality are you that you didn't even recognize that?

Now you told us not to go to the Ku Klux Klan rally on July 8th.

You were wrong.

All of you were wrong.

The entire leadership was wrong.

And you couldn't even recognize it then.

So that when the Nazis came on the 12th,

You still were taking the position.

Don't go there.

Don't confront them.

Lay back in your houses.

Let them have the lay of the land.

And you were wrong again.

And now you purport to be leadership in the community telling us you're going to help heal?

Now the real point is to me that now that the Nazis and the fascists and the Klan have left town, we've got to deal with white supremacy.

And you are, unfortunately, the face of white supremacy in our community.

And if you look at any objective criteria, you will see that black people in our community are second-class citizens.

Infant mortality rates, life expectancy rates, income, wealth, housing, everything that you can think of that's an indicia of people's right to live a decent life has been deprived of black people.

That is the real white supremacy here.

That is why this council represents the face of white supremacy.

This is what we have to deal with.

We will come together and fight the Klan.

We'll come together and fight

the Nazis and we will come together and fight all of the white nationalists.

But we also have to come together unfortunately and fight with the very people who have been elected to do justice in our community to provide equity and to dismantle white supremacy in this community.

Thank you, Mr. Fogel.

Let's give him Mr. McCarthy.

I just want to thank everyone who spoke earlier.

Thank you for sharing your stories.

It's very validating and cathartic to hear what some other folks are going through, and I know there's a lot of other people having a really hard time with this.

Please reach out to therapy and

There's a lot of numbers out on Facebook.

Go to the Surge Facebook page.

Go to the Clergy Collective everywhere, anywhere.

Talk to some friends.

There's a lot of folks in the community that want to help.

I just want to say that on Saturday, a Friday evening at UVA,

I was there and then I didn't want to go Saturday morning because I was really scared and I just wanted to stay in bed and so I knew that there was stuff going on at six in the morning but I didn't show up until like ten thirty or eleven.

And I just want to say to a lot of folks that that's a privilege that I have as a light-skinned person, as white folks and light-skinned people.

You know, we can just not show up.

And we can just stay in our homes and our communities, and we'll know we'll probably be fine.

But that's not the case for a lot of marginalized communities here, especially black folks and people of color.

And I want us to recognize that.

I hope you guys can recognize that you have a lot of power where you are.

You're in city council, you know people, and maybe you may not have official avenues that you can make changes, but you know that if you want something done, there's a lot more that you can do to make that thing happen.

And I want you guys to really do that.

And I know some of you have, but I think some of you can do a lot more.

Mayor Signer, I know that you recently tried to get the General Assembly, the emergency session, but come on.

This state is gerrymandered.

You know that there's not going to be any change there.

You know that.

At best, you're being naive.

At worst, you're looking for headlines.

If you guys want to do something real, you will organize exactly.

Of course you're going to do stuff about affordable housing and dismantle white supremacy in all its institutional forms, but what you can do right now is you can remove that statue, put it in a museum,

You may be breaking the law, but there are unjust laws.

I think we recognize that in this country, throughout history, there have been unjust laws.

And I think that you guys say you want the statue down.

If that is true, or take it down, you can do it.

If you're worried about court fees, this country is behind you.

There are so many people in this nation that want you to take that statue down.

Start a GoFundMe.

You'll get money.

You'll get money.

If you guys are looking for lawyers, you know that the best lawyers in this nation will show up to support you.

This community, we have put our bodies on the line.

We are asking not just for words and empty gestures.

We want you to do real stuff, even if it means breaking the law.

I don't feel like a terribly courageous person but a courageous person brought me here tonight and asked me to come down here and speak with her and when I was her age I came from a non-religious family but what I knew about being a Jew was that Hitler would have considered me a Jew and somebody to go in the ovens

And now that I'm an adult and seeing these chants come through our town, I mean I can't believe it, but what I did notice when I heard them is

that I'm okay.

I am not the vulnerable population now.

But when we said never again, we didn't mean just us.

And where it comes, where it started in Germany was with legislation, was with policy.

And the white supremacy that we're talking about here is not the people who came here and benefited from the ability, like how cool and fine that is with Trump and everybody else.

but it's within the policies and I hope that what everybody's doing, how brave and courageous everybody's being and we have so much respect for that.

So everything that's going on just for us kids it's just crazy how it's even more for us kids that

It's just crazy what's going on.

And not that long ago, I thought Charlottesville was just so safe and you couldn't possibly be unsafe.

So, ma'am, what do you gotta say about a little child talking to you about this?

What you gonna do now?

You had a little child just tell you this.

What you gonna do now?

What are you gonna do now?

A lot of people tried to sound the warning.

A lot of people tried to sound the warning and weren't really taken seriously and I know that the morning of Saturday the 12th I was at the Jefferson School there and

I was there with Mr. Gathers there and just as folks were preparing to march off to the park, you know, we gave each other a hug.

It was only 8 in the morning.

I was crying.

And the reason I was crying is that I knew that somehow, somewhere, somebody was going to die.

that day.

It was already clear, already at 8 in the morning, given what had gone on the night before because the city police hadn't protected the people at St. Paul's Episcopal Church where I was trapped inside.

The university police hadn't protected those students.

We couldn't count on law enforcement.

Either we get excess force like we got on J-8 or we got folks standing back and not protecting us.

and I'm really sad that those people died and it's a little sad that it's taken the death of three white people for more white people to realize the danger of white supremacy.

People of color have been suffering for centuries under this.

