For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise. At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians […]
I had lived in Charlottesville for 10 years almost to the day before I saw the inside of City Council chambers. I’d paid my gas bill in person once or twice. I think I bought a trash sticker in 2012. But I’d never even been upstairs at City Hall before. If you’d asked me at […]
Before August 12, 2017, many people thought of America’s Confederate statues as harmless pieces of history—if they thought of them at all. Then the hate groups came to Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest the monuments’ removal. The violent clashes that led to the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of dozens, and the sight of […]
Phoebe Stevens is a pacifist. She says that’s why she wrapped her arms around Jason Kessler at his August 13, 2017, press conference as a crowd of angry protesters closed in on him. But after she knocked him down in the chaos, he accused her of assault and battery—a charge she was convicted of [...]
Tyler Watkins Davis entered an Alford plea February 8, and though it’s technically a guilty plea, it means the man from Middleburg, Florida, is not admitting guilt, but acknowledging that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him of malicious wounding in the brutal parking garage assault [...]
By Jonathan Haynes City Councilor Wes Bellamy sat down for a revelatory interview at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center January 10 to promote his new book, Monumental: It Was Never About a Statue. The title alludes to the former vice-mayor’s push to remove Confederate [...]
He wore a construction helmet that said “commie killer” as he joined in on a brutal beating in a downtown parking garage, striking the already downed DeAndre Harris with a stick until it broke as Harris struggled to pick himself up off the ground. And though two out-of-town men already found [...]
Many thought James Fields’ mental health would be used as a defense during his murder trial– but surprisingly, it never came up. Instead, jurors learned about his troubled state of mind during the December 10 sentencing hearing, after he’d been found guilty of murdering Heather Heyer and [...]
It’s in the jury’s hands now. The prosecution and defense have given their closing arguments on the ninth day of James Alex Fields Jr.’s first-degree murder trial. The man charged with killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others when he rammed his car into a crowd at an August 12, 2017, [...]
The prosecution rested today in the trial of James Alex Fields Jr. and the defense began its case, both sides focusing on the defendant during and after his arrest August 12, 2017. In prosecution videos of Fields after he was taken into police custody, he repeatedly apologized, asked about any [...]
“That’s what someone’s eyes look like when they’re dead,” is the only thought that went through anti-racist activist Star Peterson’s mind as she saw Heather Heyer flying through the air. Peterson had just been run over by a white supremacist in a Dodge Challenger on Fourth Street on August 12, [...]
His lawyer painted a picture of a black father in his early 50s, the sole caretaker of his child with autism, who doesn’t have a computer or read the news, and who came to the Downtown Mall on August 12, 2017, to panhandle for the extra money he needed to buy his son’s medication. Defense […]
When about 40 protesters gathered at the University of Virginia School of Law library April 25 to chase off Jason Kessler, one man was arrested—and it wasn’t the one who brought hundreds of torch-wielding white supremacists to Grounds. Eric Martin, a local activist and theologian, entered the [...]
The two young men handed lengthy prison sentences last week for their involvement in the August 12, 2017, brutal parking garage beating of DeAndre Harris sat in stark contrast to one another in Charlottesville Circuit Court. One’s remorse was hard to miss. Jacob Goodwin, the Arkansas man who [...]
An estimated 15,000 protesters. Thousands of signs and flags. Hundreds of cops. All of which made their presence known from Freedom Plaza to Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., all day long on Sunday, August 12—to face down barely more than two dozen white nationalists. Just before noon, [...]
During the weekend of August 10-12, the anniversary of last summer’s violent and fatal clashes, the city will be on lockdown—and Governor Ralph Northam has already declared a proactive state of emergency. At an August 8 press conference attended by more than a dozen law enforcement and public [...]
During the weekend of August 10-12, the anniversary of last summer’s violent and fatal clashes, the city will be on lockdown—or so it seems. Interim City Manager Mike Murphy today announced additional measures that will affect many people in the downtown Charlottesville area during the Unite [...]
Chris Cantwell, aka the Crying Nazi, came to Charlottesville a year ago to chant “Jews will not replace us” while marching through UVA Grounds. As the self-proclaimed racist shock jock was booted from Virginia July 20, he hurled a final invective at local media outside the Albemarle Circuit [...]
By Jonathan Haynes Indignation hung in the air during the July 12 city-sponsored #ResilientCville event as around 150 Charlottesville residents filed into the pews of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church to confront a panel of public officials about the city’s failure to contain white [...]
The man charged with 30 federal hate crimes, including the murder of Heather Heyer by ramming his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12, gave a clipped introduction to the judge when he announced himself as James Alex Fields Jr. on July 5. Each hate crime charge [...]
In a civil suit against an angry activist, Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler has won $5. The man who planned the August 12 event where neo-Nazis and counterprotesters clashed in the streets, leaving three people dead by the end of the day, said his suit was intended to bring [...]
When about 40 protesters gathered at the University of Virginia School of Law library in April to chase off Jason Kessler, one man was arrested—and it wasn’t the one who brought hundreds of torch-wielding white supremacists to Grounds last summer. As Kessler sat doing legal research for his [...]
Another man charged with malicious wounding in the August 12 Market Street Parking Garage beatdown of DeAndre Harris has been convicted. Daniel Borden, whose local TV station and newspaper have said he was known for his swastika drawings and Nazi salutes in high school, was 18 years old when he [...]