#DropEmCville campaign continues, following acquittal of DeAndre Harris
Community calls on Joe Platania to drop the charges against Corey Long and Donald Blakney
The organizers of the Drop The Charges campaign released the following statement:
On Friday, March 16, 2018, we were overjoyed and relieved that the General District Court acquitted DeAndre Harris of all charges related to his showing up in the face of white supremacist violence on August 12, 2017. As was established in court, DeAndre “did nothing wrong at all that day.” We believe that he should never have been charged with a crime in the first place. While that victory in court was sweet, we remember that Commonwealth Attorney Joe Platania is still prosecuting two more Black men for asserting their humanity on August 12: Corey Long and Donald Blakney. We cannot rest until he drops the charges against Corey and Donald. Resisting white supremacy and defending one’s humanity is not a crime.
After DeAndre Harris’s acquittal, local politician Tom Perriello tweeted: “The modern KKK‘s ‘clever’ tactics (eg filing charges against the victims they attack) continue to be rejected by the highly professional bench in Charlottesville. These precedents matter.”
We agree that the precedent in DeAndre’s case is crucial: ideally, this will deter white supremacists from weaponizing our courts in general. But in Corey and Donald’s specific cases, we cannot assume that the local judiciary will yield a just result. In Charlottesville, as is true across the country, the criminal justice system rarely gives the benefit of the doubt to Black people. Like DeAndre, Corey and Donald did nothing wrong. Yet they remain at risk of significant judicial harm, as long as the city continues to prosecute these men within the criminal justice system. It is a dangerous game to rely on the courts for justice in their cases. Joe Platania must drop their charges.
Corey and Donald did nothing wrong on August 12. The hundreds of people who came to the streets to protect Charlottesville from the white supremacist invasion that day know that. So do the thousands of people across the country who celebrated the images of resistance to the white supremacist onslaught that weekend. For many, these images were cathartic: proof that white supremacist violence need not go unchecked. We cannot, on the one hand, celebrate memes of resistance to white supremacy, while, on the other hand, we accept the wrongful prosecution of Corey and Donald — real world emblems of this resistance.
Justice is not served when our Commonwealth Attorney continues to prosecute two Black men on the basis of the testimony of the white supremacists who attacked our community on August 11 and 12. This is a purposeful tactic of the white supremacists: to not only commit violence in communities, but to then seek to entrap in the criminal justice system the victims of their racist attacks. The police failed to protect people from the racist violence on both August 11 and 12, standing down as waves of armed Nazis and Klansmen marched through our communities. Even worse: while they were ignoring the threat of severe white supremacist violence, we know that the police worked with white supremacists leading up to August 11 and 12 to target anti-racist activists. By working with white supremacists to continue to prosecute Corey and Donald now, Joe Platania continues this pattern.
While we are heartened by the verdict in DeAndre Harris’ favor, we cannot become complacent and assume that the criminal justice system will give any benefit of the doubt to Corey Long or Donald Blakney. Law enforcement, by its own admission in the independent report, utterly failed to protect our city before the Unite the Right rally and on the streets on August 11 and 12. Corey and Donald showed up to protect their humanity and our community on those days, when the police would not. Joe Platania cannot pick up the ball halfway through a broken process and assume that the result for these two Black men will be just. The only option for justice right now is for Platania to drop the charges.
— From Black Lives Matter-Charlottesville, Congregate Charlottesville, and Showing Up for Racial Justice-Charlottesville
