By Chris Joyner and Marlon A. Walker
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 15, 2020
Protesters
from the left and right ends of America’s political divide squared off
for hours Saturday in the city of Stone Mountain arguing, and at times
fighting, over race, politics and the massive granite carving of
Confederate leaders in the adjacent state park.
The protest drew dozens of heavily armed private militia
from around the state, neighboring states, and as far away as Arkansas.
They were motivated by the taunting of the leader of an all-black militia
who marched on Stone Mountain Park July 4, but they also expressed
their rage over the removal of Confederate monuments, shared conspiracy
theories, and voiced their support of President Donald Trump.
The
militia-backed protesters were met by hundreds of counter demonstrators
eager to shout them down. That group included mainline civil rights
organizations like the NAACP but also far-left anarchists and
socialists, some of whom arrived with assault weapons and were as
heavily armed as the militia.
Though
largely free of serious violence, the protest is the latest in a series
of clashes since 2016 where armed groups have used Stone Mountain as a
backdrop.
Saturday’s
demonstration drew a large police presence from around the metro area
and the Georgia State Patrol, but they stayed on the periphery of the
protests. Unlike some prior demonstrations between extreme right and
left groups where police used overwhelming numbers to separate them,
such as last year’s protest over Super Bowl weekend, authorities allowed
the two groups to approach each other. The strategy lead to several
small-scale fights and regular shouting matches.
There were no arrests, police said.
One militia organizer, Arkansas-based Confederate States III%, had
intended to protest inside the park, but the Stone Mountain Memorial
Association denied their permit, as did the city. When the group
continued with plans to demonstrate there anyway, the park announced
Friday it would close its gates
for the day. Groups of militia scrambled in the hours after the
announcement to come up with a new plan, while counter demonstrators
urged their people to stick with their plan to convene in the city.
Speeches from local NAACP
About 200 people in the
coalition of counter demonstrators began Saturday morning at the gazebo
outside the Stone Mountain Welcome Center on Main Street, listening as
speakers urged the crowd to do what they could to address voting issues,
lending practices and forced evictions. Others urged obliterating the
Confederate monument at Stone Mountain.
Richard
Rose, president of the NAACP’s Atlanta branch, surveyed the sea of
faces of different colors, many standing several feet apart and wearing
face masks because of the current pandemic.
“This is what America looks like,” he said. “It does not look like what’s on that mountain.”
A
man identified as “Brandyn,” a member of the Democratic Socialists of
America, also told the crowd assembled that the same energy used to
organize a march could be used for much bigger tasks.
“The
same way you work together to organize a march, you can get together to
address racism,” he said. “That’s the power we need to see.”
Militia outnumbered
As
the counter demonstrators talked, Chris Hill, a militia leader from
McDonough, and nine of his Georgia Security Force III%, took up a
position behind a barricade about 100 yards away.
From his position behind the barricade, Hill began talked into his cell phone where he was recording video.
“They
will try their best to characterize us as white supremacists,” he said.
Hill said his group was there to defend the Constitution from radical
leftists, while also hitting on a variety of grievances — from gun
control to repeating the concerns of the president that mail-in voting
will result in fraud.
“It’s
straight-up terrorism. People are killing each other over ideology,”
Hill said, resting his arm against an assault rifle. “They are going
against Trump supporters and — dare I say it? — whites.”
Hill’s
militia of 10, vastly outnumbered, was joined by other militias later
in the morning, along with sympathizers who showed up in pickup trucks
festooned with Confederate flags.
Crowd swells before police move in
Police
left the groups of demonstrators largely alone for more than four
hours, and over the course of the morning discipline within the two
opposing groups broke down and led to chaotic scenes of small groups
shouting or shoving one another.
Tracy
Baisden, a Black woman from Atlanta, engaged in a long discussion with a
white man, who only identified himself as Zach, as the man declared his
desire that races remain separate. Like many such face-to-face
encounters, little was settled.
“I think this young man is lost,” Baisden said about Zach.
Militia members sprayed several counterprotesters with insect repellent
or pepper spray, and several individuals on both sides were knocked to
the ground. A counterprotester ripped the face mask from an Associated
Press photographer as the he was attempting document the scene.
The sides recorded video
of one another, and the entire scene was heavily documented by news
photographers, journalists and several documentary filmmakers. Many
participants on either side also live streamed the protest on their
phones.
By midday, the
crowd had swelled to a combined total of more than 500, many of whom
mingled in a chaotic scrum outside the Stone Mountain Methodist Church.
While counter
demonstrators accused the militia members and their supporters as
promoting racism, a Florida militia member who gave his call sign as
“Rick Rat” said his participation wasn’t “a race thing.”
“Everybody
should come together and march on DC and get all the damn Democrats out
of office,” he said. ”What I think they are trying to do is start a
race war.”
Rick then
launched into a version of a popular internet conspiracy theory known as
QAnon and accused an unnamed group of Washington “elites” of being
pedophiles.
“They are killing the kids and selling their organs,” he said.
Around 1 p.m., following
an uptick in fighting between the groups, police marched through
downtown with riot shields and dispersed the crowd. Behind the police, a
unit of the National Guard waited in case they were needed, but the
vast majority of protesters left peacefully. By 2 p.m., downtown Stone
Mountain was quiet.
Stone Mountain police Chief Chancey Troutman said he told the groups they had three minutes to disperse.
”If they didn’t disperse in those three minutes, arrests would have been made,” he said.
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