A melee broke out at the Charlottesville City Council meeting Monday night when angry activists and residents took over the chambers. The angry residents denounced the city's response to the white supremacist gathering earlier this month that left one woman dead. Today's meeting was the first since the August 11 and 12 rallies took place which brought hundreds of white supremacists to the town of Charlottesville. Residents of all ethnicities were furious with the way police handled the situation. They blamed officers for repeatedly not intervening when the protesters and counter-protesters became violent towards one another.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">People demand the release of ejected patrons. <a href="https://t.co/0iLohwThwr">pic.twitter.com/0iLohwThwr</a></p>— Frances Robles (@FrancesRobles) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancesRobles/status/899781111584313344">August 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The violence escalated from people swinging fists and clubs at one another to a man driving his silver Dodge Challenger straight into a crowd killing Heather D. Heyer. The Charlottesville City Council meeting started out today like normal but soon riled up residents began shouting at the city officials for allowing the 'Unite the Right' rally to take happen in the first place. Police in the town hall was forced to remove three people from the chambers prompting the remaining 100 to break out chanting and shaking their fists at city officials. The three people initially removed from the chambers were charged with disorderly conduct. No injuries were reported at the City Council meeting. The people who began shouting during the City Council meeting are faulting city officials simply for doing their jobs.
Free speech is a right in America and if you lawfully apply for a protest to spread your opinion vocally it is within the right of every American to do so, regardless of the cause. Words are not violence. President Trump has come under fire for essentially saying as much, there were members of both sides that day in Charlottesville who was at fault. No one is excusing the white supremacists but there were people inciting violence on both sides. The 'Unite the Right' rally was the only group with a permit to be there. Everyone else there was unlawfully gathered.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/us/charlottesville-council-melee.html
