Charlottesville Mayor Signer Apologizes

From left to right: Councilors Bob Fenwick and Kristin Szakos, Mayor Mike Signer, and Councilors Kathy Galvin
and Wes Bellamy. The held a brief press conference after hours of a closed session meeting discussing
"the discipline of a City official." / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

Charlottesville City Council members met behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon, and afterward Mayor Mike Signer apologized.  WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini has more.

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City Council called for a special meeting regarding the “performance and discipline of an elected official” on Wednesday. This followed a controversial Facebook post by Mayor Mike Signer pointing fingers at City Manager Maurice Jones and Chief of Police Al Thomas on the organization of the alt-right rally. It was later confirmed that the Mayor was at the heart of this closed session when, after more than 3 hours, he came out and read a public apology.

MIKE SIGNER: In the deeply troubling and traumatizing recent weeks, I have taken several actions as mayor and made several communications that have been inconsistent with the collaboration required by our system of governance, and that overstepped the bounds of my role as mayor - for which I apologize to my colleagues and the people of Charlottesville. I will be committing to the following four protocols through the rest of the year:

- I will meet with senior staff only with another councilor present;
- I will be more mindful of the time of the Council Clerk and the Assisting Clerk;
- I will work with my colleagues to insure the council meetings going forward reflect shared leadership;
- and I will not make public pronouncements or announcements as Mayor without working with my colleagues.

City Council members accepted his apology, and affirmed their support. But the Mayor will have a diminished part during the last 4 months of his term.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Local Authorities Distrust and Heated Discussion at Charlottesville 'Recovery Town Hall'

About 500 people attended today's Town Hall in Charlottesville / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

Charlottesville residents came to the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center to get answers to the issues of August 12’s alt-right rally. After close to 4 hours of "Community Recovery" discussions – instead of 2 hours as planned – people may not have answers yet, but at least they voiced their concerns. They’ll have to come back in two weeks to learn about the City’s proposal of an action plan to address these concerns.

Introduced by Office of Human Rights Manager Charlene Green, the session was moderated by Suzanne Buchanan, from the Community Relations Services of the Department of Justice – dubbed the Department’s “peacemaker” for community conflicts and tensions relating to race, gender, religion, or disability. They both emphasized the need for dialogue and respect of one another during the meeting. Mayor Mike Signer, Chief of Police Al Thomas, City Manager Maurice Jones and other councilors sat in the crowd, listening.

One by one, people formed lines behind two microphones placed in front of the stage to speak their minds, pour their hearts out – and express their anger and disappointment. Several people called for the resignation of Signer, Thomas, and Jones. Dave was one of them; he is a Charlottesville resident who was "held hostage" with his wife and other citizens in at St Paul's church on Friday night, August 11. “The finger-pointing and the leaked memos show that you all reek of desperation to save what's little left of your careers. Mr. Signer, you just live in a bubble – you are the mayor of the 1 percent.”

He also pointed out a concern shared by many others who spoke: “We do not trust an internal review of the police - we cannot rely on an outsider to conduct that review either. Citizens' review of the police is the only thing that we can count on.” Many people shared their stories of August 11 and 12 where the police were nowhere to be found, and they had to protect themselves on their own – like outside of the synagogue, even though they had previously asked for police protection.

A non-exhaustive list of the recurrent demands made during the Town Hall includes: stopping racial profiling of African-Americans and stop-and-frisk police practices; naming the attack for what it was, that is, a terrorist attack; finding a way to prevent any such rally from happening here again, because “hate speech is not free speech”; improving children’s education on the racial past of Charlottesville, to make it more relatable to children of color, and truthful; and providing more affordable housing in the city as well.

Lively exchange between
Lee statue defender (right) and criticizer (left)

About 3 hours into the Community Recovery Town Hall, one person – the only one – came up to the microphone to defend the statues, and was faced by Dan H., a disabled African-American veteran on the other microphone. That was the first instance of an instant back-and-forth – even if brief – between two opposite views.

