So, here it is:
There is a statue of Lee in a place called Lee Park. A 13 year old girl decided she was scared of the statue because of slavery blah blah blah and city council went on the liberal warpath to have it removed.
City council got blocked by Virginia state laws. City council doesn't care, keeps trying to remove the statue. Much yelling and arguing from both sides. City Council continues doing illegal things like renaming the park and basically being asses.
In regards to the actual park and statue, I have officially reached the point where enough is enough. I say bulldoze the whole thing and turn it into a *expletive deleted*ing parking lot because what downtown needs is more parking and less aholes.
A couple weeks ago the KKK came to town and had a rally. They had a permit and police escort. A bunch of idiots showed up to protest without permits. Got told to leave. A bunch of other idiots (many from out of town and members of Antifa groups) refused to leave, started crap and mostly got arrested.
IMHO, if the KKK had come, been ignored and gone, the events of this weekend would not have happened. C-ville proved itself willing to feed into this kind of bullshit and, thus, the bullshit happened.
So comes along Kessler and his idiots. They also get a permit to protest. They are legit racist, neo nazi scumbags. City Council has it's head up it's ass. Tries to refuse giving the permit. ACLU backs Kessler and forces the city to give the permit. City makes up some crap about making them move the protest to a different park based on the size of the event. Kessler and his ilk are ticked off, fight it. Then City revokes permit at the last minute. Kesslers goons go to Walmart, get tiki torches and have the cops called on them by "concerned citizens" since many of the goons are open carrying. Obviously, the cops explain to the "concerned citizens" that open carry is legal and goons laugh and go on their merry way. The goons go to the Lawn with tiki torches lit and march. UVA students come out in force to "protect" a statue of Jefferson. IDK if the goons are still armed, because if they were that would have been illegal since they were on UVA campus. Minor brawling ensues. Drama. Whatever.
Day of big protest. Goons from both sides show up with helmets, shields and baseball bats. Police are supposed to be escorting and corralling various goons. Police fail miserably. In fact, at one point they force nazi goons to walk through a bunch of antifa goons. Fighting breaks out. Who didn't see that coming.
Finally, bunch of antifa goons are packed into a side street just off the Downtown mall. Dodge charger comes through, rams into the two stopped cars in front of him, then hits it into reverse and wails back the way it came from. One woman is dead, 19 injured.
***stop*** noted else where people making comments about people being in the street and that's all bad, obviously people in the street up to no good. While I agree that this particular bunch was up to no good, them being packed into the street is not indicative of bad behavior in that area. The Downtown mall is a pedestrian mall and the side streets are usually fair game as well. When it gets crowded down there, that's pretty much par for the course. You see people walking around like that every friday. *back to the events**
Dodge Charger has Ohio plates. Driver has turned out to be a "alt right" scumbag who has no ties to C-ville that I've seen.
All in all, city council is wailing for peace publicly and probably patting themselves on the backs in private. They got C-ville on the map and I doubt they could be prouder of themselves.