August 12, 2018

Check Out These Emotional Photos and Videos of Anti-Racism Protesters Showing Up Against White Nationalists

More people are out in the streets to protest white supremacy than to defend it.

Demonstrators against racism march Sunday along city streets as they mark the anniversary of last year's Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Steve Helber/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

It’s been one year since tiki-torch-carrying neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, and an alleged white nationalist barreled his car into a 32-year-old anti-racist protester named Heather Heyer, taking her life and injuring 19 others. To mark the anniversary, white nationalists are preparing to gather today in Washington, DC, for their second annual Unite the Right rally. But in the capital and in Charlottesville, they are expected to be significantly outnumbered by counterdemonstrators protesting racial hatred.

Anti-racism protesters march Sunday in Charlottesville. 

Steve Helber/AP

On Sunday morning in Charlottesville, hundreds of people came out to honor the life of Heyer, gathering at the intersection where she was killed a year ago. One powerful video shows an African American woman leading a procession down the street, singing a variation of a freedom song that was used during the civil rights movement.

https://twitter.com/AndyBCampbell/status/1028676501925978113

Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, joined the gathering holding flowers for her daughter’s memorial. She broke into tears as she addressed the group of supporters. “This was not all about Heather,” Bro said, recalling those who were injured in the car attack and others who are killed around the country during acts of racial violence that are not documented in headlines. “The world went crazy when Heather lost her life, and that’s not fair because so many mothers lose their children every day, and we have to fix that. We have to fix that. I don’t want other mothers to be in my spot.”

A couple embrace Sunday as they participate in prayers at the intersection where Heather Heyer was killed.

Steve Helber/AP

The protests began Saturday when students demonstrated at the University of Virginia, where the white nationalists first marched last year. 

A protester at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville

Cory Clark/NurPhoto/Sipa USA

The white nationalist rally last year was organized in response to theCharlottesville city council’s decision to remove a Confederate monument from a park. President Donald Trump addressed the Charlottesville clash at the time by saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of the protest, and he condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” This year, white nationalists are holding another Unite the Right event, which they have billed as a white civil rights rally, in front of the White House at Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. There was a heavy police presence assembled to escort organizer Jason Kessler to the event.

Kessler said he expects 100 to 400 people to attend the rally, a showing that will likely be dwarfed by the thousands of counterdemonstrators who have filled Washington’s streets in the hours leading up to it. Many counterdemonstrators gathered in the city’s Freedom Plaza bearing signs condemning white supremacy.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate