White Lives Matter rally canceled after counter-protesters disrupt two failed gatherings
As white supremacist actions and policies—which result from white supremacist worldviews—dominate the news and color interactions in America, disrupting these skewed norms brings joy. Even here at the Black Youth Project, I sometimes ask my editor Hari to acquiesce in the publication of positive stories. After all, constant negativity can weigh down one’s spirit. So may we Milly Rock, Bankhead bounce, Diddy bop, complete with 1990s “take that” exclamations, or whatever your go-to celebratory dance is, over some white supremacist Ls taken over the weekend? Apparently, two “white lives matter” rallies (also known as Neo-Nazi gatherings) failed to come to fruition in a southern state on Saturday.
When attendees brought their white nationalism, human swastika identities and racist logic to Tennessee, counter-protesters bested them, resisting the white supremacists to the point that the white nationalists chose to leave. In Shelbyville, counter-protesters pumped out Beyoncé and Bob Marley’s music and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to overpower the white-is-right foolishness.
In Murfreesboro, at a second would-be rally, between 800 and 1,000 counter-protesters faced a paltry amount of white nationalists. The League of the South secured a permit for the rally, but the white supremacists accepted their loss at about 3 p.m. EST and went somewhere else to lick their wounds. As CNN noted, white supremacists chose these two cities because of their rural compositions and heavy support of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The counter-protesters’ weekend win comes shortly after Ohio State University declined an opportunity to center white supremacy and white nationalist recruitment, which also occurred after counter-protesters at the University of Florida drowned out similar messaging.