Between White Nationalists and counterprotesters. This portion includes graduates from the university of virginia and Community Organizers discussing their efforts to address racism. This is just over an hour. Good evening. Im a staff attorney with the american Arab Antidiscrimination Committee and it is truly my honor to present our last panel for this evening, charlottesville, the reemergence of White Supremacy. Particularly because of what weve seen in the last three years alone about violence occurring, not only in the Arab American Community but Mass Violence against africanamericans. Africanamerican communities have been one of our most crucial allies in our fight against the muslim ban with many of our Community Workers working with black lives matter but as well as being prominent members of the naacp and the aclu. Particularly this summer weve seen the outcry and the Mass Violence that occurred in charlottesville with the uprising at the campus, particularly seen, as we know, the brutal behavior and nature of people exercising their freedom of speech and their right to assemble and their right to protest. So today im honored to present this panel here, particularly, jeffrey fogle, a civil rights attorney working in charlottesville, virginia who will be monitoring this panel. With that ill hand it over to mr. Fogle. Charlottesville is a bucolic college town. If you believe the university of virginia and the leadership of the community, but it like much of the south has a terrible history of race relations, and im not just talking about slavery or even jim crowe. Were talking about the destruction of a whole community in the period of urban renewal, and were looking at a professional class that now runs the city, none of whom are from the city, but who talk a good game but produce very little. So we have an africanamerican population that is really second class citizens in charlottesville. In a way its sort of strange that the nazis would come to charlottesville in order to protest the removal of the robert e. Lee statue. Im sure youve all seen video of what transpired that day. The town fathers and mothers profess to be liberals and in fact, ultimately voted to take that statue down. What they havent voted to do, however, is provide adequate housing a housing, do something about the incredible discrepancy in wealth and income, infant mortality rates, Life Expectancy rates. We have a terrific panel here today, all of whom were involved in what happened in charlottesville, and were talking about a period of two months here, july 8th when the ku klux klan had a rally, august 11th when several of the students, were students at the time, were at in front of whats called the rotunda which is the Main Building that was designed by Thomas Jefferson, surrounding his statute, when they were attacked by the socalled altright, and we have people here who were present on the day of august 12th when all of the shit went down. So i think we ayoure going to a very good perspective from people about what their reactions were and what happened. More difficult particularly for those who lived through that is what does this reflect about america . Were very close to having seen nazis coming down the street with semiautomatic machine guns, with militia men standing there with assault rifles, and with people from the altright there with all kinds of guns and other forms of weapons. So its quite a shock to be confronted with that directly, and it makes it difficult to take a step back and see where that fits into whats happening in america. But i dont think anybody doubts that the election of donald trump fed this kind of belief in the people who protested in charlottesville, that they actually have the ear of the president and that its okay in this country in 2017 to be a white supremacist. With that introduction, let me start with well, lets do it chronologically in a way. We can start with ibi han who was a student at the time who has since graduated fortunately, who was present the night before the major demonstration at the university surrounding the Thomas Jefferson statue. She can tell you what happened and what her perspective is on what that reflects. Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having me here. I just graduated from the university of virginia and throughout this summer had been going back and forth to charlottesville to organize the response with some of the students who ive been with while in my under grad. So i had come down that friday night of august 11th to prepare for the 12th. I was there in a street medic capacity so when street medics are basically folks who have some kind of medical training, who arent necessarily with like the rescue squad. They kind of act as like battlefield or combat medics who are in the thick of the situation. So my role for august 11 and 12 was as a street medic. So that friday night we had found out the information had started being passed around that nazis were going to march from the field, one of the main fields at uva to the Thomas Jefferson statue. This had not been planned. This had not been publicly announced by them. But the information had gotten out probably around 6 00 or 7 00 p. M. That night that they were going to march at 9 30 p. M. So the students we were all together and we were like, we cant let this happen. Like, we cant have hundreds of neo nazis marching through our campus, uvas campus. At the time we were really unsure of what was going to happen so we grabbed a banner that said virginia students act against White Supremacy that we had actually intended to use the next day and just showed up at the statue to see what was going to happen. So that evening i was there watching them all assemble on the field. It was really surreal to just watch people walking down the sidewalks in their normal clothes but carrying tiki torches, i mean, people who look like uva students just walking down the sidewalks. Then they all gathered on the field and then you could see the call went up to light up the torches and then it was like, theres hundreds of them out here. We were not expecting so many and what was even more shocking was that no sign of campus police, no sign of city police or any kind of Law Enforcement to break up that assembly on the field. So they lit up the torches and started marching, and then at that time students had surrounded the statue along with Community Members holding the banner. Basically the only voices in opposition to the hoard of nazis who were marching basically through the heart of uvas campus. Those students got swarmed by them. You could hear them i knew we were outnumbered as soon as you could you couldnt hear the students chanting anymore. All you could hear was white lives matter, jews will not replace us. I think a lot of you may have watched the vice documentary that includes some of that footage in there. So a bunch of my friends who were in that circle ended up getting pepper sprayed by the nazis. In my role as a street medic i was there to flush out eyes and make sure that they were all doing okay. At that point when i was provided medical treatment to the students who had been sprayed was when the police finally showed up and said this