"I saw people going to Lee's monument and spitting on it. Why isn't it bigotry?" said the first man, who criticized Vice-Mayor Bellamy for his “bigotry.” He also argued that people, both Black and White, fought dirty wars – against Native Americans for instance – under the same American flag. Yet, “there are people on both sides of this with a hate ideology, "I hate that flag", "I hate this or that"... It's hate! You just want to choose hate."

"Robert E. Lee's monument was not erected because of Jim Crow laws. It was not, that is a myth.” The public starts to shout back. He continues, “I'm going to stand up and defend that man who freed two to three hundred slaves, and did offer them the opportunity to support themselves. And I agree, they should not have been slaves."

Dan H. then replies, “The Civil War was fought because the South was becoming too powerful. It had nothing to do with slavery.” “Another thing about the History of this country,” he adds: “anyone can check their own DNA ancestry, and you will have African ancestry. So this whole White Supremacy is a fallacy.

To which the other person replies, “We're all mixed blood. You want peace? The peace is within you, to stop bigotry. It starts with us as individuals, and understanding, educating ourselves about certain things. Not a single person here is without hate.” A brief face-to-face argument erupted between the two men in the public, and the room quieted down again.

Towards the end of the session, Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy assured that a group is currently actively working on all these issues, and comes from of a diversity of backgrounds – respected community members, activists, people from both sides of the fence. City Manager Maurice Jones jumped in to confirm they’ve had their first meeting on Wednesday; “We are going to continue to bring more people into that discussion. They will be eminently involved with deciding how we move forward with community engagement activities like tonight.”

He continued, “At the next meeting, we'll talk about if we can we come back in two weeks and have some meaningful discussion with this community. We'll come out – they’ll come out with a plan that says “Here is how we are going to engage over the course of the next two, three weeks, two months” - because this is not going to happen overnight, it's going to take some time for this community group to move these solutions forward.”

This article was written for this blog only.

Miller Center Presidential Tapes Featured in New Vietnam War Documentary

Marc Selverstone (right) was the guest of the American Forum show, presented by Douglas Blackmon (left). Selverstone, associate professor in presidential studies at the Miller Center and chair of the Center's Presidential Recordings Program, provided sources and advice during the making of the new Vietnam War PBS documentary. / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

The Vietnam War is the focus of a new PBS documentary produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.  Marc Selverstone, associate professor in presidential studies at the Miller Center and specialist of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, discussed his role as a consultant for the film at the Miller Center yesterday.  WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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Historian Marc Selverstone provided important sources and feedback during the making of the new PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. Indeed, as chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program, he edits the secret White House tapes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. These tapes were not available at the time of the first PBS documentary, back in 1983.

MARC SELVERSTONE: And they play a significant role in this film. There's a real disparity between the public optimism of so many officials, and particularly the presidents, and their private pessimism. It's that gap between what the public was being told, and what the policy-makers were thinking and wondering about the war and wondering about their capacity to win this war - I think that's what's really arresting.

The tapes notably show Nixon tampering with peace negotiations, so that the war would not end until after he was elected. Another topic addressed in the film, is that of "American exceptionalism."

SELVERSTONE: People of that era, the early 1960s, believed that they were going over there to do right, to do good. I think it changes in the latter part of the 1960s. And then there’s this sense of… 'We really are, perhaps, capable of doing ill,' there's that realization on the part of many who were fighting at the time. It's a much richer, more complex picture of the war on all sides. I think one of Ken's and Lynn's objectives is to give the public a better sense of who the people were, that went through this war, as part of an opportunity to give us a chance to heal.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Does 'Ban the Box' Really Work?

Do Ban the Box laws do more harm than good?  That policy, which removes the box on a job application form that asks about a job seeker’s criminal history, aims to give ex-felons a better chance to re-enter the workforce. Some praise the policy’s impact, but research suggests it might have unfortunate unintended consequences, and may even harm young black applicants. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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In the U.S., roughly 70 million people have a criminal history – and that can make re-entry into the workforce difficult. That’s why 29 states, including Virginia in 2015, have adopted so-called “ban the box” laws to mask that history. But do they work? That’s the main question posed by Jennifer Doleac, assistant professor of Public Policy and Economics at UVa’s Frank Batten School, who recently co-authored a study on the subject.

