On August 12, I had a most unusual day. I awoke at 4am to drive in the dark and fog, from my homr near DC through the beautiful hills of VA to Charlottesville, responding to the invitation from colleagues living in Charlottesville. I joined in an interfaith prayer service \u2013 the great Cornell West was there to speak of Love Over Fear as a response to the invasion of the hate-filled white supremacists into Charlottesville. We were reminded the principles of non-violence presence, and then we paraded a few blocks to bear witness to, to pray for and sing loudly, as the men \u2013 and they were all white men, just a few women \u2013 as the men began to arrive at the park with the statue of Robert E Lee. <\/p>\n
At first, things were relatively calm \u2013 us singing or chanting \u2013 them shouting, the threatening armed militia staying quiet. I enjoyed being with colleagues, talk with our new UUA President and with the great Cornell West. But as the mists of the morning lifted, and the sun grew warm, the atmosphere heated up. Soon there were Black Lives Matter groups, and anti-Fascists marching in \u2013 along with KKK groups, paramilitary gangs, Alt-right Nazi-types. Wave after wave of groups invading the space. The noise level raised \u2013 like thunder. We were surrounded by circles of armed forces \u2013 city police, State police, National guard troops \u2013 and above us the roar of a military helicopter circling us. The shouting turned to pushing. Then things started being thrown \u2013 and soon there was pepper spray and then tear gas. Alt-right troops pushed into clergy lines; Antifas pushed back; drummers added drama.<\/p>\n
I was a witness to a summer storm \u2013 the result of fear and mistrust and hatred spilling out and seemingly washing over the peace and love the 100 clergy present had tried to bring. It became so stormy that the police put on riot gear and demanded we all leave \u2013 pushing all \u2013 some 500 townswomen and men and old folks and young \u2013 into the streets to disperse. <\/p>\n
But the storm didn\u2019t end then. Groups continued to meet and fight in the streets. I was witness to several battles, and walked with young people trying to counter the hatred. I saw people getting hurt, and I saw people helping out. As we know, the intensity peaked when a car drove into a group of people \u2013 killed one, sent 19 others to the hospital. I had left that block only moments before the collision. I had walked and talked with Heather only an hour before that. As I found refuge in a local church, the news came of the tragedy. It was an intense summer storm.<\/p>\n
Linda Olson Peebles (Meadville Lombard MDiv ’97 DDiv ’11)
\nformer UUA Trustee, UUA MFC, UUMA President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On August 12, I had a most unusual day. I awoke at 4am to drive in the dark and fog, from my homr near DC through the beautiful hills of VA to Charlottesville, responding to the invitation from colleagues living in Charlottesville. I joined in an interfaith prayer service \u2013 the great Cornell West was … Continue reading Charlottesville – Rev. Linda Olson Peebles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,9,1010,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocacy","category-anti-racism-multiculturalism","category-featured-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17640"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17644,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17640\/revisions\/17644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}