is an Unlawful Assembly and started kicking us out and telling us to get out of the plaza, to get out of the statue area, as im, like, trying to provide medical treatment to my friends. So it was a total a perfect example of the administrative negatives of the uva administration and i think encapsulates their entire attitude toward White Supremacy. Basically for the past year the uva Administration Stance has been ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. Its like this is what happens when you ignore it and tell people not to engage, is you have a hoard of 300 White Supremacists come marching through your campus. Whats been really disheartening about the administrative response to that is theres been no moves toward true accountability. The president has never even acknowledged that there were student protestors there even though vicepresident joe biden acknowledged that in his atlantic oped piece. Its really maybe not that surprising to me but definitely disappointing to know that uva has not changed its stance on their actions that night or taken any kind of responsibility. Were going to have time for questions. Our second speaker who also just graduated uva in may. Can you use your microphone. This one . I just graduated from uva this past may with ibi and were a part of a group on the grounds called uva students united. We have had a long history since our forming as a group to fight White Supremacy and to fight the injustices that are happening on the grounds and in the greater Charlottesville Community. For us as a group who weve been talking about these issues for a long time and people have really thought that we were crazy and really didnt believe us that we were exaggerating, that we were blowing things out of proportion, being snowflakes, all the things that people are labelling students as these days, and we did an action right after the donald trump election where we disrupted a university of virginia Board Meeting where we were requesting for the Police Officers, uva Police Officers who were using uva you know, their police cars and their pa announcements to say donald trump things like make America Great again and taunting students. We went into that meeting to disrupt and ask them, you need to fire those police, like you cannot use School Property to promote this message of hate. We went in there and asked them to protect our students, protect our workers and protect the people that go to the school. There were threats of, you know, immigration bans and deportation and at that time the ban wasnt out yet so people were like thats so outlandish, what are you guys talking about. This was in november right after the election. After we had a meeting with president sullivan and a bunch of students, we were all talking about the racial injustices that have happened to a variety of students, and i think for her it was a time for her to step up and actually acknowledge and take accountability for what was happening at uva and what was happening on the grounds. Unfortunately, as uva administration always does, they kind of take the lightweight out. They dont address things head on. From then on i would say things just kind of spiraled out of control. In late spring there was like an event at the Batten School and a group of some of the same people that were involved in july 8th and involved in august 12th, those same people came to uva grounds touting stuff about racial injustice, saying no immigrants, no refugees, all these things about white lives matter. This was on uva grounds in late spring. A small group of students and Community Members went out there to confront them and to tell them that we welcome everyone had are, th here, that were about inclusiveness and diversity, and again the administration didnt address the violence that happened on that day. People were pushing students, hitting students, saying nasty racial slurs and the university did nothing about it. They didnt say anything, they didnt stand up for the students. So to me silencing people, as ibi was saying, to keep saying ignore things, dont pay attention, dont go to events, this is happens. You allow them on grounds, you write city permits and this is what happens. So i think this is a really great time for us to reflect and for us to take uva and the city of charlottesville honestly, take accountability for what youve allowed and try and find ways to move past it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tenisha Hudson who among us is the only native of charlottesville. Has been active in the community for a variety of issues, criminal justice issues, housing issues, issues are poverty. Tenisha was there early in the morning. Why dont you share what your experience was. I was out early in the morning with the clergy group. I had the honor and the privilege to stand beside dr. Cornell west. We arrived about 8 00 that morning and we were standing with basically our toes kind of touching the sidewalk facing the emancipation part. So there was a setup with barricades. There were two barricades, so in between the barricades is where the police stood. Behind the second barricade is where the neo nazis were supposed to enter the park and stand. Whoever created the entry points basically had it set up so that the neo nazis, altright, whatever you want to consider them, i consider them a hate organization, had it set up where they came directly past us who had a permit to stand there. The hate started early in the morning. About five or six of them would walk past and lower their flags to like tap you in the head, the flag would wave across your face. They had their news groups there asking people, oh well, do god let gays into church, do god li like queers . We continued to sing and chant spirituals, sing gospel, just trying to really not focus on them. Around about 9 30, 10 00, things had gotten really, really, really bad. Now, i know personally a few of the officers on the Charlottesville Police department, so i took it upon myself to walk up to the barricade where they were standing and ask them, are you guys going to step in at any time because people are being very violent. Clearly theyre violating the law. What theyre doing is against the law. Theyre assaulting people and youre standing right here being a witness to it. They said well step in if we need to. I just want to touch on something that one of you ladies said about uva. I said this in the vice news video. I interviewed on the vice news video, and nobody is specifically coming out and stating that White Supremacy is wrong because we have to remember the legacy of the confederacy. Virginia is a state that has always decided to do what it wanted to do. Brown versus the board of education was 1954. Virginia didnt integrate schools until 1959. So being a native and at my age i can see that things have not changed since the 60s or even before jim crowe era. This is the rhetoric of virginia. This is the rhetoric of charlottesville. They were not invited there. They felt comfortable being there and slowing this violence all over the place and embracing this place as the heart of supremacy which is totally wrong. And then we have a City Government as well as a city Police Department, as well