Photographed & videotaped among the alt-right in New Orleans, too

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia––No Kill Nation founder and pit bull advocate Debi Day appears to have been among the self-described “Freedom Keepers,” neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and other “alt-right” participants in “Unite the Right” protests held on August 11 and 12, 2017 against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee from a park in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia.

Facebook postings from Day herself and other “Unite the Right” participants, including video of allegedly armed marchers, appear to put her prominently on the scene at one of the largest white supremacist events of the 21st century.

Three deaths

The Charlottesville demonstrations culminated in three deaths on the second day. Heather D. Heyer, 32, a paralegal from Charlottesville who was protesting against the “Unite the Right” faction, was among at least 20 counter-protesters mowed down in a chain-reaction crash allegedly started by a speeding car driven by James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio. Nineteen other people were injured.

Virginia state troopers H.J. Cullen and Berke M. M. Bates were killed later in the day when their helicopter crashed for unknown reasons and burst into flame.

Identified herself on camera

Photos and video in which Day identified herself to alt-right videographer Johnny Dale Mcclung, of Biloxi, Mississippi, were posted on July 29, 2017, following an “Anti-Immigration March” in New Orleans.

Day, at both the Charlottesville and New Orleans events, appeared among the “Freedom Keepers.”

“The Freedom Keepers have appeared as a camouflage-garbed security force at ‘free speech’ confrontations up and down the west coast hosted by the nationalist movement known as the ‘alt-right’ ,” Willamette Week news editor Aaron Mesh explained, after similar events in several Oregon cities. “They describe themselves as a ‘patriot’ group,” despite the prominence of Nazi, Confederate, and Ku Klux Klan regalia at their events, “and recently protested the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans.”

“Fringe white supremacists”

According to It’s Going Down, self-described as “a digital community center from anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements,” based in Portland, Oregon, “Warriors for Freedom LLC is the most recent guise of a group also known as American Freedom Keepers. Uniting a variety of motorcycle gang members, bigoted fundamentalists, militia members, and other street-brawlers with nothing better to do, this group takes donations from the public and uses the money to jet-set around the country, hoping to get into fights with young activists. They videotape these fights, and then use them as propaganda to gain more donations. In aid of this vicious circle of violence, allowing fringe white supremacists to join their rallies has become commonplace. The more violence, the more outrageous videos they produce, and the more money for Warriors for Freedom, so the more time they can spend flying around the country rather than doing something productive for their communities.”

“Constitutionalist?”

Day has described herself on Facebook as a “constitutionalist,” a term of multiple interpretations, ranging from the judicial conservatism of some U.S. Supreme Court justices, to the notion that the U.S. should return to observing the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written, before the addition of the Bill of Rights, the abolition of slavery, and the extension of political rights to women.

No Kill Nation & No Kill Advocacy Center

Previously Day has been known chiefly as the apparently biggest single funder behind both her own animal advocacy organization, No Kill Nation, headquartered in Lighthouse Point, Florida, founded in 2009 and the No Kill Advocacy Center, of Oakland, California, founded in 2006 by Nathan Winograd.

No Kill Nation had raised nearly $1.5 million through 2015, according to IRS Form 990 filings, much of it to promote Winograd and his projects.

Anti-Semitism

Winograd, author of the 2007 book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & the No Kill Revolution in America, is Jewish, and has often made use in his work of imagery associated with Nazism and the Holocaust.

(See Review: Redemption, by Nathan Winograd, Nathan Winograd in perspective, and Street dogs in the U.S.? Nathan Winograd has gone barking mad.)

This does not appear to jibe well with the anti-Semitic rhetoric often used by alt-right organization members.

“Premiere sponsor to No Kill Conference”

Yet footnotes on No Kill Nation filings of IRS Form 990 repeatedly mention that “For several years No Kill Nation has been, and will continue to be, the premiere sponsor to the annual 2-day No Kill Conference held in Washington D.C. in partnership with the No Kill Advocacy Center.”

Additional footnotes explain that “In 2011 Redemption: The Story of the No Kill Movement in America, produced by Sagacity Productions, began filming. While the majority of the film was funded by one director of No Kill Nation Inc., the balance of the film’s production costs were paid for by No Kill Nation Inc.”

“The ultimate thank you”

Said Winograd on the No Kill Advocacy Center web site, “The ultimate thank you goes to the film’s benefactor, Debi Day. I remain grateful for her kindness, her unique and special contribution to our cause and the potential for animals her assistance helps to be realized.”

Winograd did not respond to an ANIMALS 24-7 request for comment about Day’s participation in alt-right events of an anti-Semitic and generally racist nature.

Day was also identified by the Miami Herald as one of the funders of a failed August 2012 attempt to repeal the lightly enforced 1989 Miami-Dade County ban on possession of pit bulls. Though there was no organized opposition to the repeal attempt, it failed by a margin of 63.2 percent to 36.8 percent.

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