The “Unite The Right” rally scheduled to take place Saturday at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA is going to happen, but not without serious push-back from local government officials. They are attempting to force to rally to be relocated because of alleged public safety concerns.
The Charlottesville city council revoked the permit of the organizers, citing specious claims that too many people were planning to attend. The city council wanted to move the location to a more remote area far away from the Robert E. Lee statue they intend on defending. Alt-right activist Jason Kessler said that he and fellow organizers will not be deterred and the protest will go on as originally scheduled.
“They don’t have a legal right to deny us our ability to express support for the monument, in front of the monument as the permit said, ” Kessler said.
The city offered a vague threat filled with Orwellian double-speak in response to Kessler’s decisive words.
“If people show up at Emancipation Park, the City will take actions deemed necessary to keep the community safe while honoring every everyone’s freedom of speech and assembly. CPD will continue to assess and plan for these possibilities as necessary,” said Miriam Dickler, the Charlottesville Director of Communications, in a press release.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union came out with a letter of support in favor of the organizers. Despite their obvious disagreements with the political views of the organizers, the leftists at the ACLU still recognize that the 1st Amendment of the Constitution was written specifically to protect offensive speech.
“If the city is justifying its relocation of the rally elsewhere based on the presence of counterdemonstrators, that constitutes an unconstitutional ‘hecklers’ veto’,” the letter states. “… The city must act in accordance with the law, no matter how distasteful that may be to members of the community.”
In a very ironic turn of events, the government officials–by restricting the free speech ability of the far right-wing organizers–have in effect turned them into martyrs for civil rights. The infamous identitarian leader, Richard Spencer referenced the ridiculousness of this whole charade in a video he released yesterday titled “We Shall Overcome.”
“The right-at-large faces many challenges culturally, politically, socially, economically, and what have you,” Spencer said. “This battlefield of free speech, the First Amendment, this is the place where we are clearly in the right and where we can clearly win… Charlottesville, if you’re going to act like doofuses, we are going to make you look like doofuses.”
The event will begin at Noon on Saturday, Aug. 12. You can find out more detailed information about the rally (including scheduled speakers) on its Facebook event page.