as a state Police Department that actually embraced everything that they stood for that day. They did nothing. You had people with their heads leaking from the side. One lady had to leave to go get stitches. She got stabbed with a flag pole. They ran out of the barricades to attack people and ran right back in the barricades the whole entire time the police were standing there. I mean, its just its no way to really paint the picture any other way except that they have an entire government that stands behind them and thats why theyre okay with setting up these meeting spots or setting up these torch Lighting Events anywhere that they feel comfortable in doing it because they are protected. Being a longtime citizen of charlottesville, ive seen so many instances where one of the gentlemen that represented this group has been involved with several Assault Charges and every time he goes to court it gets pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. But the moment somebody assaults him, theyre in court. Theyre being seen in front of the judge. Its not right. Its unlawful. And everyone that sees this, if you consider yourself a person that believes right is right and wrong is wrong, then you cannot make excuses. We are living in some very high racial times right now like the racial tension is very deep. It has always been deep. Its just been hiding inside policies that only affect certain people, black people, arab people, islamic people, mexican, hispanics. It doesnt matter who you are or what you are. They feel like if you do not look like them, you do not belong here. At the same time they also forget to embrace the fact that our ancestors built this place, so we have just as much of a right to be here as anybody else. Thats pretty much all i have to say about charlottesville. We would of course be remiss if we didnt mention the most horrific thing that happened that day which youve probably all read about which was the murder of Heather Heyer with a car and the injury to at least 19 people at that scene and i think another 15 or 16 elsewhere. I know there was a total of over 30, but we had somebody killed purposely by an automobile and it looked like he wanted to kill a lot more. I just also want to mention a couple of other things. Its worth noting, i have been a critic of the Police Department and i also ran for Commonwealth Attorney which is the District Attorney there. A week before the election i was arrested on the complaint of one of these neo nazis that i had put my hand on him. Just to show you where the Police Department was at, they not only took that complaint but they came and arrested me at 12 30 in the morning to take me to jail. Once i got to jail i finally did see a magistrate and i eventually got released and im going on trial on october 23rd on this charge. But that will give you an indication that the Police Department is split in many ways. I dont agree that theyre all in favor of the nazis or the White Supremacists, but youve got to understand a lot of those Police Officers come from rural virginia where that is still an important part of peoples socalled heritage and livelihood. But i want to go back to the panel and ask them very briefly if you can extrapolate from your experience, what do you think this reflects about whats happening in America Today . Were all at risk here in this room by nature perhaps just because of our religion or the color of our skin. Its a lesson thats universal. Were looking at this all around the world, but what does it say about whats happening in america . Give it a shot . Anybody. I think what it says about america is we really have some changes to make. I think that we need to search for truth. I think the truth needs to be revealed. I think that we need to accept that there has been a lot of wrong done to a lot of different people. Africanamericans especially but not just africanamericans. I think it started with us 400 years ago. It didnt end there. We have an islamic ban. We have, we dont want hispanics to come here. We have so much going on in america right now that we have to change this and the only way to change it is we have to have discussions that we dont want to have. If it means that you have to not deal with a Family Member that believes that this is right, then thats something that youre going to have to eventually face. We have some policies to change. We know that some of the policies thats been created has been to hinder and leave certain cultures and certain races behind and very stagnant where they cannot move forward. The Washington Post just posted that africanamericans are making the same amount of money as 2000. Thats unacceptable, very unacceptable. We work three times harder to get promotions in positions that were in. You know, we have a mass incarceration issue that we need to focus on. How we move past putting all of our men in prison. We have education that needs to be really reformed. Its been reformed for well over 100 years but it hasnt truly been reformed. It needs to be blended and we should learn who we are as africanamericans. Black history did not start with slavery, and thats a very vivid fact that thats a great starting point and a vivid fact that we need to teach our children so that we know that there were great africanamericans in this world that did some great things. So that we too can grow up and feel like we can become who they are instead of learning that Christopher Columbus was the first person to discover america. We need to stop the banking discrimination, you know, the average amount of homeownership in africanamericans is dwindling down. We have bank discrimination. If i go into a bank to get a loan and my best friend whos white goes into a bank to get a loan, shell get a better Interest Rate than me. These are the things that we really have to focus on if we really want to make america the country that it is, we have to start with some of these policies that have affected certain communities for a very long time. We need policy makers to understand environments before they create policies. I couldnt tell a rich person how to manage their money, and i couldnt tell a rich person who investments to make. That just doesnt make sense. Im not rich. Im far from it. So we need people that understand these environments in order to create policies and then they need to work with people that have the money, that have the access. And then speaking on money, we need to understand that money should not get you the white house at all. You should have to earn your position. You should not be able to buy your way into anything. The question was really what do you see as the impact of this event or this series of events in terms of what it reflects about where america is at . Its really unfortunate that we had to witness and that we had to be there during this time and i think it was almost an explosion and a crack of sort of the facade that weve been living under. Whether its people thinking we live in a post Racial Society or whether its people thinking that income equality is greater or whether we believe that we had a black president and automatically all these other people of color were automatically put into positions that are better. So