City Council Special Meeting   10/12/2017

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

Calling this special meeting of Charlottesville City Council to order, let's begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Ms. Rice, would you call the roll?

Mr. Fenwick?

Mr. Bellamy?

Present.

Mr. Stegner?

Here.

Ms. Sakus?

Yes.

Here.

Ms. Galvin is unable to be here but under our rules we do have a quorum as we need and we also have, I'll convey sentiments from Ms. Galvin once we get into this discussion.

We are here to consider a resolution authorizing an action to enjoin unlawful paramilitary activity.

I would like to introduce resolution authorizing an action to enjoin unlawful parliamentary activity, be it resolve the council for the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, that the city attorney and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center Institute

are hereby authorized to file an action in the Circuit Court for the City of Charlottesville seeking declaratory and injunction relief against certain organizations, groups and individuals that engaged in unlawful

paramilitary activity at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.

Is there a second?

I'll second, yeah.

All right.

Any discussions or comments?

I have a few questions for Ms. McCord.

We're going to begin with a presentation from Mary McCord, who is with the Georgetown Law Center and the center that drafted and will be representing us in this matter.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor.

My name is Mary McCord and I'm with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

The institute, which we refer to as ICAP, was founded earlier this year as a small public interest firm within the law school.

We have drafted a civil complaint to be filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court.

that we believe will help prevent a repeat of the violence that took place during the Unite the Right rally two months ago today.

We have spoken individually prior today with most of you, with all of you, and I know that each of you has expressed interest in this lawsuit.

My purpose here is to explain the basis for the lawsuit and to answer any questions you may have.

Our ICAP team was horrified at what we saw unfold in Charlottesville on August 11th and 12th.

The presence of unauthorized, heavily armed militias and paramilitary groups taking over the streets was terrifying.

Our concerns motivated us to reach out to community members and the stories of anger, pain, and fear we heard were universal.

Prior to joining ICAP, I served as a prosecutor for more than 20 years, and what I saw in so many of Charlottesville's community members was the same thing I saw in crime victims.

We thought the law should have a response to this, and it does.

Drawing from cases brought against the militia wing of the KKK in the 1980s in Texas and North Carolina under state anti-militia statutes, we looked to Virginia's Constitution and state statutes.

We found that Virginia's Constitution requires that in all cases the military should be under the strict subordination to the civil power, that is the government.

which retains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

In addition, Virginia's statutes prohibit both paramilitary activity and falsely assuming the functions of a peace officer or law enforcement officer.

These Virginia laws now form the basis of the lawsuit that is the subject of this meeting.

We represent numerous Charlottesville neighbors, neighborhood associations and businesses that are plaintiffs in this suit.

Through this legal action, residents and business owners seek a court order prohibiting the unauthorized private militias and paramilitary organizations that descended on Charlottesville from returning again and engaging in unlawful paramilitary activity.

Regardless of ideology, the presence of these private armies, whether armed with assault rifles or bats, batons and clubs,

significantly heightens the propensity for violence.

Today's lawsuit is the culmination of extensive investigation following the Unite the Right rally, which included reviewing hours of videos, hundreds of photos, and talking to many residents who witnessed or experienced the violence firsthand.

In addition to dramatically documenting the highly coordinated military maneuvering of the paramilitary groups, the investigation covered overwhelming evidence

much of which came to light only after August the 12th of planning by the alt-right groups to engage in the very type of militaristic violence that we saw.

Theirs was a strategy of provoke and invoke.

Provoke the counter protesters then invoke self-defense as an excuse to inflict long planned violence.

This suit does not seek to restrict the individual Second Amendment right to arm oneself for self-defense, nor would it imperil First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and express political views.

Instead, it seeks to restore the longstanding public-private equilibrium disrupted by the unlawful paramilitary conduct of the named defendants.

We've worked closely with the neighborhood associations and businesses that are plaintiffs in this case.

Along with residents whose neighborhoods were invaded, a dozen businesses representing the retail sector, restaurants, architecture firms, and investors both on and off the downtown mall stand unified in their desire to use the rule of law to prevent another military-style invasion of their city.

Thank you.

Well, Ms. McCord, I appreciate what you're doing.

Some of the questions I have will echo against what you said.

There are many people in our community who think the judicial system has been too timid.

So I appreciate your coming forth and doing this.

You also mentioned the word equilibrium.

Many people think we're out of whack.

The values that we stand for are being used against us.

So, good luck.

I'll do what I can to help you.

And let me ask the specific questions that people have asked me.

The State Attorney General has asked that we refer any questions about this case to the State Attorney General's office.

Okay.

Other private individuals are free to bring lawsuits of their choice for damages, for example.

This lawsuit does not seek any type of money damages.

The discovery that you have found out about or discovered and any future discovery, would that be shared?

First of all, the complaint, as I know you probably know, Counselor, is replete with sourcing for most of the allegations within it, and it itself provides a pretty very thorough document.

that has references to many of the sources for what we determined.

Okay.

And just for the community's information, I had a private question since I will be leaving council in about two and a half months.

how this would affect me and any testimony I would have to give, but we can discuss that.

