Publisher Description
The former mayor of Charlottesville delivers a vivid, first-person chronicle of the terror and mayhem of the August 2017 “Unite the Right” event, and shows how issues of extremism are affecting not just one city but the nation itself.
The deadly invasion of Charlottesville, Virginia, by white nationalist militias in August 2017 is a microcosm of the challenges facing American democracy today. In his first-person account of one of recent American history’s most polarizing events, Michael Signer, then Charlottesville’s mayor, both tells the story of what really happened and draws out its larger significance.
Signer’s gripping, strikingly candid “you are there” narrative sets the events on the ground-the lead-up to August’s “Unite the Right” rally, the days of the weekend itself, the aftermath-in the larger context of a country struggling to find its way in a disruptive new era. He confronts some of the most challenging questions of our moment, namely how can we:
- Reconcile free speech with the need for public order?
- Maintain the values of pragmatism, compromise, even simple civility, in a time of intensification of extremes on the right and the left?
- Address systemic racism through our public spaces and memorials?
- Provide accountability after a crisis?
While Signer shows how easily our communities can be taken hostage by forces intent on destroying democratic norms and institutions, he concludes with a stirring call for optimism, revealing how the tragic events of Charlottesville are also bolstering American democracy from within.
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A reflective insider account … Michael Signer, then mayor of Charlottesville, worked mightily, as his book Cry Havoc makes clear, to try to avert the white supremacist standoff that took the life of Heather Heyer and tarnished the name of his town. … Signer grapples with the limits of the First Amendment and … raises thoughtful questions with no easy answers. Should provocateurs be given demonstration permits when their objective is to provoke? Signer offers a long rumination on his efforts to stay true to a freedom he holds dear while not giving energy to people who repulse him. …The mayhem on the streets of Charlottesville bruised the idealism of Signer, who had grand ambitions of remaking the normally tranquil college town into a capital of the resistance against the politics of President Trump.
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New York TimesÂ