i think this event just really displayed like this is the United States of america. Having nazis, having neo nazis, having White Supremacists, having the kkk walking down our street, i mean, this is it. And i think i mean, its disturbing to think about seeing those images again. Its disturbing to go through that car attack. It was almost just like a slow motion sort of turn of events of like this is where were living. Watching the police watch that car attack, watching you know, you have the national guard, you had tanks. They were all standing around. This is something im just so mad about in terms of the media is just really not getting the point of the lack of, you know, interference that the police played. They watched this entire weekend happen. Like, the police were just on the sidelines. They were just observing. I was watching my friend get put into an ambulance. I watched her get hit by a car and the police just stood there like nothing, like nothing happened. I think this is a time for us to really reflect and really talk about this is america. We can analyze as much as we want about how donald trump got into the presidency and this goes back into the roots of the Peoples Party in 1890 where the sort of White Christian resentment started with societal changes, economic changes. You have immigrants coming in. You have the black people, and you have the end of slavery. You have jim crowe. You have reconstruction when there was a time when black people were Holding Office and moving into positions of power and wealth. And so weve been living in this time of we have these monumental civil rights legislation and we think things are getting better. We have schools that are integrated. We have this, we have that, we have a black president , and then all of a sudden we have nazis marching down charlottesville which is supposed to be the happiest town in america, right . They were voted that. So i think what happened in charlottesville is a time for us to recommends that we have not made the post racial advances that we have thought that we have made. We have not, as a society, really changed that much. There have been small advances but on a societal level, nothing has changed. The fact that neo nazis and kkk people in hoods, people wearing the rebel flag, people who want to literally kill you walking down the street and theres nothing you can do about it and you live here, you went to school here and theres nothing you can do. That feeling is something that we thought wed never experience in our lifetime and were going back to a time when that is true and thats not to say that, you know, White Supremacy is on a resurgence but its been here. Were just seeing it in different forms. You see it in jim crow, in mass incarceration, the war on drugs, you see it in economic violence. Its the daily violence that i think we need to now focus on now that weve seen this huge explosion and this facade has been taken down. Sg i think one question ive been reflecting on, i think charlottesville also represents like a juncture in how we view the interaction between the first and the second amendment. It was really chilling to walk around on august 12th and see like i had to carry one of my patients through a massive militia that was just kind of standing in an alleyway and blocking the whole alleyway and i had no other way to get my patient out of there so i just walked through them but they were all heavily armed, like this independent militia, not affiliated with police or anything. So i think that is something that we really need to, like, legal scholars need to start reconciling and the general public needs to start reconciling what does it mean for free speech when some people using their free speech are also armed and very heavily armed and that is one reason why police, at least in their official statements, have noted that this is the reason why they chose like a stand down strategy is because theres rumors that they had weapons around the city. The police were standing back and letting people basically fight it out in the streets because they didnt want to start like they thought their intervention would start some kind of massacre. So, yeah, i guess the question is why was that even allowed to happen in the first place . Like why did you it all goes back to like virginias very lax gun laws. So we need to be thats one thing ive been reflecting on is that interaction between freedom of expression and the right to be armed, especially as it refers to not just individuals but people who are working in groups together, like these huge militias who assembled together on the 12th. Then the second thing that i think this event is emblematic of as well is this fake news and alternative facts and its been really surreal to watch the story of charlottesville unfold in the Mainstream Media in a completely different way than the way that i experienced it. Sometimes it feels really powerless when its like the narrative thats being told by the media is incorrect and its false and its fueling these kinds of assumptions, like for instance trump saying theres many sides or that we didnt have a permit when, in fact, we did have multiple permits for a couple of the parks. So just like basic facts are just not even out there and that is really concerning to me and its like alternative facts is something that i was aware of and that living in a socalled post truth world but its been very surreal to actually live it and feel like im screaming into the void, like no, thats not actually what happened. So how can we Start BuildingGrassroots Media efforts where were no longer relying on Mainstream Media to tell our story but we have to be the ones to be saying what actually happened on the ground. I can tell you our experiences since then has been many more people in charlottesville are much more conscience now about the issues being discussed right here today that go way beyond nazis, ku klux klan, altright, White Supremacists and so on. If anything goods come out of that its been this consciousness that seems to be growing among people who otherwise werent involved. One of the things that was very scary was the uva center for politics did a survey and although very, very small percentage of people from the general area of charlottesville support the nazis, somewhere like 38 believe that white people are under attack in this country. Which is Pretty Amazing when you think about white people control everything in the country, that theyre the ones under attack. Thats an incredible lie thats been perpetrated by the altright and the nazis to say that, oh, were the victims. Its amazing. They claim to be the victims when they were the ones there with assault rifles and submachine guns and all kinds of other weapons. Now id like to open it up to the people here to ask questions of the panelists. You know weve got some articulate people here so please ask some good questions. I am just amazed. Thank you so much for being here and discussing this thing. This is very important to our society, to america. Where do you see civilization is going, the current civilization is going to be from this . If we are going to fight each other, what about america . Arent we are all