in the car as we heard there should be in the did then reversed over people and reports saying that a state trooper went in pursuit of that said vehicle now the violence had already erupted on the day with crowds gathering for a right wing march there in charlottesville these are the pictures from earlier on in the day of the violence first erupted. i i i. i i i i. i. i i i i. i. just tuning in you're watching are to international on our rolling coverage of this

breaking news story from charlottesville which has now declared a state of emergency of a rally turned violent the small city has become a ground zero for white nationalist near confederate an activist in the u.s. this includes the k.k.k. who are fighting to keep traces of the confederate legacy there intact it followed an announcement to remove a statue to rename to local parks in charlottesville earlier i spoke with r.t. america's alex rubenstein he was at the scene and witnessed the violence that ensued. i'm not sure how it how it works physically but the person in front from what i hear was able to drive away and was followed by a state trooper that was told to me by an n.b.c. reporter i didn't see that personally i saw it i saw i did i saw two cars that were all totaled the trunk was just completely smashed a woman was inside crying there was there was blood on the hood of her vehicle there was blood all over the place of people about sixteen people injured i saw i

saw some of them flying through the air over the hood of the car. and i'm hearing actually one one possible fatality i can't confirm that but that's that's what i've been hearing on the ground and i also hear about sixteen people injured total. been any suggestion at this point to who the victims were the people who were hit by this call with a right wing protest as over the counter protest no no they were contra protesters they they were more of the variety they weren't breaking things or anything like that they were marching through a very very small road it was it's a one way and they had just a big number of people in that stretch and the car just plowed through three cars actually plowed through two of them and it appears to be unintentionally one of them and it appears to be very intentional i mean this sounds like in the riffing seen lots of people injured by the sound of it one of the authorities done about this i would imagine that with the place down of the something like this. although

it's not completely locked down i mean streets have been shut off on and off all day and charlottesville. they were originally fire trucks came down and even a bear cat the bear cat was the first vehicle to respond after reports it started coming out of this of this incident and then later on some ambulances were able to show up after about like seven to ten minutes or so. i hear donald trump is going to give a speech later tonight say something about this but it seems as though. charlottesville is not completely shut down although there is a state of emergency what's the mood there of the count to protest he said that some of them who have been injured how they responded to what. the soul to pawn some of the numbers. it's just it's just very somber here a lot of people crying a lot of people have friends that were that were hit by that car and just just all

around sadness you know you know typically at a protest if if the police will ask you to get on the sidewalk protesters will say no i mean everyone was comply and everyone was just trying to do the best thing that they could do at that time for the injured people it seems. but how would you describe the scene today we heard the previous incidents as well just how violent how's this protest being. sure i mean there was not a good number of chemicals being sprayed there was pepper spray of there. i'm sorry i apologize my camera man. there was a a large number of pepper spray being shot from both sides at each other. as i saw of people hitting each other with holes i saw a lot of people with just what a lot of blood running down their face giant welts it was very it was very odd dramatic very scary at times but i will say that the police did not did not

use heavy handed tactics today. how would you describe the scene now does this look like things are going to calm down perhaps people seen enough and want out now or could this actually build. it seems it seems that for the day and charlottesville it's over everybody is spread out across multiple multiple sites throughout the downtown area. but it seems that for the day everything everybody is tired everyone's everyone's grieving. ok let's go so it's washington d.c. now because we talk correspondent jacqueline on the sun jacqueline donald trump's been reacting to this what's been said. yes he has he said that obviously everyone here is closely following the incident that happened in charlottesville and condemns bigotry on all fronts he also called for unity in america and said that the hate and division here must stop let's take

a quick listen to what his remarks were. were closely following the terrible events unfolding in charlottesville virginia. we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred bigotry and violence on many sites on many sites it's been going on for a long time in our country not donald trump not barack obama. has been going on for a long long time. it has no place in america what is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. so there we have the president saying that this has been going on for a long time the sort of division in the country that america is really anything but united and then here we have this incident today and what's interesting to note is even before the car plowed into the crowd of protesters there had been

a state of emergency declared in the area there was a heavy police presence with more than a thousand officers to me to have been there the police were in riot gear and the virginia national guard was present and so it's not fully clear how this happened how this was possible that this is allowed to happen we know that they were trying to break up the protesters but this simply had been declared as unlawful but obviously when you have large groups of people it's hard to just get them to leave and go home but this original protest by the white nationalist was because there was plans to remove a confederate statue what some see see as a racist symbol from the city and this isn't the first time we've seen an incident like this back in may down in new orleans there were plans to remove they actually did remove a confederate statue in the city and they actually did it there at night in order