But it's only gotten that kind of attention, sympathy, as of late, because of this.

Take down those statues, that's just, you know, those statues, that's just, you know, it's just stone and metal.

And these folks that came in for these rallies, they're here for a short time, although a lot of them are still skulking around now.

Chasing people around at Lowe's hardware store.

They've been going to people's neighborhoods and nobody ever reports about that.

They only report when they show up in numbers.

But they've been doing that.

It's been going on for days.

But it's not just, it's not just statues, it's not just rallies.

It's everyday white supremacy.

It's, you know, lack of affordable housing, how black folks have been pushed out for so long.

It's everyday.

It's everyday white supremacy.

Hi, I'm Mike Johnson.

I've lived in the city for 37 years.

I really appreciate what everyone's had to say tonight, and this is one of the best city council meetings I've ever been to in terms of actually listening to what people are saying and hearing it.

And my perspective on it was changed when I, you know, when the Blue Ribbon Commission came into being.

I missed the first two or three meetings but then I went to either I or my wife went to every single one of the next you know however many there were over about a six-month period and I was just shocked at how little I seemed to know about the history of this country, of white supremacy, of what black people have had to endure for 300 years in this country and I started to find out, I started to read books, I started to kind of question what was going on and

It's just shocking to me how little I, and maybe I'm not alone, how little I as a white person knew and understood about the experience of black people in this nation.

And I guess what was really brought home to me is

The weekend of the rally, the night before, my daughter, who was just home from college, had a friend come and visit us.

And I didn't know this person before.

She had just met him in the last couple of months.

She was away for the summer.

And he came, and he was a young black man.

And suddenly, they were going out to see the rally.

And suddenly, I got it.

I got it real quick because you know one of the problems is I don't really know many black people personally and I've been trying to kind of reach out and talk to people and find out what are the experiences of people because it's not my you know it hasn't been my experience to be shot down by the police or have people my family shot down by police or any of the other things that have gone on for so many people in this nation for hundreds of years and so

To me, it just seems like part of the rage here tonight is the complete lack of understanding that this history goes back 300 plus years.

People have been suffering under this kind of abuse for hundreds of years.

And I had someone say to me, I said, you know, since I started going to the meetings, I started reading things and I started finding out things and

and I said, you know, what do you think about this?

Why are you not in favor of taking the statues down?

And he said, well, this is world-class art.

And he said, I don't want to replace it with some paint-by-number kind of art.

And I just said, wait a minute.

I said, you're hearing what people are saying.

You've read some of the books.

What's up with the lack of empathy?

I mean, is art going to trump

The experience of millions of our people that live in this country, it makes no sense at all.

And it's just, again, I ask, you know, rhetorically, but for us to think back, what's up with the lack of empathy?

What is up with not being able to put yourself in the position of someone who has been terrorized for 300 years?

Someone whose mothers were raped and children were sold and on and on and on.

What is it about this community that does not recognize, and not just this community

But you know, after going to six months of the meetings, I thought, really?

Are we not going to take these statues down?

Are we really not going to vote to do that?

Is it hard?

Is this whole idea that white people have to be taught a lesson so when they go into Lee Park, there's going to be some other kind of debate going on where we're going to read signs, and then every black person that's going to come in, we're going to say, god, forgive me.

I never understood.

For the life of me, I can't understand that kind of thinking.

And I'm glad now, it's kind of late in the game, that we have a 5-0 vote now to remove these statutes.

But the irony of this is that New Orleans removed four statutes overnight.

Baltimore did the same thing.

It's happening all over the country.

And Charlottesville, which began, perhaps, one could say, this modern attempt to remove these, could be the

the area where we don't remove them and we continue to suffer the depredations of people like Trump and neo-Nazis and anti-Semites and white supremacists.

Hold on, before you go Mr. Gathers, if there's anyone else, can you please come get in line?

Thank you.

To piggyback what Mr. Johnson just said, Mr. Signer, Ms. Galvin, while there may be some appreciation and some understanding of your willingness to change your votes now, it bears recollection that you all are at this point 195 days and three bodies, 195 days late and three bodies short.

and it's a sad commentary and I don't want anyone to look at this as an alarm going off for a wake-up call.

This alarm started sounding back in the mid-1600s.

Good evening, everyone.

I want to start off by apologizing to the citizens of Charlottesville for not being here earlier.

I was one of those people on social media watching what was going on.

And one of the earlier speakers put a call out.

And they said, you need to be here now.

So I put on my shoes.

I don't have socks on.

And I'm here.

And the reason that I'm here is because I've been a participant in all of this.

I was an employee at one of the restaurants that were targeted.

We were open on July 8th and so I've seen it.

I saw it in the face.

I saw it for what it is.

And after volunteering on August 12th and dealing with victim blaming and people trying to shame us for what we did there, I realized that some people aren't going to understand what happened, what is happening until they stare it in the face.

So now I'm asking the council, what are you going to do?

to stare it in the face because the only person that I've seen out there is Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy.

He's the only one that's been out there with us.

Hello, my name is Jason Lapa, I'm a homeowner in Belmont and I've been a member of this community since the mid 80's when I moved here with my family.

I'm a photographer, I recognize many of you, not just from the city but also people that have come to these meetings before and I'm happy to see all these familiar faces at these meetings but I'd like to see some new faces at these meetings

a lot of new faces.

I'd like to see some new faces up here.

I'm not going to get into that.

What I came to speak on is I've been following this very closely.

People who know me and who are Facebook friends with me know how close I've been following this.

I was at UVA the night of the Torch Rally.