americans and america itself. Why we are dividing america . Thank you. I think if things keep going as usual and the same people keep getting into power and the same institutions keep producing the same results, then i think were going to go down a very bad course. But i think the alternative is that people who understand people who can talk to people who have human value for other people who actually care about people, theyre the ones who start to take reign of power, who become politicians, who become, you know, the ones running institutions. I dont see any way of change if were not the people who are going to make that change. And its been surreal experiencing an education at the university of virginia, and what i see there is universities are like that production like this is where it all starts. So if were producing the same type of people in universities who then fall into the same political positions who then n run institutions and who run the United States, if we dont stop that cycle were not going to stop the violence thats happening. What were being taught in universities is to continue that, not to break that cycle, not to have a radical agenda and curriculum that teaches peoples history and people in power and how do we get out of this mess. Its not just the United States. Its happening everywhere. How do we get out of this mess. How do the same people who are taking reigns of power who are manipulating everyone else in the world, dividing people through economic issues, through race, through gender, through Sexual Orientation manipulating everyone else, keep doing the same thing over and over again. So i think if we dont take the reigns of power then the same things are going to keep happening. I also want to thank all of you for being here. Its maiamazing to hear it. I currently live in chicago which as you know its the most segregated city in america. Over the last three years its just been incredible to see how much chicago has changed and in some ways stayed the same and when charlottesville happened there were so many movements that we just wanted to like feel your pain and give you our hearts and our hearts so much with you in charlottesville from chicago. But my question to you because i know you said the university hasnt really done anything since or made any statements since but have you seen the Legal Community or any policy makers within the community or even from outside charlottesville and from the general virginia public come and like try to intersect these grassroots movements that are so powerful and that resonate with so many people in so many places in this country . Im going to follow up to her question as well but it kind of answers yrs. I think accountability is important and i think we live in a time where no one wants to be accountable for wrongdoing. I think no one wants to say, hey, i was wrong. You know, we can get over being wrong sometimes. What we cant get over is to continue to be lied to and for government not to be transparent and tell us whats really happening. And i think thats one of the issues that were dealing with in charlottesville is we have a City Government as well as the university, president sullivan, who has not been transparent. So ill give you just a little timeline of events that happened. The university was notified at 3 00 p. M. That this march was going to take place at 7 00. Ladies, you can correct me if im wrong. 9 30, sorry. So they were notified at 3 00 that it was going to take place at 9 30. Had they notified the city of charlottesville or the city of Charlottesville Police department, i think that people could have made some type of action to try to contact the judge maybe at home that had okayed the permit or did something to stop the permit prior to saturday morning. So we had an Unlawful Assembly take place friday at 9 30. Nobody made any phone calls. Nobody did anything. So accountability is huge. And from our governor all the way down to our senator, all the way down to our mayor, all the way down to our city council, no one wants to take accountability. Jeff and i have been at every City Council Meeting since this has occurred. No one wants to take accountability. Its frustrating because you owe it to your tax paying citizens. Everyone wants the people that defended charlottesville to feel bad. Nobody is going to allow a stranger to come into their home and destroy their home without putting up a fight. If you do, maybe you just dont love your home that much. But we love charlottesville enough that it was we had to do it because we saw it coming. Was it two years, jeff, we saw this coming . About two years it started, we saw this coming. So accountability is huge. If someone would have taken the accountability or took the initiative to even make one phone call, i think it would have prevented heather from losing her life. Had one Police Officer stepped up and said, listen, this is wrong, this is not what we stand for watching violence right in our presence, because in a black community and im pretty sure you know from watching the news in chicago, the police dont mind going into a black community and kicking the door down or shooting somebody in a car, unarmed person or shooting an unarmed child playing in the park with a toy gun. Weve seen this live on tv when they dont mind, when theyre afraid of our blackness but youre not afraid of someone that looks just like you. So accountability is all i can really say. In terms of legal action what you were asking, in terms of external groups, im not sure that theres been a lot and you can speak to this about tim heefy who is doing the yeah, so city council has asked for a security audit and the university of virginia is also doing an audit but this goes again back to transparency and accountability. If the city is paying this person hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the audit, especially someone who used to be a former attorney, is that truly independent, is that truly a Third Party Review . We kind of think that theyre probably just going to keep tell the city Council Things that they want to hear. Thats whats kind of happening in terms of legal action. So the last City Council Meeting monday tuesday i stood up and i said that i was very disappointed with the city for lying to the public and saying that tim heefy was doing this. They call it an independent investigation of the events that occurred. Tim heefy was a western disattribute attorney for the federal courthouse on main street. He was also responsible for sentencing a young man that was born and raised in charlottesville to two life sentences and ten years. They were charged under the rico law. None of these young man had enough money to pay for an attorney, yet charged criminal charges that people like john g gotti and other mobsters actually went to jail for. And we questioned, you guys say this is an independent investigation when clearly its a conflict of interest. Hes worked closely with the city of Charlottesville Police department, the city of charlottesville Commonwealth Attorneys office, the drug Area Task Force which in charlottesv that arrests young africanamerican men for drug charges, and they continue to say that this is independent. The