Georgia police arrested at least nine people on Saturday at a “pro-white” rally at one of the south’s largest Confederate monuments, after counter-protesters clashed with the demonstrators and officers in riot gear intervened.
The long-planned “Rock Stone Mountain” rally was supposed to draw thousands to the state park, just before Confederate Memorial Day. In response, progressive activists planned a demonstration of their own to denounce public acts of discrimination. Only one group showed up in numbers.
On Saturday morning, roughly two dozen “pro-white” protesters gathered at Stone Mountain, a half hour east of downtown Atlanta, to wave Dixie flags and wear “White Lives Matter” stickers. Hundreds of counter-protesters, including groups chanting “Black Lives Matter” and against the Ku Klux Klan, lined up across from them. Between the two sides, police in riot gear formed a wall, and officers made arrests, broke up scuffles and shut down the park’s main attractions.
Rally organizer John Estes said his group’s presence at the public park, which is home to a behemoth granite sculpture of three Confederacy leaders, was necessary to slow what he called the desecration of Confederate symbols important to his heritage.
“There is no separation between heritage and race,” said Estes, who was clad in a red shirt with a Confederate flag bearing the words “Rebel Son”.
“If you destroy the roots of a people, that tree is easily pushed over and conquered,” he said. “That’s what happens: to erase history, they erase heritage first, then they erase and liquidate the people. That’s what going on here.”
The “pro-white” event, scheduled two days before Confederate Memorial Day, an official holiday recognized by Georgia and other southern states, was expected to draw as many as 2,000 attendees. Because the rally had been planned months in advance, at one point with the help of KKK members, progressive groups had spent weeks planning a counter-protest.
Khalid Kamau, an organizer with Black Lives Matter’s Atlanta chapter, called for visitors to boycott the state park until its officials stopped giving permits out to groups who embrace white supremacy. Early in the morning, his group coordinated an effort to block all the tollbooths to the main entrance to prevent visitors from entering the park.
“If Isis wanted to have a rally, if a Syrian group wanted to have a rally, those [groups] probably wouldn’t be given a permit,” Kamau said, using the acronym for the terror group Islamic State. “As long as it’s a state park, and the association’s board members are appointed by the governor, we should have a say in who gets permits for rallies.”
Half a dozen different law enforcement agencies were called into action to keep the protests separated. Since Estes had obtained a permit for the demonstration, roughly a hundred corrections officers in all-black riot gear, many of them African American, formed a perimeter around the area to protect the protesters waving Confederate flags.
Most protesters demonstrated peacefully, but several fights did ensue between the competing protesters. When police blocked the counter-protesters from approaching the “pro-white” demonstration area, a handful of people started fires and hurled rocks at officers in riot gear. Police officers also dodged smoking canisters and fireworks that were lobbed in their direction.
John Bankhead, a spokesperson with the Stone Mountain police, said law enforcement officers arrested a total of nine counter-protesters. Eight activists were charged with refusing to take their masks off on public property, a law originally created to deter the Ku Klux Klan from wearing white hoods, and three of them were also charged with obstruction of justice.
Ultimately, Estes said, the heavy police presence scared many supporters out of attending the rally. Later in the afternoon, the National Socialist Movement had scheduled a separate Confederate Memorial Day event in Rome, Georgia, 85 miles north-west of the state park. Once both rallies ended, the “pro-white” protesters planned to stage a cross burning.