to avoid such a large turnout of protesters during the removal there were still protesters there but they did do it at night in order to avoid what they feared could be violent protests such as this and frankly we've just seen a lot of division here in the united states on both sides of the party. both sides of the aisle the political aisle we've seen comedian kathy griffin doing a photo shoot holding up a bloody severed head that was meant to resemble the president she were. granted having done that later on she said that she had gone too far but many accused her of listening violence with that sort of stunt we've had place here gone on in new york city that depicted again the president being killed in the end so we've seen just a lot of division here and this is just one more incident we're seeing today where one person has already been confirmed to have been killed by the incident today and

many more injured it's possible that the body count may rise obviously we hope not but anything's possible at this point. of course when jacqueline figure in washington d.c. bring is the latest reaction that the events in charlottesville thank you. and we also had now the account of an eyewitness who was at the scene where you are or what you're looking for a. part of the world there is a room. right. it was international they cracked open they get if this is intentional tears. as we heard there from the eyewitness saying that his opinion this was an intentional assault vehicle running into weather is resulting in at least one fatality and a minimum of eight injuries we can show you the incident to get a please be aware you may find this video disturbing this is the incident from

another angle. my of the. book of my. time. i think of. i took us. down. to the car in the car and back out of this completely drifted out completely creeping up almost. like. somebody knew the darkness coming before the march could get under way of resistance the fancy but let me racist some racist mansion to pick

up he ran to the back of the line a part of the people were pinned in between cars people on the ground blood on the ground who got out of. the car repairs. but out here we traded windows you cannot see it. but to all the inboard from the libertarian national committee. i think you love whole of. the following is a severe thunderstorm watch announcement from the national weather service the national weather service has issued severe thunderstorm watch member for forty eight affected and eleven pm this watching clude the following marine location chesapeake bay north island maryland remember a severe thunderstorm watch means the conditions are favorable for the development

of severe weather including large hail and damaging winds and close to the white area while severe weather means eminent persons should remain alert for rapidly changing weather conditions and listen for leader statements and possible warnings stay tuned to no weather radio commercial retail and television outlets are internet sources for the latest severe weather information repeating severe thunderstorm watch number four four eight has issued until eleven pm for the following in location chesapeake bay north island and. seen at this rally in charlottesville which has claimed at least one life and left a minimum of eight of the people injured so i can bring in brian becker now he's from the and the coalition. that brought the nature of your organization normally when we speak to you it's about war situations this time is violence on the domestic front if you've seen the video you see how high risk it was is there any

way this could have been foreseen or prevented. yeah i've been in touch all day with friends who are men at the demonstration in charlottesville who are standing up against nazis and k.k.k. terrorists i have to really disagree with your last guest who tries to put an equivalency between the racist anti fascist protestors and fascist i mean that's like putting it in equal sign between hitler and hitler supporters and those who wanted to stop hitler the k.k.k. venality the so-called right in the south they have a long history of genocide of terror thousands and i mean literally thousands of black people have been lynched and here they are descending into charlottesville virginia to record to defend the confederate statues those of the statutes of the leaders of slavery and the enslavement of black people in america and so we don't see this is just an equivalency what's going on in america is the rise of fascism

and naziism and white supremacy because of donald trump's racist policies i mean donald trump during the entire two thousand and sixteen campaign rally was telling people to hate protestors send them back go back to the good old days have them go out on a stretcher well yeah now they're going out on stretchers and these are his supporters the our great our this trumps of borders trying to make disavow them but they don't disavow. as we understand your thirty's we're already trying to intervene the violence had broken out prior to what was the set start time over the authorities have said this was an unlawful assembly they had national guard we hear actually present as well as police in riot gear is there anything more the authorities could have done they were trying to clear the situation presumably nothing nobody would have seen and into that with a vehicle plowing into crowds. on the contrary i mean this happened repeatedly in the one nine hundred seventy s. and one nine hundred eighty s.

i was an anti clinton organizer in the south a car that plowed into people all the time in fact in there were routine acts of violence what happened today and you're not adequately reporting it i'm i'm afraid and i think it's because maybe the people aren't there on the spot and the police distanced themselves at the moment when the fascist protestors were about to attack the fact fascist crowds and other words the police left the area so that in a clash could take place it wasn't that the police couldn't done more to police i think the police in charlottesville a police department that's been riddled with racism stood aside because of probably a lot of them support the all right. races forces i mean this is the this is the deep south this is the southern part of virginia this is the heart of the confederacy richmond was the the center of the confederacy so this was not an accident what happened today the police stepped aside and let this happen. was this

