The first Charlottesville, Virginia city council meeting since the deadly attack on counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally in the city erupted on Monday night when several residents began shouting down city council members.
Residents attending the meeting took the council members to task for the way the city handled the rally of white nationalists earlier this month.
“You had multiple opportunities to intervene and you did not intervene one time. We told you exactly what you needed to do and you did nothing,” one man said at the meeting, according to local NBC affiliate WVIR.
At one point during the meeting, two people climbed onto the dais to hold a large sign reading, “Blood on your hands,” prompting some councilors and city staff to flee the room, per WVIR.
As the meeting became increasingly unruly, police intervened and arrested removed individuals, according to the New York Times. When the police detained three people, the crowd in the room broke out into chants of “Shame” and “Shut it down,” per the Times.
At that point, the only city official left in the room was Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy, who negotiated with the angry crowd, the Times reported. He worked out with residents that each would be allowed a turn to speak during the meeting.
Residents in attendance blasted the city for allowing the “Unite the Right” rally to take place and called for the resignation of Mayor Mike Signer, chanting “Signer must go!” They also urged the council to push for the removal of Confederate monuments from the city.
After residents were finished speaking, the city council moved to start the process of removing Confederate statues from the city. The council approved a motion to drape those statues in black fabric to commemorate the victims of the attack, according to WVIR.
Good for him.
Click for mayor bellamy bio
"Residents in attendance blasted the city for allowing the “Unite the Right” rally to take place and called for the resignation of Mayor Mike Signer, chanting “Signer must go!” "
Wasn’t the city under a court order to let the rally go on as initially planned after they tried to move it to a larger venue where crowd control would be easier?
Yeah, it would have been pretty bad if the whole council had walked out. Rightly or wrongly - and it sounds like rightly from what I´ve read - the city and the police did not do enough to prevent violence from the right-wingers. There needs to be some accountability for that failure.
I do have sympathy for the city as far as allowing the march in the first place. It was protected speech, after all, and there was a court ruling to that effect.
Residents in attendance blasted the city for allowing the “Unite the Right” rally to take place and called for the resignation of Mayor Mike Signer, chanting “Signer must go!”