From The Eastern Shore To Martinsville, A Weekend Of Protests

From the Virginia Mercury:

By Ned Oliver

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From the Eastern Shore to Martinsville, thousands continued to demonstrate against police brutality and racial inequality over the weekend:

• In Prince William County, police arrested nearly 50 protesters after a crowd marched onto Interstate 95, briefly closing the roadway.—Associated Press

• In Richmond, about 1,000 joined a march planned for children and their parents.—Richmond Times-Dispatch

• In Roanoke, protesters have been outside the city’s police station every day since May 30.—The Roanoke Times

• “In front of Norfolk City Hall, hundreds of white Christians kneeled to ask for forgiveness.”—The Virginian-Pilot

• On the Eastern Shore, a Saturday night gathering of about 150 people in Exmore “had the feel of a hometown gathering.”—The Virginian-Pilot

• In Martinsville, about two dozen people spent the day in a park. (And a man who leads a local history group issued a public apology for cursing at them from his minivan.)—Martinsville Bulletin

• Pastors held a prayer circle in Caroline County.—The Free Lance-Star

• Organizers in Charlottesville, where 1,000 people stretched blocks through the city’s downtown, said they want “to keep pushing for police accountability even after ‘BLM’ is no longer trending online.”—The Daily Progress

• At a park in Staunton, a local pastor told the crowd, “This is our house! And the beams have begun to rot! We have it as our responsibility to repair this house.”—News Leader

• In Culpeper, an estimated 750 people gathered “in an atmosphere charged with anger and frustration tempered by hope and a sense of community.”—Culpeper Star-Exponent

• And in the tiny town of Orange, organizers said they were astounded by the size of the crowd. “It makes me teary-eyed to see the turnout that we got.”—Orange County Review

The state’s reckoning with Confederate monuments and symbols continued:

• A small group of demonstrators toppled a statue of Confederate Gen. William Wickham in Richmond’s Monroe Park overnight Saturday.—Associated Press

• Richmond leaders began discussing renaming Jefferson Davis Highway within the city.—Richmond Times-Dispatch

• Leaders in Roanoke said they support removing their own statue of Robert E. Lee.—The Roanoke Times

• Workers in Fredericksburg removed a long-debated slave auction block, which a local business owner had sued to keep in place, arguing moving it would hurt his business. The block had become a gathering point for protesters who called for it to be moved out of the city center.—The Free Lance-Star

More headlines:

• “Transfers of military gear to police departments — from $767,000 armored cars designed to survive mines to night vision equipment to the backpacks soldiers take into combat — ballooned in Virginia and in Hampton Roads last year.”—Daily Press

• Fairfax County police charged one of their own officers with three misdemeanor counts of assault and battery “after authorities said he used a stun gun on a black man who was disoriented and did not appear combative.”—The Washington Post

• Henrico County Police arrested a man accused of driving his pickup through a crowd of protesters, one of whom was hit but not seriously injured.—WTVR

• A 24-year-old in Orange was jailed after threatening to kill protesters and burn property.—Associated Press

• Virginia’s official tally of COVID-19 cases passed the 50,000 mark on Sunday.—The Virginian-Pilot

• “A southwest Virginia man who blew off his hand in an apparent explosives accident has been charged in federal court after authorities say they found evidence he was making a bomb and wanted to target ‘hot cheerleaders’ because of his sexual frustrations.”—Associated Press

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This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit VirginiaMercury.com.