. they they the size of the crowds who gathered that and the extent of the violence . yes the real size of the crowd as many thousands of be anti-racist protesters came out in the last twenty four hours in response to this amazing extraordinary fascist mobilization in the heart of a major city in the united states more anti fascist races demonstrators were there than the fascists but the fascists still had a big crowd so i see what we can see in the last few days and it was palpable that this was going to be something very big big government in the police cannot now say they didn't know what was coming i mean this was challenged in court the district court ruled that the fascist forces had the right to be in this particular part i mean in other words it was at the center stage in the attention of all of the

authorities the legislature the police the courts and mean this was not hidden this wasn't like out of the blue. what do you think the reaction is going to be motions of course are going to be extremely high now do you think we will see further protest perhaps for the violent. well i think we'll see many protests i mean the racists are routinely violent there's routine violence and in their interest training the police departments in there are using you know they no longer come and wait hoods and wait robes some of them are just dressed in blue uniforms but what's happening is because of the traffic ministrations overt racism these people feel that their time this term they're going to overcome the legacy of the sixty's they used to rule the south they want to rule the south again and they're saying we want to make america wait again we want to get rid of jews in other words this is the linguist in the rhetoric of the spanish is but that's how they used to talk when they were the dominant ruling class power in the south until the sixty's civil

rights revolution overturned it then now with trump they think guess what our time is come we're going to reverse the verdict of the last fifty years and go back to the quote good old days what you're looking at the video you're seeing right now guess what that is the good old days what do you think of the actual reason that was given for they so far right protest in the first place supposedly it was about the removal of a monument to read i mean the parks they considered some calling of white washing of history do you believe that was a justified protest or others who've been on have suggested to me that this was just the subtext or something else. you know they're on the rise because they feel their time has come politically they're emboldened it's going on all over america right now the confederate statues the monuments that were built to memorialize the losing side of the civil war i mean can you imagine here's as a side of the part of the country that secedes that enters into a treasonous

a relationship that takes up arms struggle against its own government all of the defense of the institution of slavery and yet there are mine humans are built in the state not for the liberators of black people not where the nation not for the united states of america but for those who took up arms against the united states of america and now the black community all around the united states especially since the massacre. where now i lacked a parishioners were killed three years ago by a white young a young white racist he went into the black church and mow them down with an automatic weapon has been a demand to reach to get rid of these monuments and so charlottesville has decided to get rid of the monuments and that's they become the symbols for the k.k.k. or whatever they want to reincarnate themselves now they call themselves is all right that's just new brandy these are the nazis these are the clinton these are the weights of premises and the monuments are they think a convenient tool in order to mobilize but those can those minute should come down

it would be like you have been in the soviet union a monument stude nazi germany i mean that would be the morally equivalent for the black community in virginia. pride as always very interesting to get your take on this thanks for being our guest brodbeck it from the ants a coalition that. talking about this violence which initially erupted in charlottesville before the fatal incident with a car plowing into the crowds originally what we saw was a gathering of right wing protesters who were met with counter protests. actually.

charlottesville has now declared a state of emergency over the rally the city has become a ground zero for white nationalist confederate and i'll try to activists in the us that includes the k.k.k. as they fight to keep traces of the confederate legacy there intact it follows a plan that was announced to remove a statue and to rename to the oakland parks earlier i spoke with r.t. america's alex rubenstein he was on the scene witness and see. i'm not sure how it how it works physically but the person in front from what i hear was able to drive away and was followed by a state trooper that was told to me by an n.b.c. reporter i didn't see that personally i saw it i saw i didn't i saw two cars that were all totaled the trunk was just completely smashed a woman was inside crying there was there was blood on the hood of her vehicle

there was blood all over the place of people about sixty people injured i saw i saw some of them flying through the air over the hood of the car. and i'm hearing actually one one possible feet how do you i can't confirm that but that's that's what i've been hearing on the ground and i also hear about sixteen people injured total has that been any. suggestion at this point to who the victims were the people who were hit by this call with a right wing protest as over the counter protest no no they were contra protesters they they were more of the variety they weren't breaking things or anything like that they were marching through a very very small road it was it's a one way and they had just a big number of people in that stretch and the car just plowed through three cars actually plowed through two of them and it appears to be unintentionally one of them and it appears to be very intentional i mean this sounds like a riff and seen lots of people injured by the sound it would have the authorities done about this i would imagine that with the place down of the something like this

