turning point in your life. it seems to have set you off on the path you re on now. absolutely. the hate crime, to say the least, definitely changed my life, and the cyber harassment that ensued afterwards continued to do so. i m definitely one of the lucky ones. i m one of the people who have survived. i take it as an obligation and a responsibility to share my story because unlike heather heyer, you know, i m able to share my story as my own person and on my own behalf. luckily heather has her mother, susan and other folks around there to advocate on her behalf but as a survivors and one of the lucky ones, i m sharing my story. what should we understand, obviously you re now a practicing civil rights lawyer yourself. you have been through this process through a very unusual circumstance given what you went through. what should we understand? what should the country understand about this strategy, about using civil litigation, in
which the victim, as the plaintiff goes after the perpetrators through civil litigation to bankrupt them, make them literally pay for what they have done. how should we understand that in terms of its overall effectiveness against these kinds of crimes or behavior, but also what kind of difference it makes to victims? absolutely, so civil litigation is just one of the many tools available to survivors of hate incidents and hate crimes. to be able to bring their perpetrators to accountability. in my suit, we were able to sue three of the individuals who cyber harassed me online as well as the daily stormers parent company, and they were using a novel kind of idea using public accommodations as that avenue, and so basically you re not allowed to discriminate against people because of places of public like schools and hospitals and other places that are accessible to the public. become able to use, you know,
so to his mind, that meant he didn t need to respond to the court anymore or produce any documents demanded by court order. you will be surprised to learn that the court disagreed, oops, i dropped it in the toilet isn t a legal defense to compulsory proceedings. so seven of these guys have already lost the case already by default judgment. three of them are facing fines over $10,000 already as sanctions from the court. and did i mention they re only at the point of jury selection? the thing hasn t even gotten started yet. the point of this litigation overtly is to bankrupt the neo-nazis and white sue prem zitss, the individual leader who is made charlottesville happened, who promised it would be used as an occasion to bring violence in the name of white supremacy, and to terrorize black and jewish people. that s what they did charlottes for, that s how they overtly planned t and that is how they carried it out. holding them accountable for it
litigation and civil remedies as an avenue for people to be able to hold their perpetrators accountable is one of the ways, and being able to see what the lawyers are doing and the charlottesville litigation is really amazing. are you encouraged by what s happening in charlottesville, one of the things that s unique about the case is there is a broad swath of defendants, they re not going after, you know, a single entity, a single defendant who had a key role in organizing those things, it is a murderer s row of neo-nazi leaders, white supremacist organizers, and the organizations that they have been able to cobble together over the years. obviously if this litigation is successful it s going to be a death blow to the groups because they ll never be able to have a dollar to their names. what do you make of that as that sort of broad strategy they re taking, taking on the whole movement all at once. i think it s send ago very strong signal to folks in that movement that survivors wi
one of the things that s unique about the case is there is a broad swath of defendants, they re not going after, you know, a single entity, a single defendant who had a key role in organizing those things, it is a murderer s row of neo-nazi leaders, white supremacist organizers, and the organizations that they have been able to cobble together over the years. obviously if this litigation is successful, it s going to be daect blow to a lot of the groups because they ll never be able to have a dollar to their names. what do you make of that as that sort of broad strategy they re taking, taking on the whole movement all at once? i think it s sending a very strong signal to folks in that movement that survivors will speak out, survivors will use their voices and use every avenue available to them including litigation to hold people accountable. luckily defendants like andrew england have been forced into the shadows because of letgation like the case i was able to bring, like the case th