White nationalists descended on Shelbyville, Tenn., on Saturday in a rally they called "White Lives Matter," but after meeting a heavy presence of police and counterprotesters, organizers canceled a second protest planned later in the day in Murfreesboro. A rep for the League of the South, which planned both rallies, says that they were to have been the largest such gatherings since violence erupted in Charlottesville. The selection of the two cities in Tennessee was deliberate; whereas CNN terms Charlottesville a "liberal stronghold," the League of the South rep says Shelbyville and Murfreesboro are the "exact opposite." "We decided after that we didn't want to do anything like (Charlottesville) again. We wanted to go to a place where we can expect the police to uphold the law," he said.
But like Charlottesville, the New York Times reports that the vast majority of the white nationalists were from out of town, in what it calls "a roadshow of hate." Both the rally and the would-be rally drew hundreds of counterprotesters, including an estimate 800 to 1,000 in Murfreesboro. "I had to drive down. You can't live a couple hours away from something like this and not get up off your ass to protest," said one woman from Clarksville. "What will I tell my daughters? 'Mommy was too busy watching football to protest a Nazi takeover?' Not me. Not in my state." (More Tennessee stories.)
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