August 16, 2017
EDUCATIONCAREERS Special Edition
photo by r yan M. k elly /d aily p rogressive
A car struck another vehicle near a crowd of antiracist protesters, killing a 32-year-
old woman, Heather D. Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Domestic Terrorism Erupts
in Charlottesville, Virginia
c hrista M c i ntyre
t he p ortland o bserver
In a joint intelligence report released in
May, the FBI and Department of Home-
land Security warned of white supremacist
groups in the United States, saying they
will “continue to pose a threat of lethal vi-
olence over the next year.”
On Saturday, August 12th violence
erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia at
a white supremacist protest against the
removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, the
Confederacy’s top general. The white su-
premacist march called “Unite the Right”
included members of the Ku Klux Klan,
the American Nazi Party and other extrem-
ist groups who travelled from around the
country to the small university town. News
outlets and social media captured the white
nationalists carrying Nazi and Confederate
flags. The groups were described as armed
like a paramilitary force.
by
By afternoon, after clashes with antirac-
ist protestors, 34 people were left injured
and three dead.
20 year old James Alex Fields, Jr. of
Ohio has been charged with second degree
murder. In a statement released from the
city of Charlottesville, Mr. Fields was driv-
ing a Dodge Challenger “at a high rate of
speed,” which hit a number of antiracist
protestors on the street before crashing into
other vehicles, which were pushed into a
crowd of pedestrians. The suspected driver
then slammed the car in reverse and fled
the scene backwards. 32 year old Heather
D. Heyer, a paralegal from Charlottesville
was left dead and 19 more people were in-
jured.
On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Ses-
sions denounced the violence in Charlot-
tesville and described it as an “evil” act
which meets the legal definition of domes-
tic terrorism.
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