Image credit: Progress-Index
Support the blue. Here’s a story covered by the (Petersburg) Progress-Index but ignored by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia’s newspaper of record for left-wing causes): Several hundred people gathered in Chesterfield County to support the blue. Remarkably, no rocks were thrown, no windows broken, no cars or buildings torched, and no one was arrested.
Crying Wolf. Up in Alexandria, a group of about 30 assembled Sunday morning assembled in front of the house of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to protest the detention and removal of demonstrators in Portland, Ore., by federal officers, reports the Washington Post. The peaceful protesters — these actually were peaceful — were joined by some of Wolf’s neighbors. Wolf himself was nowhere to be seen, but another group of neighbors lined his lawn with tiny American flags and planted handmade signs saying, “Thank you for your service.”
Wokeness won’t save you from the mob. Meanwhile, Virginia Commonwealth University administrators have learned that no matter how woke you are, you can’t buy off the mob. VCU has gone further than any other higher-ed institution in Virginia to embrace social justice principles, but the university suffered more than $100,000 in damage from 80 windows broken by a predominantly white mob bent on protesting the police and creating mayhem Saturday night.
According to the Commonwealth Times: VCU President Michael Rao said in response: “We are concerned about groups that promote destruction and violence co-opting important social justice reform movements. … Violence against people and deliberate destruction of property are contrary to the values of our community and will not be tolerated.”
Perhaps Rao should rephrase that statement. Deliberate destruction of VCU property is not be tolerated. Turning Lee Circle into a police-free zone and allowing protesters to harass and intimidate neighbors — spray painting graffiti, defecating on lawns, driving down alleyways off Monument Avenue, popping off firecrackers and shooting guns at 2 p.m. — that’s a different story. Perhaps I am overlooking statements they have made, and I’m willing to stand corrected, but I have seen no expressions of indignation or even concern by either Rao or Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney about the plight of homeowners near the statue.
It would be interesting to know the degree to which VCU itself has become an incubator in Richmond of the anti-fascist radicalism of the white nihilists causing so much of the mayhem in the city.
— JAB