. although it's not completely locked down i mean streets have been shut off on and off all day and charlottesville. they were originally fire trucks came down and even a bear cat the bear cat was the first vehicle to respond after reports it started coming out of this of this incident and then later on some and you insist were able to show up after about like seven to ten minutes or so. i hear donald trump is going to give a speech later tonight say something about this but it seems as though charlottesville is not completely shut down although there is a state of emergency. the mood there of the count of protests you said some of them who have been injured how they responded to what seems to been the sole support and some of the numbers. yeah it is just it's just very somber a lot of people crying a lot of people have friends that were that were hit by that car and just just all

around sadness you know you know typically at a protest if if the police will ask you to get on the sidewalk protesters will say no i mean everyone was compliant and everyone was just trying to do the best thing that they could do at that time for the people seeds. and how. would you describe the scene today we heard of previous incidents as well just how violent how's this protest being. sure i mean there was are a good number of chemicals being sprayed there was pepper spray of there. i'm sorry i apologize my camera man. there was a a large number of pepper spray being shot from both sides at each other i saw of people hitting each other with holes i saw a lot of people with just what a lot of blood running down their face giant well it was very it was very odd

dramatic very scary at times but i will say that the police did not did not use heavy handed tactics today and how would you describe the scene now does this look like things are going to calm down perhaps people seen enough to want out now or could this actually build. it seems it seems that for the day of charlottesville it's over everybody is spread out across multiple multiple os sites throughout the downtown area ah but it seems that for the day everything everybody is tired everyone's everyone's grieving. bring in a guest now to speak to patrick henningsen he's the executive director of twenty first century joins me on the line could speak to patrick and the very sad circumstances from what we've seen the videos have a riff ache we see the call plowing into two of the vehicles the presumption is we don't know the mindset of the person who is in the vehicle the presumption is that this was deliberate a lot of people on social media are saying that when we see incidents like this in

europe it's called a terrorist attack what's your take on it. well this this is really important not to overreact right now because right now if this is a criminal investigation and this is in the. it could be irresponsible to speculate on what the motives were or what actually happened one thing i want to point out is during the l.a. riots number of drivers it hit people in the middle of the street surely out of panic because when you're driving through a street especially not only when you're getting beat on by protesters on your windows in your hoods some people panic. at that point anything is possible so all sort of rational actions sort of go out the window at that point very well what could have happened if it was someone ramming protesters intentionally something that would be discovered through this investigation afterwards whatever the case is

it's actually a warble situation but i would want to speculate on the motives of the driver i think that's probably premature it should be anyway but if you look on twitter right now everyone is blaming steve bannon and donald trump for the you know the deaths and injuries that have taken place yes a very good point patrick and it's something i've been trying to. throughout our coverage of this i got into a sort of a heated debate with a journalist suggested that we would attribute to get the blame but as he said although there may be unlikely they're all possibilities where this may have been an accident it's not impossible until we know what the mindset of the driver was it's hard to say but that said everybody on the internet this is already making their mind up about this people are very emotional about what has happened today are you surprised that we have seen such violence we knew that there was going to be a protest when you know it's going to be an account of protest the authorities knew all about this they had national guard there they were trying to actually disperse

the people but are you surprised by the fall it was or even before hand. i'm not surprised actually. i'm going to say this is not is not my opinion this is just a matter of fact if you look at the protests in sacramento in berkeley in a college campuses around the country especially in the. speaking tour what you find is this group showing up very well organized and then showing up in really inciting violence in a lot of times oddly police just stand back and allow them to throw punches and beat people and keep people on the ground there's lots of video of this up on social media and seems like this protest this group seems to be very much played to the media play to the cameras and so.

the group you hardly hear you seem to have no political shape and the only appear as a counter protest group inciting violence if you think about it there would have if it wasn't there. anything you know would have would have taken place at this point yet you know they do have a right to be there as well what i find is if you look at the record streaming aggressive extremely advocating publicly calling for violence against anybody they label or brand a nazi or a fascist and even the term anti fascist it's kind of disingenuous construct because they don't seem to want to define what fascism is and they seem to be sticking this label. is a kind of a politicized construct and you could say what basis. are they operating on just purely agitation were delayed actually have.