review should not have been by anybody in charlottesville related to anything that occurred in charlottesville at all because its a conflict. They continued to say that they asked this man to do this when jeff can speak on the request that he pulled, they didnt ask him to do it, he offered. Ill let jeff speak on the rest. Theres not much to say. Simply, hes a former u. S. Attorney from the Western District which is he was located in charlottesville. He put lots of people in jail for these mandatory sentences which are off the wall. He believes in the death penalty, and hes worked closely with the city of charlottesville. On the day after this incident, he sent an email to the mayor who he knows well and who he provided Financial Support to in his election as well as the city manager saying what you all need is an independent investigation. And guess what, im the best guy in the world to do it. Im only going to charge you 550 an hour for anybody in the firm who works on it, and thats a steep discount from my normal fee. Now, theres nobody in charlottesville who gets a normal fee of 540, no less his normal fee of 1,000. That speaks to the class of people who are running charlottesville and whose interests are being protected which are essentially the professional class and the developer class. But i wanted to point out something that i thought was very frightening. Let me come back to that later. It looks like you have four options here. Number one, the mighty pen. You got to keep this thing going in articles, books, whatever. You have the power of the purse. You have to put your money in like as soon as the university of virginia loses money or any of the the town loses money or the developers, theyre going to look at whats going on. You have the power of the vote. You have to get out there and vote. You have to organize. You have to run for things. Then you have the power of the voice. You got to go out there and protest all the time. Look what happened in massachusetts. The White Supremacists showed up. They cancelled their thing because 25,000 people showed up against them. They were frightened. Theyre cowards. You have four ways, and money speaks loud. Voice, you know, bad publicity speaks loud. Your vote, thats one thing we have in this country is a vote. You can use it, very powerful. Then again, go out there and protest. People dont like it when the city is protesting constantly. So there are a lot of protests that happen. Theres a lot of groups, surge, standing up for racial justice, the local naacp chapters, the black lives matter, charlottesville black lives matter. Theres a lot of people that protest but to touch on the money, when youre controlled by money and you can easily kind of buy your way into things, its hard to do. One thing about charlottesville, im born and raised from charlottesville and one thing that i can say about charlottesville is 30 years ago places that people wanted to develop and wanted to move to, they were stopped. They werent allowed to do it. Then once the big money come in, they were able to do it. So again, our fight is a little bit harder in charlottesville because were ran by were a Rich Community thats ran by rich people and its also ran by the university. [inaudible] theyre worried about this stuff going around. The more you write about it, am i as a parent going to say go to uva, no, you can go to harvard or ideyale or someplace east better. I understand what youre saying, maam, but as jeff pointed out how the police work, the most thats been reported on uva negatively has been yearly love, her being killed by the hughley guy, and hannah graham. So a lot has occurred at uva to dwindle down the nebs umbers of people attending this school. But when you have a police force thats protecting the university, thats not reporting all that happened, its more crimes that occur in the university than the city of charlottesville, but youll never hear about it because its kept [inaudible] i completely understand what youre saying. I completely understand what youre saying but i need you to understand that being born and raised from charlottesville, when the Daily Progress is ran by money, when nbc 29 is ran by money, they will paint a picture. You know, we do need our own networks. We need our own newspaper. We need people to invest in us so we can have these things to counter off [inaudible] were going to let someone else ask a question. Id like to add something about the university thats bothered me a lot. The University Set up a committee to deal with the question of slaves having worked at the university. Out of that has come the fact that 5,000 slaves built that university. The response of the university has been were going to build a memorial. When you say to them, how about some back pay, just back pay, im not talking about reparations, im talking about back pay for people who built the university, oh, no, we cant do that. Why not . This is a university with a 5. 5 billion endowment 7 . 7 billion endowment, i think the largest public endowment in the country and they will not talk about helping the people who built that university. Pardon . There was a grant from the kkk in the 1920s probably which theyve now agreed to devote to help the people who were hurt by the kkk. For what thats worth. In i think 1921 theres records that the kkk had given uva a grant of 1,000 which they then converted after a lot of student and faculty outcry upon hearing of this, of this grant, they calculated that in todays dollars its equal to 12,000, and then they reinvested that in the medical funds. But i had a friend who was very seriously injured by the car attack. Shes incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expens expenses, so uva is kind of putting on a show of these kind of Symbolic Solutions where its like, oh yeah, well put the 12,000 into medical expenses, when in fact, they need to be doing a whole lot more than that. They dont have to charge anything. Id like to talk a little bit about the psychology of our nation. We can go into all the details and i cant imagine what a horrific experience youve all been through. I mean, thank you for being here and telling your story. Weve been talking about how important it is to tell the truth and the story. I think as a nation that has committed atrocities, that we have never really taken responsibility for, from almost eradicating the native people, from slavery, from the japanese internment, i mean, it goes on and on. If a nation does not take responsibility and teach schools, our history, our true history, we wont be able to change something. The only thing i can say about having trump as president , its not like he created this. He flushed it out. Its like now im the table and maybe the hope we can hope for is that enough people will be so outraged that they say oh, my god, i didnt realize this was still happening. So thats my hope for not only charlottesville but for our whole country. And i know that germany, for example, teaches in their School System about the holocaust, about what the nazis have done. We do not teach that. We dont teach anything, frankly. The other thing is, looking at the white supremacist, its the fear of other, whether its