denise freeman charlottesville

In an exclusive interview with the Conservative Firing Line on Thursday, Denise Freeman, a former registered nurse (RN) from North Carolina who was literally in the middle of the melee that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, confirmed that leftist protesters were extremely violent, hurling rocks, eggs, frozen water bottles, urine, feces and what she believes to be battery acid.

Freeman went to Charlottesville as part of a contingent from the APV (American Pit Vipers) III Percenter organization.  According to Freeman, the group was there after having contacted local law enforcement and did not take sides in the protest.

Freeman, who said she has a Puerto Rican son, was up-front in saying that she disavows the alt-right groups, including the KKK and the white nationalists who participated in the “Unite the Right” rally.  She also expressed similar sentiments about the far-left Antifa counter-protesters.

She chose to go, she said, because of her belief in the First Amendment right to free speech and free assembly, saying that it extends to both sides, even if she disagrees with their point of view.

“We’re not affiliated with either side,” she said.

Her job was to provide assistance to anyone who might need medical attention.

And, it turns out, her services were needed — by both sides in the the fight.

Freeman told me she and her colleagues pulled and treated injured protesters from both sides, sometimes working in the middle of the street as combatants clashed around her.  In all, she said, they treated well over two dozen people. At one point, they attended over 5 people at one time in the street.

Meanwhile, she added, “my boys were holding people off.”

Here’s video of the situation from her perspective, courtesy of the “News2Share” [https://www.facebook.com/N2Sreports/] Facebook page:

Freeman explained that she and her comrades feared being attacked by both sides, and had to maintain “situational awareness,” but it turned out that they had much more to fear from the liberal protesters who, she said, were far more violent than the white nationalists.

“I don’t know of anyone attacked by the alt-right,” she said “All of the violence was from the Antifa side.”

That’s not to say the alt-right didn’t start fights.  Freeman said both sides initiated conflict with the other at times, but the leftists were far more violent.

And, she recalled, the level of respect shown to her and her group was quite different between the two sides, with the alt-right being far more respectful than the Antifa counter-protesters.

Freeman described the conditions at the park where the clash took place.  According to her account, police put up a barricade where alt-right protesters were standing. Making matters worse, there were no portable toilets in the park and none were seen within a six to eight block radius.

According to Freeman, the group went to Charlottesville under the assumption they would be working with the police department.  She further said that prior arrangements had been made with local authorities — who escorted them into the park where they would be working.

Before long, officers left the scene, which allowed the situation to get out of control.

Christian Yingling, the tactical commander of the group, spoke to the UK Guardian, which reported [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/15/charlottesville-militia-free-speech-violence]:

“We spoke to the Charlottesville police department beforehand and offered to come down there and help with security,” Yingling told the Guardian.

“They said: ‘We cannot invite you in an official capacity, but you are welcome to attend,’ and they gave us an escort into the event,” he added.

So-called mainstream media outlets have reported the presence of militia at Charlottesville, claiming — as Politico [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/17/white-supremacists-militias-private-police-215498] did — that Freeman’s group was essentially part of “the private police for white supremacists.”

According to Politico:

Despite the militias’ public statements of neutrality, evidence has mounted over the past six months that the militias have gravitated decisively toward one side in the street battles that have played out recently in cities across the country. Indeed, during these first months of Trump’s presidency, these loose-knit organizations making up America’s militia movement are losing their anti-government ideological purity as they grow increasingly close with a segment of the right-wing from which many in the recent past had generally kept their distance. Their presence as a private security force for an increasingly public coalition of white nationalist factions—Ku Klux Klan followers, neo-Nazis, and alt-right supporters—has transformed a movement that has already demonstrated a willingness to threaten violence.

