The murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 unfolded against a socio-political backdrop of demonstrations protesting the removal of Confederate statues around the country. In April 2017, following some months of debate, Charlottesville voted to remove a statue of Robert E Lee. But this stalled in early May, when a temporary injunction issued by the court prohibited the removal of the statue for another 6 months. By this time, the city’s former Lee Park had become the preferred venue for various neo-Confederate and far right wing political groups to hold public events, which would see things come to a head by that August.
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