arab americans or muslims or latinos or africanamericans and thats what also needs to be addressed. So i think we talked earlier about what we need to talk about is get back to dont we all believe in dignity and respect and fairness. How do you see that applying to all of us as americans. So just keep the hope up and good luck. Im a big believer in the truth and believe we will never get anywhere without the truth. Having grown up as all of us did i guess in america, i know how many myths i was taught about america that simply were not the truth. Its those myths that have become an idealogical center for a lot of people in our country and they refuse to give up their myths. Lets make America Great again. When was it great . For whom . Lets bring democracy back. When did we really have a democracy . When did fully half of the population exercise their right to engage in the power of running government. None of those things are really true and we need to undo those myths in order to have those conversations about what the real life is and schools have to be teaching the truth about america. The notion that politicians have which i find strange because i dont think its to their benefit which is they will not talk about the truth and then you have a politician who talks about the truth and only some people can listen to that. So yes, we do need to do that and we do need to be conscious also of whats going on in the rest of the world and unmask you know, we have a number of us supporting a candidate for city council whose slogan is unmask the illusions. Those are the kinds of illusions youre talking about and the kind of illusions that we face with our City Government. Charlottesville, according to them, is a world class city for all of its citizens. 35 of the people in charlottesville struggle every day to put enough food on the table. Is that what we call a world class city . But thats the myth that goes on today by our professional classes in charlottesville and places like that. Seems to me if you opened up and said, listen, i was wrong, i certainly would be more engaged with somebody who admitted their mistakes as well as their successes. Could i ask its been such a heavy hour and i really appreciate it. Im kind of curious, you who were undergraduates at the university of virginia, is it a little bit more hopeful inside the undergraduates . In other words, are undergraduates not selfsegregating, are they in fact talking to each other, not living in their own little bubbles . Are people trying to make it better, or is it as gloomy as Everything Else ive heard for the last hour . My job now is i organize students with the virginia student power network, so the students who i work with ive seen like, especially after the events of august 12th, there has been a greater swell of students who were i think really politicized by those events and who previously may not have given a thought to politics or student activism who are now trying to engage with that. So ive seen way more students than we ever dealt with while organizing in undergrad. So to me thats very heartening that more and more students were shocked by those events and realize that now is the time to get involved and work on, for instance, groups like the Living Wage Campaign at uva. As jeff noted, 35 of the Charlottesville Community is struggling in some way and a lot of those folks in fact, its interesting that in charlottesville the rate of poverty is higher than the rate of unemployment people are working but theyre not getting paid enough. So weve got and the university of virginia is one of the largest employers in Central Virginia and they are not paying their low wage workers enough to survive in charlottesville, especially with rising housing costs. And those students who are now getting into activism, i see a lot of hope for the general student body. I still think there is kind of like a hierarchy within the student body, kind of the culture of political elitism in virginia still definitely lives on in the student body. So we are trying to break that. Not to be gloomy, but on she was saying there, there are a lot of students that are now more involved and more attracted to student activism. But theres also another side of activism which is the right wing. Theres been a resurgence of the other side of student activism whether its Young Americans for freedom or turning point usa or all these other student groups that are now on the wagon of free speech. There are posters all around uva. Theres this new Group Identity which is like a White Nationalist group that is posting. You know, people are getting braver in terms of expressing their racial injustices to people. So there is a side of hope in terms of people being more attracted. But then theres the other side of people having more audacity and being more comfortable in saying how racist they are and saying its free speech. They have the right to do this and say things that hurt a large majority of students at the university. I do see hope, but i also do see a resurgence of student activists on the right. Thank you for sharing your stories today. Adc whole heartedly understands the intersectionalty of these issues and targeting of both our students, africanamericans, hispanicamericans and arabamericans. What could be your top key recommendations to the university of virginia that they should change within the next physical year in order to address some of the issues you discussed here today . I would say more enrollment of people that dont look like white america. The amount of africanamerican students and you ladies know this as well, has really dwindled down. I think to change that would be to bring more people in thats not the norm. I also believe that the university should invest some money in kind of redoing the history thats being taught even on a college level. I mean it needs to start in elementary school. But on a college level, i think the truth of the university should also be told and that people should know walking into the university what it really stood for. Yes, Thomas Jefferson was a founding father. However, he is a slave owner. And morally that was wrong. And how do we become a more moralistic country. And i think if schools start with that, i think we would get where we need to be. I may not be here, but it will happen. I think, one, really admitting the truths of what happened on august 11th and 12th and july 8th, i think really confronting the injustices. There are a number of instances of things that happened on campus that weve never really taken accountability for and gone head on into issues whether its about race or gender or different types of violence thats happened on grounds. I think really having a conversation with each other and having a president that is willing to have that hard conversation about how do we fix this, how do we go past this. I think recognizing the importance of the Charlottesville Community and stop pushing out people and making it unaffordable for people who are from charlottesville to be able to live in charlottesville. I also think they need to pay their workers a living wage. I would say like what i see the university of virginia doing is like rhetorically expressing