While there is evidence that some of the militia members stepped into the breach [https://www.propublica.org/article/police-stood-by-as-mayhem-mounted-in-charlottesville] to try to keep the peace on Saturday, many critics contend their presence exacerbated tensions and prevented the restoration of order. When asked why police didn’t do more to stop the bloodshed, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe pointed to the riflemen strolling the streets. “It’s easy to criticize, but I can tell you this: 80 percent of the people here had semiautomatic weapons,” the governor said. “You saw the militia walking down the street. You would have thought they were an army … [The militia members] had better equipment than our State Police had.”

But McAuliffe’s claim was just one of two major lies [http://conservativefiringline.com/virginia-state-police-exposes-two-huge-lies-told-terry-mcauliffe/] he told regarding the protest, as we reported here [http://conservativefiringline.com/virginia-state-police-exposes-two-huge-lies-told-terry-mcauliffe/]:

“The governor was referencing the weapons and tactical gear the members of various groups attending the rally had on their persons,” (Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne) Geller says. “I can assure you that the Virginia State Police personnel were equipped with more-than-adequate specialized tactical and protective gear for the purpose of fulfilling their duties to serve and protect those in attendance of the August 12 event in Charlottesville.”

Freeman acknowledged that her colleagues were armed, which is probably what ensured her safety in the long run.

We reached out to Yingling, who told us that he’s “filing libel and slander lawsuits over this stuff,” meaning “news” reports like that published at Politico that paint him and his group as something they aren’t.  “I would never associate myself with white supremacists,” he said.

In fact, he explained that militias “don’t want to be associated with” white supremacy. “No one wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole because they didn’t want to be associated with that.”

Moreover, he told me that his second-in-command that day was a Hispanic man and one of the highest ranking officers in his unit is an openly gay man.

“We were out there simply to keep the peace,” he said.  “We helped both sides and got abused by both sides.”

And, he further said, it’s “disheartening to see how the media is treating us.”

In the end, Yingling observed: “There were 32 of us and 6,000 of them and we held them off for six hours.”  They stayed, he added, “until the State Police ordered us out,” noting that “if they had stepped in earlier none of this would have happened.”

Freeman’s account would seem to corroborate statements made by President Trump, who said there was violence from both sides.

It also corroborates statements by others who were at the protest. [http://conservativefiringline.com/nbc-news-admits-trump-was-right-both-sides-showed-up-ready-to-fight/]

For whatever reason, officers were reportedly [http://conservativefiringline.com/reports-police-stood-violence-erupted-charlottesville/] ordered to “not intervene until given command to do so,” according to the ACLU.[https://twitter.com/ACLUVA/status/896386562484731904]

The Daily Caller [http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/13/why-were-the-police-held-back-in-charlottesville/] reported:

When police were ordered to disperse the alt-right rally, that act directed the white nationalists into the antifa demonstrators, leading to further street brawls. Police didn’t seem to try to get in between the two groups or suppress the fights.

As ProPublica reported [https://www.propublica.org/article/police-stood-by-as-mayhem-mounted-in-charlottesville]], state police and National Guardsmen mostly stood aside and watched as the violence grew worse.

This appears to be a direct result of what appears to be a stand down order from higher-ups.

Even with this evidence, liberals and many in the media continue to claim that all of the violence came from white nationalists and now liberal Democrats seek to punish President Trump [http://conservativefiringline.com/democrats-move-formally-censure-trump-telling-truth-charlottesville/] for telling the truth about Charlottesville.

The protest climaxed with a horrific incident in which Heather Heyer was killed when she was struck by a vehicle driven by James Fields, a white nationalist who, Politico added, “had posted an image of Donald Trump as king [https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/896567841897533440] on his Facebook account…”

Freeman said she was at the intersection where that incident took place just minutes before Heyer was killed, telling me that she was “horrified” by what happened, describing it as “the most god-awful thing that could happen.”

“I feel so bad for her family,” she said, describing the attack as “horrible.”

ussanews.com/News1/2017/08/17/eyewitness-confirms-left-wing-protesters-used-acid-rocks-as-police-in-charlottesville-did-nothing-video/