News round-up: Yorktown in the press

Thought I'd give a round-up of the traditional, mainstream print media's take on Saturday's events...

From the Daily Press, published on the Peninsula here in southeastern Virginia, we have Tamara Dietrich, a columnist. She compared the day to a circus, although I'm not sure she found the clowns all that funny.

It was Saturday in Yorktown, and the carnival had arrived.

SWAT sharpshooters; women in tallit prayer shawls; young toughs chanting, "Death, death, death to the Nazis"; flower children; messianic Jews; guerrilla anti-racists; enough firepower to overthrow Cornwallis all over again; and baffled senior citizens with tote bags and sensible shoes, stumbling upon it all.

Carol Scott of the Daily Press noted that "counterdemonstrators outnumbered the white supremacists at the battlefield on Saturday."

Saturday's three rallies at the battlefield - one led by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement and two counter-rallies led by the messianic Jewish synagogue Congregation Zion's Sake and the Center for Education Rights - ended with no arrests, said National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst. There were no injuries; a handful of people were treated for heat-related issues, he said.

More than 500 counterdemonstrators attended the congregation's rally. The center's "Rally for Tolerance" brought in about 250, and some of that number attended the Zion's Sake rally as well, said center President Phil Stinson.

The southside newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, sent Kristina Herrndobler to cover the news. She wrote,

Fewer than 150 members and supporters of the National Socialist Movement gathered for speeches by their own members and members of the Ku Klux Klan. As they faced the counter demonstrators on the other side, group members wearing Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands shouted Sieg Heil.

Some 500 counter-demonstrators, including members family attends synagogue, and Anti-Racist Action, had flags and posters of their own. One read Fight Terrorism, Smash the Klan. Another read, No tanks in Gaza, No Nazis in Yorktown. A second counter-demonstration, sponsored by the Center for Education Rights, was held about a halfmile away.

She also wrote,

Peter Stinson, a local organizer for the Center for Education Rights peace demonstration, said more police officers than activists attended their rally. But Stinson credits the police force for keeping the day free of violence.

Yes, the men and women of law enforcement were out in force. I'll note the Virginia State troopers who were at the Rally for Social Justice site were extremely personable and professional. We couldn't have asked for better law enforcement personnel; and clearly, we couldn't have asked for more... ;-)

Sue Lindsey of the Associated Press covered the event. She noted,

About 150 members of the National Socialist Movement and their supporters gathered at the Yorktown Battlefield to honor George Washington and other founding fathers of the United States whom they said held white separatist and anti-Jewish views - a position disputed by most scholars.

Many wore Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands, while others identified themselves as members of the Ku Klux Klan and various skinhead groups.

"This is sacred ground," said Jeff Schoep of Minneapolis, Commander of the National Socialist Movement, which bills itself as the largest Nazi party in the United States.

Her story went out over the wire and was picked up by more than 200 news outlets. This site has a photo from the AP; this is probably a better view than all the counter-protestors on Surrender Road had. When you're more than 250 yards away, people look like ants...

CNN (I know, they're not print media... but they've posted words online) also included the day's festivities in their reporting. Their film coverage also included aerial video, likely provided in a feed from the law enforcement helicopters which provided real-time surveillance video to the Incident Command Post headed by Chief Ranger Nash; a still frame of the video is posted here.

National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep railed against immigrants, calling them "putrid scum" that are "pouring over our borders, destroying our culture, and robbing us of our heritage."

"We must secure the existence of white people and the future of white children," another speaker said....

Bill White, a spokesman for the movement -- which calls itself "America's Nazi Party" -- acknowledged the turnout was not large....

In a nearby field -- separated by barricades from the Neo-Nazi rally -- about 250 counter demonstrators shouted for an end to such hatred. The protest was organized by a messianic synagogue and six other religious institutions....

About a mile away, a second counter demonstration was held. Organizers called it a "tolerance rally." Those participants said shouting at the Neo-Nazis only helps fuel the fire of Neo-Nazi hatred.

By now, frankly, I'm just glad they caught one of our four key values.

Bill Geroux of the Richmond Times Dispatch posted a thoughtful news account. He noted that police outnumbered both the participants at the National Socialist Movement's demonstration site and the counter-protest site sponsored by Zion's Sake.

Police clearly outnumbered both groups put together, though authorities would not say how many officers were deployed.

While officials might not have been telling the press how many officers were at the Park, reliable sources placed the number in excess of 500.

Geroux writes,

The commander of the neo-Nazi group, Jeff Schoep of Minnesota, declared in his speech yesterday that America was being controlled by Jews and ruined by racial integration. He vowed his group would resist such "occupation" and likened them to the patriots led by George Washington who won America's freedom at Yorktown.

"If being proud of your race is hate, then we are a hate group," Schoep shouted over the pounding rotors of a police helicopter.

"If hating foreign occupation makes us a hate group, then we're a hate group." His brown-shirted listeners urged him on with cries of "Sieg Heil" as Nazi flags flapped in the wind.

As to the counter-protest, Geroux notes,

The counter-rally across the battlefield was organized by Rabbi Eric Carlson of Synagogue Zion's Sake in Newport News and attended by members of nearly a dozen other synagogues and churches from Moyock, N.C., to Richmond.

The synagogue group asked for a permit to gather within sight of the neo-Nazis, Carlson said, because "we want them to see the face of love. We've been praying for them all week." The group spent much of the day dancing and singing songs of peace to drown out the distant neo-Nazi speakers.

But the counter-demonstration was joined by a group of about 50 men and women dressed mostly in black and carrying placards with messages such as "Die Nazi Scum." Members of that group, who would not identify themselves to reporters, marched and shouted condemnation of not only the neo-Nazis but the police, court system and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Frankly, it all sounds like a zoo, particularly when compared as to how he describes the Rally for Social Justice:

About a mile from the opposing rallies, a third group, the Pennsylvania-based Center for Education Rights Ltd., held a low-key gathering to promote tolerance.

I'm not sure how one could say Seed Is or the Dave Quicks Band are low-key, but okay. At least nobody was screaming obscenities or wishing people dead.

Diversity. Tolerance. Non-violence. Social Justice.

I continue to be amazed that people on both sides of Surrender Road can't fathom a world that embraces these values.

Well, that's it for the mainstream news round-up. If you have links to other, different, stories covering the event, please post them in the comments section below.

Peace.