A campaign stop for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams quickly went left after she was faced with a screaming bunch of white nationalists who heckled her and members of her campaign.
Local media outlets have remained awfully mum on the incident, however.
Abrams, who’s on track to become the first African-American governor in Georgia history, was hosting a campaign event for female veterans near Augusta earlier this month when members of Nationalist Liberty Union (NLU) decided to crash the party, threatening and harassing the folks inside, the One People’s Project’s Ida Vox reported.
If elected, Stacey Abrams would become the first Black female governor in Georgia and the United States. (Photo credit: abcnews.go.com)
The group, whose Facebook page claims its mission is “to unify America as a Euro-centric Christian nation,” was seemingly angry over the possibility of Abrams becoming governor and ridding the state of their precious Confederate monuments.
One video from the incident shows NLU associate Paul Lovett pressing Abrams about her wishes to move a Confederate carving from the face of Stone Mountain.
“They’re veteran monuments ma’am!” he shouted. “They’re veteran monuments. You’re calling for the destruction of veteran monuments.”
After calming her guests down, Abrams made her case by citing the horrific events of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. last year and noted that the monument was created by those who revamped the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century.
“At the time that this happened, the person who sits in the Oval Office said [Charlotteville victim Heather Heyer] was no different than the people who killed her,” Abrams said after Lovett cut her off to rant. “ …That kind of moral equivocation is an embarrassment to our nation, and when the question was raised to me, ‘What would I do about the single largest monument to domestic terrorism in our nation’s history’, I said I would remove it because as a person, and more importantly as an African-American woman standing for office in the Deep South, I cannot countenance that kind of celebration paid for by state dollars.”
Meanwhile, a separate video shows more NLU protesters standing out in the lobby where James J. Stachowiak, a felon and anti-Muslim vlogger, was arguing with a Black woman veteran. Despite never serving a day in the military, Stachowiak decried a shooting at a Chattanooga military base in 2015 by so-called “Islamic ragheads” and insisted Abrams’ plans for Georgia would will have it “at the mercy of Islamic radicals.”
He later threatened a right-wing uprising if Abrams tried to take their guns away.
“Her policies will result in a revolution!” Stachowiak yelled at the woman. “If she attempts gun confiscation, her policies will result in armed resistance, be it local, state or federal. Gun confiscation will be met with lethal resistance!”
Fellow protesters are seen in the background toting signs that read “Hands Off Our Monument” and “Save Stone Mountain.”
The harrowing incident flew under the radar of local news outlets, who didn’t make much mention of it until nearly three weeks after the fact. Augusta station FOX 54 was actually at the event and didn’t even mention the protests or Lovett’s outburst in its report. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution briefly referenced the incident at the end of a recent politics blog.
“You know a lot of these [local Georgia] journalists are crap,” activist and blogger Anoa Changa, who posted video of the confrontation between Stachowiak and the veteran, told The Root. “The national coverage of Stacey really helps because the AJC, these local papers either don’t cover her, or they only cover nonsense about her but not [Republican opponent Brian] Kemp.”
Abrams and Kemp will face off in the governor’s election in November.
Watch more in the clips below.
And here…
This Man yelling at a Black woman veteran, during an event held by Abrams for veterans, and word is he has never even served. We can discuss the issues with US militarism but I’m not here for these idiots crying about confederate monuments while disrespecting Black women. #gapol pic.twitter.com/COLMfiBbgT
— freeborn Black woman first of her name (@TheWayWithAnoa) September 2, 2018
