An Interview with Mayor Mike Signer and Tim Dodsen, Editor of The Cavalier Daily
By C.C. Clark, Senior, University High School
Color and light overwhelmed my vision; I wasn’t sure what I was hearing or what to look at—so I used my sixth sense to experience the moment on a more incomprehensible, spiritual level. There was static in the downtown air, and a buzz of energy, and passion. Storefronts welcomed in customers with Pride flags, posters reading “no home for hate here”, printouts with the name “Heather” inside a heart and other affirmations. University students, sparkling and charged with the excitement of life, raced down a brick-lined pathway, laughing and dragging each other along to the next activity. Live music, coming from the annual Tom Tom Founders Festival in Emancipation Park, pulsated into the downtown area, present but not overpowering the woman singing and playing her guitar on a nearby bench. No matter which way you turned, people were having a good time and enjoying each other’s company; people from all around the world, from all sorts of diverse backgrounds, coming together and welcoming you into this unique, present environment. In that moment, it was difficult to comprehend that a little over a month ago, at this exact spot in the downtown area of Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists and neo-Nazis were congregating, wielding torches and assault rifles, attacking counter protesters and hollering horrific phrases such as “You will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” These despicable actions were the antithesis of what I was observing this happy, inclusive evening. And yet it happened. Why and how it happened: that was what I was there to find out and analyze.
