'Get out of my country!' Virginia mom confronts KKK members marching around courthouse
A Virginia mother confronted hooded Ku Klux Klan members who held a surprise rally outside a Hanover County courthouse.
The Hanover County Sheriff's Office said they weren't expecting the robed KKK members Saturday, but said no altercations or traffic disruptions were caused by their hour-long demonstration, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The event was organized by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Pelham, North Carolina-based group that rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, a month before the August 2017 United the Right rally where a neo-Nazi killed a counterprotester and injured 30 others.
Law enforcement was caught off guard by the demonstration, but not one local woman, who decided to confront the group.
“I was not surprised at all,” said Shannon Spiggle. “I was grief stricken. It’s just so sad.”
Spiggle told the out-of-state KKK marchers that their hate was not welcome in her community.
“I was just getting so mad, but I was also shaking," the mother of three told WWBT-TV. “I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do."
Spiggle streamed the encounter on Facebook live.
“You’re a disgrace to this country!" she shouted. "Go home! Get out of my country!”
Spiggle said she's the great-great-great granddaughter of America’s first reformed rabbi, and she laughed at the KKK members' response to her criticism.
"They told me to go back to Israel, which I found to be funny because my ancestors came to the Americas in the 1620s," she said. "They helped build this country. My grandfather helped change Judaism.”
Spiggle agreed the hate group had a constitutional right to demonstrate, but she also has a right to push back against their message.
“Where it is their right to demonstrate, they have to deal with the consequences that they’re not welcome, not in my county, not where my children are growing up,” Spiggle said.