JENNIFER DOLEAC: The best evidence from employer surveys and other research that has been done, has shown that employers seem particularly worried about people who very recently come out of prison, because it can signal that you're still criminally active. In that context they've been more worried about young men. Older men are very unlikely to be committing crime.

Doleac's study does show that employment increases for older black men, and black women. Her biggest worry, though, is the harm done to young black men – who are statistically more likely to be incarcerated than white men, and therefore, more likely to be discriminated against.

DOLEAC: Employers don't just assume the best about everybody. They try to guess who has a criminal record, and then they discriminate against young black men instead. Removing the information doesn't remove the discrimination: it broadens the discrimination to the entire group you're trying to help. It seems like the story is that public employers – government employers – are hiring older black men instead of the young black men, but private employers are hiring young white men instead of young black men.

PHIL HERNANDEZ: Ban-the-box isn't causing that racial discrimination. If anything, it's exposing the racial discrimination that's already there.

That’s Phil Hernandez, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project - NELP for short. The organization advocates for worker rights across the board, and it is one of the biggest critics of Doleac’s study.

HERNANDEZ: I think it's a reminder that there are really two forms of discrimination happening here and we have to be vigilant about both. Even as ban-the-box policies are reducing discrimination against people with criminal records, we still are seeing that racial discrimination in the hiring process remains deeply entrenched. And so from our perspective the answer isn't to just say "Well, racial discrimination is happening so let's get rid of ban-the-box policies," our answer is to do more, and not less. Let's also have a comprehensive approach to target the root of the problem of racial discrimination.

DOLEAC: They clearly have a lot more faith in our ability to enforce our way out of this problem than I do. If we think that we could meaningfully ramp up our enforcement of anti-discrimination law in the future, and reduce employers' use of race in hiring then maybe those effects would change, but these were the effects that we saw in the context of 2004 to 2014, given the level of enforcement during that period.

Although they disagree on ban the box, both Doleac and Hernandez are in favor of additional measures to address this complex issue. As a potential alternative, Doleac suggests the idea of “employability certificates.”

DOLEAC: It's not ban-the-box or nothing, right. So these employability certificates are one example that seems really promising. In their current form, they're court-issued certificates, so if you have a criminal record you can go before a judge and if you're able to convince the judge that you've rehabilitated yourself, and that you'd make a good employee, he or she can give you one of these certificates. Some researchers at the University of South Carolina found that the people who had the same conviction but they had a certificate were called back at equal rates to those who had no conviction at all.

HERNANDEZ: We're not opposed to certificate programs. The one thing we would want to make sure of is that those programs aren't actually creating more barriers for people with criminal records.

On top of ban the box, Hernandez wishes to see more investment in apprenticeships, and more enforcement of the already existing guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – which a majority of employers are compliant with.

HERNANDEZ: We're also very interested in doing more work around occupational licensing reform. These are situations in which you have to get, basically, permission from a state agency before you're able to engage in work. In too many states, we found that there are categorical bans on individuals with criminal records so that's another barrier that we're trying to take down.

Doleac is also part of a project aiming to facilitate prisoners’ re-entry into society.

DOLEAC: I’m working with Ben Castleman, who is also a professor at UVa.  We are implementing a tablet-based module in jails. It's a series of questions that point you to resources in your community that can help address whatever need you have coming out of jail. Part of the challenge in trying to solve this problem is that this population has a lot of needs, they need to find a job, they need to find stable housing... So it helps inmates develop a transition plan before they get out, and then after they get out we send them text messages to help them stay on track. We just launched in a large jail facility last month.

She hopes the results of that project will help researchers, and policy-makers, understand how best to help former felons find work, and to avoid unfair discrimination.

This story appeared on WMRA News.
Download it on Through Gallo Eyes Media.

