Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Charlottesville Mayor Backs Legal Fight Against White Nationalist ‘Freelance Armies’

Business leaders, elected officials and residents in Charlottesville, Virginia, are going to court to try to prevent a repeat of the violence at a white nationalist rally that ripped through town this summer.

Mike Signer, the Jewish mayor of Charlottesville, said he supported the legal campaign to prevent future white nationalist violence — decrying what he called the “freelance armies” that marched through the city’s streets.

“I support [the campaign] as a stand against the disintegration of our democracy, and as a call for us to put a firm close to this horrible chapter in our democracy where people think it’s OK to parade in military outfits in public, to openly threaten violence against other people, to fire weapons into crowds, to beat people in public, and to use a car as a weapon,” Signer said. “This violence is all of a piece, and it can be stopped with the legal relief we are asking for under Virginia’s Constitution and our laws.”

Two separate court cases — one federal, the other state — are targeting “Unite the Right” rally leaders and organizers, like white nationalists Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach, the Washington Post reported. The federal suit seeks monetary damages and a ban on similar gatherings. The state suit targets the private militias that marched down the streets, armed with weapons and clad in military garb.

Signer became a target for “alt-right” trolling online in the days leading up to the August rally, which was organized presumably to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee. Signer initially opposed removing the statue, but changed his position, after the rally, which devolved into violence and resulted in the death of a counterprotester.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.