Washington transportation officials have decided against running separate trains for people headed to next weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally, according to reports.
According to the Washington Post, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board chairman Jack Evans said previously that the organization are weighing to try to head off clashes between participants in the white supremacist rally in Lafayette Park and protesters. The gathering, billed by organizers as a “white civil rights” rally, is planned for Aug. 12, the anniversary of last year’s event in Charlottesville, Va.
Evans said Saturday that “Metro will not be providing a special train or special car for anyone next Sunday,” per the Washington Post.
The authority faced criticism both from employees and the public for considering the service.
Jackie Jeter, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, the union that represents many WMATA employees, issued a statement that the union “will not play a role” in providing special accommodations for protesters.
“More than 80% of Local 689’s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated,” the union’s statement said.
Rally organizers claimed the original event, which resulted in the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, was in protest of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Heyer died after being hit by a vehicle driven into the crowd by a self-identified neo-Nazi.