condemnation of White Supremacy. But what id like for them to take that a step further and actually materially make changes. Theyre really good at talking about it, but not so good about acting on it. And within those taking action steps, uva also needs to be thinking really critically about democratic governance and what true democratic governance means where its not just a token student representative on a working group where youre actually listening to the student body and not just the student body but all stake holders of the university which includes the people who live in proximity to the university which includes the workers of the university, faculty members, staff. So uva has a tradition of kind of selfselecting people to lead these working groups for every crisis that pops up. And every time we see that they select the same people over and over and over again, the same kind of token leaders. So i would push the university to think about what a truly Democratic University culture could look like. Id like to see the University Fire their Public Relations staff and just answer questions from their heart and tell the truth to everybody. Some students had shrouded the statue of Thomas Jefferson that stands in front of the rotunda in protest about his history of racism and having raped his own slaves. The president of the university condemned those students, referring to Thomas Jeffersons statue as sacred ground and that the students had desecrated sacred ground. Well, to its credit as a result of pressure from the community, the city of charlottesville just changed columbus day to Indigenous Peoples day. In that context i took a look at what Thomas Jefferson had to say about indigenous people. Its not far from the heart of Thomas Jefferson in the declaration of independence. He refers to indian as merciless indian savages. Later on he calls for the extermination of native americans. Now we have a gentleman who professes to be a renaissance man, who was the founder of the university, considered to be the greatest person standing for liberty in American History who believed in genocide of a people. We really havent seen that until the nazis came. Was jefferson a nazi . Probably not. But he shared with the nazis the belief that you could exterminate a people that you didnt like. Weve got to start dismantling these myths and say who people really were. None of these things could possibly have happened at the same time. But these are the kinds of myths that grow up around the person. Its important to undo the myths. Pay workers a living wage. This is unbelievable. There are people working at the university being paid imagine, 7. 25 an hour at a university where the football coach gets 4 million. Now, thats just wrong and something has to be done about it. As i said earlier and i believe the university owes it to the people that were enslaved that built that university to pay lets start with their wages and that can go right back into the communities and to the people who cant afford to live in the communities where they live at the time of liberation. We all know there is a majority Africanamerican Community in charlottesville at the time of liberation. Since that time, its down to under 19 . Something has happened to push black people out of charlottesville and it wasnt good. Id like to thank the panel for being here with us. And just as a programming note, we are now having the art exhibit. We encourage people to go there to check out the art. Its the opening. From there at 7 00 approximately we will have buses that will shuttle us over to the Cultural Center for the evenings reception. The panels are done for today. Tomorrow morning we start at 9 00 p. M. With a Panel Discussion about little syria and it impact on the arabamerican identity and what we can learn from them as a community. I encourage everybody to be here for that. Id like to give a round of applause to our panelists. Ambassadors will discuss Irans Nuclear deal this afternoon and how it will affect neighboring countries. Well have live coverage beginning at noon eastern right here on cspan 3. And this afternoon the Senate Finance committee holds a hearing on the latest republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care act. Two of the bills lead sponsors, senators Lindsey Graham and bill cassidy are scheduled to testify. Cspan 2 will have live coverage starting at 2 00 eastern. A congressional reporter tweeted out these pictures from outside the Senate Hearing room. Organizers say about 200 activists including about 80 in wheelchairs are already outside the room for the Graham Cassidy hearing. This video tweeted out by senator mark warner showing the line of people waiting to get into the hearing room goes from the hart Congressional Office building into the Office Building next door. And an msnbc correspondent sent this hearing. Sent this video. Tonight comcast Senior ExecutiveVice President david cohen talks about telecommunication developments. Whats your take on the Trump Administration and competition . First of all, i feel compelled to say this and Brian Roberts pointed this out last week. We love our company. We post at t acquisition and then Nbc Universal acquisition. We view ourselves as essentially strategically complete. Were not out there saying oh my god, we have to find Something Else to buy. I just want to make that clear. On the other hand, we have never viewed ourself as being foreclosed from the acquisition marketplace either domestically or internationally. Has to be the right deal, has to be something we think enhances the quality of the company, enhances returns to shareholders. I think thiss no secret that overall this president and this administration is likely less hostile to horizontal growth or vertical growth in the Telecom Space and elsewhere. What the constitution says is high crimes and misdemeanors and we define that. Bill clinton got impeached because he lied. Here you have a president who i can tell you and guarantee you is in collusion with the russians to undermine our democracy. Here you have a president who has obstructed justice and here you have a president that lies every day. Thank god that the special counsel is beginning to connect the dots and understand facebooks role in it, social medias role in it. When is the black Community Going to say impeach him . Its time to go after him. I dont hear you. Dont another person come up to me and say you go girl. No. You go. For the past 30 years the Video Library is your free resource for politics, congress and washington public affairs. So whether it happened 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago, find it in cspans Video Library at cspan. Org. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. The European Commission president delivered the annual state of the European Union address to lawmakers in france. He outlined several new proposals including the creation of a european defrs you knense Cyber Security agency. This is just under an hour. Mr. President , honorable members of the european parliament, when i stood before you this time last year, i had the somewhat easier speech to give. It was plain for all to see that our union was not in a good state