So thank you for the presentation, good luck, and I hope this is the first of many efforts to balance what many people in the community think is unbalanced now.

I'll just add a comment in that when this happened I think a lot of people

felt in their gut that this could not have been what the framers of the Constitution intended when they talked about First and Second Amendment rights, the sort of armed intimidation and attack in a city within the United States.

And I think that the way this lawsuit is framed and the really careful and amazing research that you all have done really kind of makes what we all knew was true

document it because I think this is, you know, that sort of thing was certainly not what the framers intended and I think this really gets back to just kind of calling us all to attention to that.

This is, it is kind of out of balance and it brings it back.

I too wish this case, wish us luck.

I assume that if other groups later wanted to join this case, would they just do a friend of the court brief?

Yes, Counselor.

In fact, a number of homeowners associations and businesses

are actively considering this.

We just sort of came to a time when it was time to file.

And they don't have to file amicus briefs, friend of the court briefs.

They can actually join as plaintiffs in this case.

So we will just amend the complaint as others would seek to join.

And I certainly will take any and all inquiries of those who have been injured, who suffered injuries, and who would like to join in unity.

It absolutely will be.

And we will link to that, I assume, from the city page?

So thank you for your work and we really appreciate it.

So what we saw on August 12th that I think was different than what happens at most rallies is we saw really military groups come into Charlottesville.

So it is perfectly legal and it is protected by our constitution for groups, no matter what their ideology, to gather in assembly and freely express their views and to do so peacefully.

And they can do so in matching uniforms and matching hats.

our Constitution and particularly Virginia's Constitution does not permit is actually organizing yourself as a private army and coming into town with weapons, assault rifles in some cases, other types of weapons in other cases.

And so what we saw when we've looked at videos and footage that probably people of all ages have been able to see, unfortunately, on the news or online,

is that what looked like was happening in Charlottesville on August 12 did look like a military invasion.

It looked like the military was here stationed and groups operating like private armies marched into town.

That's what we seek to prevent.

Thank you.

Okay, I would like to read a statement about this.

I support the city joining this lawsuit as a plaintiff not only because it will provide our citizens with a measure of practical safety against paramilitary groups bent on violence here.

I support it as a stand against the disintegration of our democracy.

and as a call for all of us to put a firm close to this horrible chapter in our democracy where people think it's okay to parade in military outfits in public, to openly threaten violence against other people, to fire weapons in the crowds, to beat people in public and to use a car as a weapon.

This violence is all of a piece and it can be stopped with the legal relief we are asking for under Virginia's Constitution and under our laws.

In their wisdom, our forebearers built our democracy on two pillars.

First, they believed that democracy depends on deliberation, that deliberation requires some measure

of Civility.

While citizens can and should feel passionately about an issue, they believe the system of government built on freedom also requires mutual respect.

Even if we disagree vehemently with one another, we need to treat each other as we would want ourselves to be treated.

That's the only way we can work together to move forward in a system like this.

Second, going back to Politics 101, they also believe that the state must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

That's why we don't have private armies in this country.

That's why Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution guarantees that, quote, in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

On August 12th, these rogue militias were like arsonists setting fire to both of those pillars.

Instead of the civility that binds our system together, these freelancing armies brought threats and outright violence.

Instead of persuasion, argument, alliances, and compromise, they instead saw only power and force.

Instead of democracy, they saw the Wild West where might makes right.

Such cynicism begets nihilism, and such nihilism begets terrorism.

It's no surprise that the rhetoric and the plans revealed through the extraordinary research in this court filing, and I would encourage everyone to read these 75 pages, it is equally chilling and riveting and essential fact-finding to understand what happened here and what's happening in our country, would lead to attacks on government itself.

These groups arrogantly, recklessly, and violently believe they can disrupt and replace the state itself.

Let me be clear, the emergence of these paramilitary groups in the public sphere is a threat to democracy itself.

Nobody knows this better than Charlottesville.

We are the historic home not only of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and James Monroe, but of their ideas about how humans can live together and prosper under a system based on freedom.

and we and our citizens were the unwilling hosts of the horrific events of August 11th and 12th.

These are the reasons that I've concluded that we should join this lawsuit on behalf of the citizens we serve and the Commonwealth whose laws we are sworn to uphold.

I want to close by thanking Mary McCord and her team of

Top Notch Litigators at Georgetown Law Center for their hard work and their counsel, and Lee Livingston and his partners here in Charlottesville, Mickey Hamlet for their support, and also Philip Zelikow, who is of Charlottesville, son of Charlottesville, and for his intellectual provenance in the original insight that led to this lawsuit.

Thank you.

We're ready for a vote.

So all in favor of the resolution as moved and seconded.

All right.

And before we adjourn, I will say you mentioned that you were going to

I just mentioned Kathy Galvin.

Kathy Galvin is very supportive of this action that we've taken and wanted us to express that in public so that everyone knows.

All right.

We are adjourned, and I believe that the attorneys are going to walk the complaint now over the filing over to the courthouse.