CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.—After a morning of violent clashes between white nationalists and counter protesters, police ordered hundreds of people out of a downtown park — putting an end to a noon rally that hadn’t even begun.Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency shortly before 11 a.m.Using megaphones, police declared an unlawful assembly at about 11:40 a.m., and gave a five-minute warning to leave Emancipation Park, where hundreds of neoNazis, Ku Klux Klans members and other white nationalists had gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. They were met by equal numbers of counterprotesters, including clergy, Black Lives Matter activists and Princeton professor Cornel West.Read more: Chanting ‘blood and soil’ and ‘white lives matter,’ white nationalists march in CharlottesvilleBut fighting broke out way before the noon rally, starting Friday night and then again Saturday morning.Men in combat gear, some wearing bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields fought each other in the downtown streets, with little apparent police interference. Both sides sprayed each other with chemical irritants and plastic bottles were hurled through the air.Colleen Cook, 26, stood on a curb shouting at the rally attendees to go home.A large contingent of Charlottesville and Virginia state police in riot gear were stationed on side streets and at nearby barricades but did nothing to break up the melee.A group of three dozen self-described “militia” — men who were wearing full camouflage and were armed with long guns — said they were there to help keep the peace, but they also did not break up the fights.There were vicious clashes on Market Street in front of Emancipation Park, where the rally was to begin at noon. A large contingent of white nationalist rallygoers holding shields and swinging wooden clubs rushed through a line of counterprotesters ...
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