Note: This article contains graphic photos of anti-Black violence.
A
white supremacist brandishes a 9mm pistol during the beating of Deandre
Harris on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The attacker
pointed the gun in the face of photographer Zach D. Roberts but backed
down in the face of his camera. (Photo: © Zach D. Roberts 2017)
Don't look away. Four white neo-Nazis are beating a Black man,
crawling on the ground, with their metal poles and a yellow hunk of
lumber. The beating continues -- there's blood on the pavement.
The young victim is Deandre Harris, a special education teacher in
Charlottesville, Virginia. On GoFundMe, which Harris is using to
raise money to pay for his emergency medical care following the beating,
he recounts his own experience of being attacked following his
participation in the counter-protest against the "Unite the Right" march
of white supremacists:
I arrived at Emancipation Park around 11 AM as a counter-protester to
voice my opinion on racial tensions and to literally stand up for what I
believe in. I was only there for a few minutes before I was hit with
water bottles, maced with pepper spray, and had [derogatory] slurs
hurled at me. Just forty-five minutes in to the rally our Gov. Terry
McAuliffe declared a state of emergency to aid state response to
violence. About fifteen minutes or so after that I was brutally attacked
by white supremacists in the parking garage right beside the
Charlottesville Police Station. I was chased and beat with metal poles. I
was knocked unconscious repeatedly. Every time I went to stand up I was
knocked back down.... If it was not for my friends that I came with I
would have been beaten to a pulp. No law enforcement stepped in to help
me. Once I was dragged off to some near by steps I was taken to the
designated area for injured protesters & counter-protesters. My
injuries were too extensive to be treated at the scene so I was taken to
the ER at Martha Jefferson Hospital.
The medical care that Harris received included eight staples in his
head and care for a concussion, ulnar fracture, laceration across his
right eyebrow, abrasions on his knees and elbows, and a chipped tooth.
During the attack on Harris, Zach D. Roberts, an investigative
photojournalist who has been with the Palast investigations team for 11
years, continued to shoot -- even as a white militant raised a 9mm
pistol to his face.
One photo has gone viral internationally. These others we bring you
here because they must be seen. Including, for the first time, the
gunman.
Welcome to Charlottesville, USA. Trump's America, month eight.
White
supremacists beat Black schoolteacher Deandre Harris in a parking
garage in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. (Photo: © Zach D. Roberts
2017)
(Photo: © Zach D. Roberts 2017)
(Photo: © Zach D. Roberts 2017)
According to President Trump, the violence was perpetrated on "many
sides." The only sides I see are the beaters and the beaten; Harris on
the ground with the "alt-right" storm troopers with weapons.
Here is Roberts' report. First, he saw Harris walking down the street
with friends, trading taunts with the white-supremacist demonstrators.
Harris' jibes were hardly fighting words. "Go home! Leave town!"
That's when fists flew and Harris was slammed by one of the white guys
straight into a parking lot barrier so hard the yellow wooden arm broke.
Now Harris fell to the ground, "alone, surrounded by all these white
guys -- and they started beating him with the poles that almost all the
white supremacists were carrying."
In the photos, you can see one white guy picking up the yellow
barrier arm and raising the three-foot hunk of lumber high over his head
before he brings it down on Harris -- who is being kicked by another
white man's boots, while two others bring down metal rods on the prone
man.
And no, that's not a cop on the left in the photo -- that's a
neo-Nazi in full riot gear. (Where were the cops? Good question: this
parking garage is next to the Charlottesville Police Station.)
Harris was saved when some courageous young Black men -- with no
weapons -- ran into the underground garage and the white posse
scattered.
Except for one. The gunman.
He pulled out what looks to be a 9mm pistol, maybe a Glock
semi-automatic, and positioned himself to fire on the rescue squad. But
then he heard the click of Roberts' camera, just three feet away, and
realized he was getting photographed.
Simultaneously, Roberts realized he'd left his bullet-proof vest in
his car. In this strange stand-off, the camera proved mightier than the
bullet: The would-be shooter figured it would be wiser to quickly
conceal the weapon and flee.
Harris "ran into the garage's staircase and collapsed bleeding
profusely from the face," Roberts said. Roberts waited with him and his
protectors for half an hour but no ambulance arrived for Harris or the
other people who were injured.
In
an interview published Sunday on The Root,
Harris said that he is in the process of pressing charges and that his
mother is working with Roberts to identify the racists who attacked him.
"How do you expect the KKK to come to your city to protest, and them not be violent?" Harris told The Root.
The white supremacist attacks on Harris and others this weekend were
not isolated incidents. They are connected to a host of ongoing
structural attacks against Black people in Virginia.
Roberts and I have been working these past four years on a story of
how Trump's henchman, one Kris Kobach, now head of Trump's so-called,
"Election Integrity Commission," conceived of a secretive program to
remove hundreds of thousands of Black Americans from the voter rolls.
Virginia removed an astonishing 41,637 voters based on Kobach's
accusation that they could have voted twice. Not one of the accused was
arrested -- but, you won't be surprised to hear, the list of the
"scrubbed" was filled with African-American names.
And Virginia is removing tens of thousands more with this Jim Crow
tactic -- despite a nominally Democratic Governor, Terry McAuliffe.
Virginia refused us their "scrub" lists. But Roberts obtained a copy
-- half a million names in all -- much to the state's dismay. And those
lists are every bit as obscenely racist and, in the long run, far more
wounding, than the iron rods of the neo-Nazis.
We will be
going back to Virginia on September 9 to the capital, Richmond, to fight against this racist disenfranchisement.
Meanwhile, Harris and others who bore the brunt of the white
supremacist violence in Charlottesville this weekend are continuing to
spread their story and challenging the US public not to look away.
"We will not let this fade & disappear," Harris wrote on his
GoFundMe page. "People are carrying real hate in their hearts for the
Black Community and I refuse to just let it happen."
Greg Palast is the director, and Zach D. Roberts the associate producer, of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
, a film about racial vote suppression and the billionaires behind it.
