Cry Havoc by Michael Signer

Author:Michael Signer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2020-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

THAT SAME MONDAY, I STARTED TALKING WITH POWELL TATE, the DC-based public relations firm we’d hired with the help of $5,000 from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. This was a relief. So far that awful summer, any public relations from the city had been halting, incomplete, and unpersuasive. For instance, the previous week, the city manager had promised the council that staff would be holding daily press briefings during the crucial week preceding the rally to tell the public what they needed to know about the city’s preparations and about what they should be doing. But these had not happened. From the average citizen’s perspective, we were staying silent while a firestorm approached.

From the first minute of our conversation, it was clear that our PR team was made up of professionals. They had done crisis management before, and we were in good hands.

After our press conference, Jason Kessler was up on Facebook Live within an hour. He was broadcasting from the roof of our parking deck on Market Street, pacing edgily, gesticulating angrily, proclaiming defiantly that he would hold the rally in Emancipation Park anyway, that the city couldn’t stop him. He seemed more shrill than usual and a little desperate.

As predicted, he was also saying he was going to sue the city. To the extent I had allowed myself a smidgen of optimism in thinking he might actually follow the city’s plan, my heart sank. In terms of litigation, we would now be on our own, because we’d run out of money for Boies Schiller. The city manager had already told me he was very worried about our City Attorney’s Office being overwhelmed. In fact, when Governor McAuliffe had asked me a few days previously how he could help, I had specifically cited the need for extra legal help. He had promised to have his counsel get back to me, but I hadn’t heard from him yet.

Late that night, I methodically analyzed every possible scenario. The best case would be that the bulk of Kessler’s supporters would go to McIntire Park, with the counterprotesters following them there. The next-best outcome would be that our strategy would divide and confuse them, causing Kessler’s event to lose legitimacy, with some supporters going to Emancipation Park and some to McIntire Park. In this scenario, fewer people might actually come because of the confusion that was being sowed. The park would not become overwhelmed with people, and we could claim credit for reducing the size of the rally. In that scenario, the protesters and counterprotesters would be spread thin, and the police would not have to disband the rally.

However, there was also another possible scenario where a large but not huge number of people would go to Emancipation Park, and the police would arrest a couple dozen alt-right demonstrators and counterprotesters, but the rally would not be stopped through the unlawful assembly mechanism. The city would end up getting credit for a day that exceeded expectations, even if it wasn’t pleasant.

Finally, I got to

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