After Charlottesville, 'White Lives Matter' rally planned for Tennessee

An alliance of several white nationalist groups — including those involved in an August rally in Charlottesville, Va. — has announced plans for a “White Lives Matter” rally this month in Tennessee.

The rally is scheduled for Sat., Oct. 28, in Shelbyville, located an hour southeast of Nashville.

Brad Griffin, who writes under the alias Hunter Wallace on his blog Occidental Dissent, announced that the event is being held by the Nationalist Front, a group of organizations that includes the National Socialist Movement, Traditionalist Worker Party, League of the South, White Lives Matter, Vanguard America and others.

The Southern Poverty Law Center considers each organization to be an extremist hate group falling under neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate and white nationalist categories.

On his blog, he said the rally is being held to draw attention to a fatal church shooting last month in Antioch, as well as to “protest the ongoing problem of refugee resettlement in Middle Tennessee.”

In the post, Griffin casts blame on President Donald Trump’s administration for “not saying a word” after the Sept. 24 shooting, in which police say Emanuel Samson, 25, opened fire at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, killing one and injuring seven others.

Metro Nashville police previously announced Samson was a legal resident, but not a citizen, after coming to the United States from Sudan in 1996.

On Thursday, Griffin said in addition to the public rally in Shelbyville — and potentially public rallies in other Middle Tennessee cities that day — the group would also hold a private meeting that night, something that was supposed to take place after the Charlottesville rally but never happened.

-The Tennessean