School Discipline, and the Road to Prison

From left to right: Virginia Organizing's Joe Szakos, NAACP's Dr. Rick Turner, the moderator,
and Bekah Saxon from the Virginia Education Association. / Marguerite Gallorini

Former Albemarle NAACP director Rick Turner spoke at Saturday’s monthly Democratic Breakfast about racial disparities in the education system. He and other panelists talked about how school discipline practices lead to disproportionate discipline for racial minorities, and ultimately, to increased contact with the criminal justice system. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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The school to prison pipeline was the focus of this month’s Democratic Breakfast. Dr. Rick Turner, former president of the local NAACP for the past 12 years, was one of the panelists invited to speak on the subject. His career has revolved around education and racial justice in the school system, including higher education. But, he realized it starts at a much earlier age:

RICK TURNER: It really didn't dawn on me until last night, that I better start talking about preschool. And I was surprised to find out that preschool children are three times more likely to get suspended than K through 12th grade combined. What is it that teachers are not aware of? When we pay attention to negative behavior in children, that's what we get. And when we pay attention to positive behavior in children, we get that too.

And children of color are much more likely to be suspended.

TURNER: African-Americans are only 19 percent of the preschool enrollment, but comprise more than 50 percent of all suspensions. Children who are suspended are ten times more likely to 1) drop out, 2) have low achievement, 3) enter the juvenile justice system, and 4) are suspended again, and again.

Repetitive suspensions mean that the students increasingly miss out on learning. Bekah Saxon is a local representative for the Virginia Education Association and she has worked in public schools for many years.

BEKAH SAXON: I was a special ed teacher, but I didn't have the autonomy to actually do what was in their best interest. But it was really because of how the system was not working, how we were failing young black males – my case load, every year, was 90 percent African-American males. But most of them should not have been in my class, their needs should have been met elsewhere.

She says teachers and schools don’t have enough training, freedom, and resources to address their students’ needs.

SAXON: And when your needs are consistently not met in a major way in school, which is your academic needs, you learn that you can't trust the adults around you to meet any of your needs. And you shut down, and you don't end up learning the material and you get that reinforced year after year – because the teachers are tied to this curriculum, and then they're left with kids that are frustrated and acting out,and teachers end up sending them out of the classroom because they don't know what else to do.

This has been a trend since zero tolerance policies, which were massively put in place following the Columbine High School shooting of 1999. A study published this year by two researchers from the University of Kansas and Michigan State University argues that it disproportionately affects students of color, and in particular black girls. They showed that in the year of 2011-2012, black girls in middle school were suspended six times as often as white girls.

Zero tolerance policies also result in sending students to juvenile court, says Joe Szakos. He is the executive director of the non-partisan organization for social justice Virginia Organizing, working on bringing parents and school staff together to break this trend.

JOE SZAKOS: Our chapter in Fredericksburg was meeting with parents in Stafford County, and a report came out that Virginia was sending more students to law enforcement than any state in the country – and there are more students of color, as part of that, that were getting sent to law enforcement.

According to the Education Week Research Center, in Virginia black students make up 39 percent of the enrollment in public schools with at least one arrest, but they make up 75 percent of school-based arrests.

SZAKOS: Eventually, the superintendent and the sheriff signed a memorandum of agreement and they said "we're going to treat students like students, we're going to deal with this within the confines of the school building as much as possible, unless it really merits going to see a juvenile judge." Suspensions dropped dramatically. It made a huge difference.

This story appeared on WMRA.org.

Thomas Regrets 'Lost Lives,' Amid More Criticism of Charlottesville Police

During a short press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas read a prepared statement and expressed "regret" for the loss of three lives on 8/12. He did not comment on the police's inaction that day. / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

Charlottesville’s Police Department is again under heavy criticism. After last month’s KKK rally, some blamed the police for taking an over-militarized, aggressive approach towards protesters. Now, some are saying the police erred in the other direction, and in many instances of disorder did nothing. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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On Monday afternoon, City Police Chief Al Thomas held a brief press conference at CitySpace. He pointed out several times that the alt-right crowd did not follow the plans, forcing the police to adapt. He also said a hot line was put in place to help investigate into what’s happened on Saturday:

AL THOMAS: We're still receiving reports of assaults and additional crimes, and we're working with our state and local partners to investigate thoroughly any criminal or civil rights' violations that may have occurred this past weekend that have not yet been reported.

City Council member Kristin Szakos felt threatened by the alt-right crowd.

KRISTIN SZAKOS: I was doing some of the events, yes, I was at the morning service and the march to McGuffey Park, and then was at McGuffey Park. I feel like our city was under attack. People came to threaten what we're trying to do here.               

