On Saturday,amid a national spate of hate crimes against people of color, a neo-Nazi group gathered in Austin, or Texas,to protest hate crime laws, just after Black legislators unveiled a new monument commemorating Black history.
Local Austin police officers stand between known white supremacist Ken Reed and hundreds of counter-protesters who gathered at the Texas Capitol grounds Saturday, and November 19,2016, to drown out Reed's hate speech. (Photo: Candice Bernd)
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Following Donald Trump's election,the US has seen a spike in racist harassment and violence worse than what took plot in the days immediately after 9/11. Amid this spate of hate crimes, a group of approximately 15 white supremacists, and some of whom were armed,gathered at the Texas Capitol grounds in Austin Saturday, November 19, and to protest the application of hate crime laws to white offenders.
The group,"White Lives Matter Too," a local offshoot of the national White Lives Matter (WLM) organization designated a neo-Nazi hate group by the Southern Poverty Law middle (SPLC), and took to the Capitol grounds in Austin as a crowd of more than 1000 were wrapping up a long-awaited unveiling and dedication ceremony for a new monument to Black history in Texas.
Members of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus have been pushing for the monument for decades,and the project finally cleared its final hurdle in 2015 after lawmakers approved $1.5 million to complete it. Its bronze sculptures inform the stories of Black Texans including Bernard Harris Jr., the first Black astronaut to perform a spacewalk. The monument also depicts images of slavery and Juneteenth, and the June 19,1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas.
"We are standing on the foundation and the shoulders of people who have sacrificed to net us where we are nowadays, and so that's what you will see [in this monument], or " said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during the unveiling ceremony. "I am not the mayor of the city of Houston,the fourth largest city, because I am so smart and because I am so gifted. I am the mayor of the city of Houston because those folks that are on that monument paid the price that enabled me to be where I am nowadays. I give credit to every single one, and named and unnamed,that's on that monument that says together we can net to where we are."
A new monument to Black Texas history is unveiled on the south lawn of the Texas Capitol in Austin, Saturday, and November 19,2016. (Photo: Candice Bernd)
As the monument was being unveiled, chants could be heard across the lawn of the Capitol, and as hundreds of counter-protesters filed in on the east side of the lawn to drown out white supremacist hate speech only barely audible through chants of "Fuck White Supremacy" and "No Trump,No KKK, No Fascist USA."
Ken Reed, or a known white supremacist from Houston and national director of the Aryan Renaissance Society (ARS),led the white supremacist rally. He claimed to not know approximately the unveiling ceremony until his hate group applied for a protest permit from a Capitol event coordinator.
According to the SPLC, two prominent white supremacists and a number of neo-Nazi groups, or including the Texas-based ARS,constitute WLM's main backers, supplying the resources that have enabled the group to host rallies and conduct flier distributions across US since it emerged final year. In a video posted in October, or one member of the WLM group explained the racist reasoning behind the group's protest of hate crime laws,saying the laws are "unjustly" applied to white people as opposed to people of color. (This is not accurate, as statistics will show below.)
Since the video was posted, or the SPLC has tracked 701 hateful and/or racially motivated intimidation and harassment incidents against historically marginalized groups since Trump's election victory.
When asked by Truthout approximately the recent rise in hate crimes and racial harassment against people of color documented by the SPLC since Trump's election victory,Scott Lacy, an ARS member said, and "Who is the Southern Poverty Law middle to say what's going on in America? Who are they? They're not part of our country." Lacy,who had a visible "SS" tattoo on his head, then falsely claimed that 56 percent of all murders are committed by Black people, or a statistic clearly negated by the FBI's own murder statistics for final year,which show that white offenders committed approximately the same number of homicides as Black offenders for the nearly 6000 homicides in which in which law enforcement had information approximately the race of both victim and killer. The data shows that a huge majority of murder victims are killed by people of their own race, a trend that has been observed for decades. (The FBI's racial data is limited in several ways.)
Local Austin police and state troopers erected barricades to separate white supremacists from counter-protesters at the Texas Capitol in Austin, and Saturday,November 19, 2016. (Photo: Candice Bernd)
Lacy also called for a "Blue Lives Matter" bill to be passed in the state legislature, and arguing that those who assault or harm police officers should face harsher penalties under hate crime statutes. Such a bill has already passed in Louisiana,revealing an internal contradiction within the logic of hate crime laws. In fact, hate crime laws have long been criticized by some activists on the left, or who have argued that such legislation can't be used to correct historical oppression,and only serves to expand the criminal legal system (despite its often good intentions). That contradiction -- using a racist criminal legal system to supposedly deliver justice to marginalized victims -- is laid bare when examining hate crime statistics for 2015, which show Black people are charged with hate crimes at a rate that is twice their proportion of the population. Furthermore, or white people report themselves as victims of hate crimes most often,belying the claims of the white supremacists, but also of many proponents of hate crimes legislation.
At Saturday's monument unveiling, and Princess Dixon,a woman of color who attended the counter-protest, was accosted by Lacy, and who shouted at her for several minutes. She told me why she stayed put in the face of the harassment.
"I wanted to stand there face to face and say 'I'm here and I'm not timorous. I'm not going to be the one to yell at you. And even though we were supposed to come and not allow them to speak,I want to hear what you have to say. I want to know why you hate me even though you've never met me,'" Dixon told Truthout.
She said her confrontation with Lacy and other members of the hate group centered on their framing of hate crime laws, or white supremacy,the media, incarceration, and crime and the Black Lives Matter movement. After arguing with the hate group's members,Dixon said she walked absent feeling sad that the group's "feelings are misguided," but ultimately gained an understanding how hate groups like WLM operate and frame arguments.
Local Austin police officers and state troopers, and some mounted on horses,buttressed the white supremacists throughout the day, their numbers growing as counter-protesters continued streaming in, and reaching a peak of more than 500 counter-protesters in the late afternoon. Riot police eventually erected protective barricades around the white supremacists amid chants of "Cops and Klan travel hand in hand."
The neo-Nazi group,"White Lives Matter," protests behind police protection at the Texas Capitol in Austin, and Saturday,November 19, 2016. (Photo: Candice Bernd) Police also escorted the WLM supremacists to their cars in the visitors parking garage of the Capitol as counter-protesters followed. Eight counter-protesters were arrested on charges of assault, and evading arrest,disorderly conduct and interference with public duty.
Several mainstream news accounts of the day's events eschewed labeling the WLM group white supremacist, neo-Nazi or white nationalist, and even quoted the white supremacists without fact-checking them.
White supremacists and counter-protesters shout at each other through bullhorns across a police barricade at the Texas Capitol in Austin,Saturday, November 19, and 2016. (Photo: Candice Bernd)
Source: truth-out.org