CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WINA) – A rumor that has circulated around Charlottesville for quite some time is starting to get legs online. But did Jason Kessler actually participate in the Occupy Wall Street movement?
Evan Knappenberger, a member of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, participated in Occupy Charlottesville. He says Kessler did, too, for nearly a week.
“He came to our meetings, he participated in our meetings, and he voted on our issues,” says Knappenberger. “He presented himself as one of us.”
Kessler told WINA News by way of an email that he was in what was then known as Lee Park, but not as a member of Occupy.
“I went to the park with a friend as (a) cameraman. They didn’t like being film [sic], became paranoid and told me to leave. I left with several occupiers stalking me down the street. I contacted the police about the incident but they didn’t do anything.”
But Knappenberger says he never saw a camera and that Kessler stayed in a tent of his own with literature.
“I don’t remember exactly what he brought with him, but it was very violent in nature,” he says. “He quickly went from talking about this and that to ‘we need to have Molotov cocktails’ and ‘we need to dig up the bricks to throw them at the cops.'”
Knappenberger says that alarmed the rest of the group, whose foundational principals were non-violence and social justice. Eventually, Knappenberger says, they voted Kessler out.
“It started this whole dynamic that ended badly,” he says. “Jason got vehemently upset. He would yell incoherently. We asked the police for help in intervening and they refused. They said ‘You’re here in the park, you wanted to do this; this is your problem, not ours.’ So I basically had to force him out of the park with my own physical presence and I followed him home from a distance. He screamed at me the whole time, incoherently, the most rash, scream-like, disturbing sounds. But that’s how we had to get rid of him.”
Kessler told WINA News in a second email that, “Occupy people didn’t want to be filmed and told us to leave. There were several goons following us down the street after that. So no, I was not involved with Occupy. We didn’t see eye to eye.”
“I did follow him,” Knappenberger says. “I must be the goon that he’s referring to.”