Beyond this, narratives differ between Al Thomas and people who were part of the counter-protest.

THOMAS: Throughout the entire weekend, the Virginia State Police, Charlottesville Police Department, intervened to break up fights and altercations among those in attendance at the rally site. We had to send our forces to multiple locations to deal with a number of disturbances, in and around the downtown area. It took probably an hour to gain control of the streets, we had groups that were moving constantly, we were following a number of groups ensuring that they were being peaceful, but it was a challenge.

Here’s the take of Kasey Landrum, who works at Charlottesville’s Thomas Jefferson Health District, and who was part of the counter-protest as well.

KASEY LANDRUM: It seemed like no matter what we did, time after time, we just kept getting assaulted and attacked. How come these guys were able to come here fully armed, ready for war? The cops showed up after each time something happened. They were not present.

Jeanette Johnson, a coworker of Landrum, talks about the police being intimidating towards their non-violent group.

JEANNETTE JOHNSON: It was snipers on the rooftops of some of the buildings, and they had guns pointing down towards us.

Back at McGuffey Park, Landrum talks about an encounter with heavily armed White Nationalists threatening their group as they passed by the park.

LANDRUM: He threatens this guy, they spit on this woman, and we ask the police officer standing right there "what are you going to do?" and he's standing behind a barrier, and he's like "I can't do anything right now: that side of the barrier is Charlottesville Police Department - this side of the barrier is where I'm responsible." You are literally ten feet away from somebody being assaulted, and you’re doing nothing. And then he goes: "Have fun today."

Asked if he had any regrets in not having his officers better prepared, Al Thomas answered one thing:

THOMAS: Absolutely I have regrets. We lost three lives.

REPORTER: Do you regret your actions and your decisions that day?

THOMAS: I explained what our regrets are: we regret this tragic day, we regret that we had a tragic outcome, and we lost lives.

Kasey Landrum was there when Heather Heyer lost her life: she was attending to her wounds.

LANDRUM: We rotated her, and then started doing compressions, and making sure we can give some kind of life saving aid to her while we're holding her wounds at the bottom. And up come the cops, and they're screaming in my face, "Get away from her, clear the area". And I said "I'm sorry we can't go, I have to stay here, she's dying." They actually told the volunteer medics to stop and leave. I was like “why would you do that until there's a secure pass off?"

JOHNSON: And that’s what I didn’t understand: when they came, they came like they were getting ready to start shooting. We're now screaming for medic, and you come, pointing a gun.

LANDRUM: We actually had one of the reverends step into the street, and stop a police officer and say "You're going to have to let us handle our people, man, because you're just not doing it." He started corralling people because the cops were being violently threatening to a bunch of people who were just brutalized.

Here’s another declaration of Al Thomas during his press conference:

THOMAS: We tried to give the individuals in the crowd who wanted to leave, we wanted to make sure that they were able to leave safely. We've facilitated that process, we had a number of individuals who chose to remain, and cause violence.

This is another claim challenged by Johnson.

JOHNSON: When I wanted to go to my car, and I told him I wanted to go to my car, and he threatens, to say that if I was going to my car I was going to get arrested. Where were they, when they could have escorted me to my car? They could have said "well, here's the route you can take" or something. But it was "if you walk by yourself or if you walk with a group of 3 or more, you're going to get arrested." So I had no choice. I was stuck.

LANDRUM: I'm just really, really, really let down by our institutions locally, and I think a lot of this was preventable.

City Council member Szakos tries to find a silver lining to it all.

SZAKOS: We certainly are capable of having spirited disagreements among ourselves and there are things that are problems in our city and we work very hard to try to deal with those and certainly fall short sometimes. And to have people come from outside and just attack us like that, it's very traumatic; and I’m hoping that if anything good can come out of this, it will be… that we're determined to kind of figure out how to move forward together.

This story appeared on WMRA. 
Download it on Through Gallo Eyes Media.

After the Violence, A Community Conversation

Sign in front of Charlottesville's African-American Heritage Center. / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

Monday evening, the Jefferson School's African-American Heritage Center hosted a Community Conversation to talk about Saturday's violence in the city, and how to move forward.  WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini was there.

