BuzzFeed: New York lawmaker is proposing a bill to rename Trump State Park for Heather Heyer. https://t.co/Pr6Yn9HpIz
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 6, 2017
Gail Sheehy, at NYMag‘s ladyblog The Cut:
… Before Heather was even on the scene, blows were exchanged, people arrested. In the late morning, a state of emergency was declared and authorities tried to shut down the rally. But no one left — instead marchers on both sides just spread out into different parts of the downtown area. The Virginia National Guard was summoned to back up local police. None of the law-enforcement people seemed to know what to do, though.
Vice later posted a documentary revealing sentiments voiced that day by some of the leading white nationalists at the rally. One of the people Vice reporter Elspeth Reeve spoke with was right-wing podcaster Christopher Cantwell, who said, “I’m trying to make myself more capable of violence!” He told her he wants a president who is “a lot more racist than Donald Trump.”…
Heather arrived downtown shortly before 1 p.m. She was with her friends Courtney Commander and Marissa Blair, both of whom worked with her at a local family law firm. They joined a counterprotest making its way along Water Street. They began chanting rejoinders to the torch-bearing white supremacists who had invaded the city the night before. “Whose streets? Our streets,” the women shouted proudly.
The three women — and virtually all the counterprotesters — wore no offensive clothing, carried no weapons, had nothing in their hands other than cell phones and car keys. Heather was dressed in a plain black tee and pants, with her brown hair braided down her back. She stopped to engage a helmeted female alt-right protester in conversation, asking why she had aligned herself with a hate group of violent white men.
“She says she can’t comment,” Heather called back to her girlfriends. The persistent 32-year-old paralegal tried to draw out the alt-right woman’s arguments, calling on two of her greatest strengths — being a sympathetic listener and a strongly opinionated fighter for social justice. But in this case she wasn’t getting any traction…
Heather Heyer did not fit the profile of black or Jewish radical that white supremacists tend to depict as their enemies. For one thing, Heather was a working-class, white Southerner. As a child she routinely heard storm winds rip the skirting off the single-wide trailer where she was raised by her single mom. Heat would begin escaping, pipes freezing, and wild animals could move in under their home.