Listen to Don’s Story

“And it's just odd that that you would bring in or allow to come in a group such as the Klan without incident. But then you turn on your community in that way. I just haven't been able to balance that off in my head.”

- Don Gathers

Don Gathers 

My name is Don Gathers, Charlottesville resident. I'll be happy to tell you about what happened that Saturday, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, on July 8th, 2017. The Klan had come in on that day, and we knew that they were coming. They had a small rally, and many in the community came out to to protest their arrival and their presence here in Charlottesville. As the day progressed, they were shouted down. Their rally failed and the police escorted them in. The police also escorted them out and made sure that they were safe. They then proceeded to, in my my view, turn on the community members who were there and proceeded to try to usher us out of the immediate area. In doing so, they they began attacking and arresting the protesters who were there. They began moving the crowd and they then began shooting tear gas canisters into the crowd. The image that I'm looking at is is an image in the aftermath of that, we're one of our beloved community members. Ms. Rosia Parker was actually hit in the foot with a tear gas canister. And the effects of that are just mind boggling, just numbing, your entire flesh feels like it's on fire. You can't stop the tears from flowing. It's tough to breathe. You're coughing. You're sweating profusely. It's just nasty. And in that moment, I was just trying to help her, to comfort her, to aid her, to try to stop some of the misery and discomfort from the attacks that the police placed upon us. Ironically, about 10 minutes after this image, I myself suffered the direct effects and impact of of tear gas. And it's just odd that that you would bring in or allow to come in a group such as the Klan without incident. But then you turn on your community in that way. I just haven't been able to balance that off in my head. I can happily say that the community came together and bonded and banded together like I haven't seen after this incident. And of course, after the incident, about a month later that we had to endure. But since then, I can see some of the the fracturing once again that is Charlottesville. We can see the segment starting to to to to pull apart once again. There was an immediate rush to get back to normal. And I don't understand why because normal never worked for the Black community. It never has since the inception of this country. So we as a community, while we did come together in the immediate moments after this, after the Summer of Hatred, we still have a lot of work to do. We still need to make sure that we find space to comfort and to care for each other. The traumatization is still being experienced by many throughout who were there on the streets during that summer. So we continue to have to reach out to those folks, to make sure that they are okay and to make sure that their lives are where they hope to be and want to be as we move forward.

Music credit: Hushed / Once Upon / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com