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KAREN WATERS-WICKS: I want to start by just asking us all to just have a moment of silence, and to reflect on the lives that were lost.

The Heritage Center in Charlottesville organized a Community Conversation, moderated by Karen Waters-Wicks. The panelists came from various organizations, such as the Office of Human Rights, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Monuments ad Memorials for the City of Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter, and from the City's Clergy Collective. The evening revolved around coming together as a community; discussing how to help children of color succeed in school; and about making it clear that White Nationalists are not welcome in the city of Charlottesville. Then, a surprise followed.

Attendees were asked to suggest ideas
to move forward as a community.
Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

WATERS-WICKS: We are going to ask you to do some work. We're going to break you into small groups, we're going to pass out pens and papers, and what this night is all about is understanding where we have been, but more importantly, hearing from you about where you want to go. What do we need to do next.

This sparked lively conversations about the weekend's events, between people who all needed to share their stories in the process of finding peace. Some of the recommendations of the night: compiling stories so as to know what truly happened; and reaching out to minorities to ask them how we can better help, as a larger community.

This story appeared on WMRA.

Domestic Terrorism Strikes Again

Memorial to Heather Heyer in 4th Street, Charlottesville / Photo: Marguerite Gallorini

It was a rocky start on Saturday in Charlottesville, following violent clashes between White Supremacists and counter -protestors in the morning. After the alt-right protestors were asked to leave the city center to go to McIntire Park, only a small peaceful crowd of Leftist counter-protestors were left marching downtown in the early afternoon.

At around 2 p.m., a car flew into the pedestrian downtown area – through a street where cars usually drive at 5 miles per hour – and plowed into the crowd, killing 32-year old Heather Heyer and wounding 19 others. Had it not hit the two other cars that were at the bottom of the street, it would have continued on its hit-and-run trajectory and certainly killed even more people. Later that day, two State Police officers also lost their lives in a helicopter crash, while they were patrolling the rally.

The State of Virginia has declared a state of emergency following these events. And as a Frenchwoman, the resemblance in the method is strong with the attacks in Nice on Bastille Day last year. So is the resemblance with setting up a state of emergency, as had happened in Paris following the Bataclan attacks on November 13, 2015. I was living in Paris at the time, and now human stupidity has followed me to Charlottesville, VA, of all places.

How does it always require such a level of violence before realizing that something is going wrong? Whether it is Isis or White Supremacist groups, the ideology and process are basically the same: take advantage of a social vacuum, indoctrinate young minds that have not yet fully developed, instill a feeling of fear of losing one’s culture and traditions, and focus it all on a common enemy. There you have it: the perfect recipe for drama. And both in France and here, it is not really as if there weren’t any signs of things possibly going wrong prior to them happening.

Another striking similarity came to my mind: Greece’s Golden Dawn extremist party. Golden Dawn was growing more and more in legitimacy and power several years ago. It won seats in Parliament, their rhetoric was spreading more and more – taking advantage of the deep economic crisis, coupled with the burden of the refugee crisis of which Greece was the first and main filter. And so their Schutzstaffel-style militias grew stronger, very similar to the crowd observed in Charlottesville this weekend: dressed all in black or in military attire, holding rifles, baseball bats, and pepper spray, brandishing Nazi flags, and yelling slurs or giving the finger to “enemies.”

It took the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013 by an alleged supporter of the party for the Greek government to wake up and take action. Only then were party leader Michaloliakos and several other Golden Dawn members arrested on suspicion of forming a criminal organization. The trial, which began in April 2015, is still ongoing as of now.

For this weekend, the city of Charlottesville had granted a permit for the alt-right to demonstrate in Emancipation Park – they could not refuse the right to free speech. And so they came, gathering on Friday night – beyond their permit – on the UVa campus with torches, KKK-style, chanting racist slogans. Like dogs peeing all over the neighbor’s lawn to mark their territory.

Now, someone has paid with their life because of a lunatic terrorist who was engrossed beyond reason in his own parallel reality fueled by a hateful ideology. It is time for the government to crack down on the most dangerous individuals in our society, and stop pretending this is only “fringe.” It might once have been, but it is not anymore.

This article was written for this blog only.