Eva Watler, age 41, has been dealing with Nazis in Tennessee since she was 13 years old when she was jumped by a pack of skinheads in Dragon Park in Nashville.
“They were looking for Jews to beat up,” she said. “I was 13 and I didn’t know how to fight. It was shocking.”
As a Jewish anti-fascist activist, Watler still fights neo-Nazis on her old stomping grounds, though she no longer gets kicked around by their jackboots. She now confronts white nationalists head on, most recently at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where reigning alt-right star Matthew Heimbach – once dubbed the “Little Fuhrer” by the Southern Poverty Law Center – spoke this February. Watler’s Jewish identity is a motivating factor in her activism, which spans a variety of projects from her work as the local coordinator of Food Not Bombs, a group that tackles food insecurity, to her involvement in the antifa movement.
Watler, Hebrew name Rivkah Bat Shanna, was born, raised, and received a Jewish education in her hometown of Nashville. During her childhood, she was sheltered from anti-Semitism having spent most of life in Jewish environments, attending shul seven days a week and going to Jewish day school.
When Watler transitioned into public school at Bellview Middle School, she befriended minority students and found the white students to be “severely racist and anti-Semitic.” She was bullied constantly and avoided her white classmates. Watler was ultimately inspired to join the antifa movement by these experiences combined with her family’s Holocaust history. “We had lost 9 out of 10 of our family in the Holocaust,” she said. “Basically only my line of folks survived.”
Watler first got involved in the anti-fascist movement by attending local music group performances associated with Nashville’s hardcore punk and hip-hop scene, a crowd which overlaps with the local antifa movement.
She said she found community in the antifa movement after her first physical assault by a white nationalist.
Antifa activism between the ages of 13 and 14 brought her in contact with the works of prominent black leftists like Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, introduced to her by people of color within the antifa movement. These figures and their struggles resonated with Watler and gave perspective on her own suffering. “I kind of related to the black and brown liberation,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t so bad for me. It was a personal level not a structural level in my case as a Jew, but it still hurt.”
In her adulthood, Watler favors non-violent direct action and civil disobedience in the vein of Martin Luther King Jr. Watler said she inherited her mission from her mother who was involved with the civil rights and anti-war movement in her youth, participating in the famous Woolworth store sit-ins in Nashville.
Watler previously served as an elder for Mercy Junction, an interfaith congregation with an anti-hierarchical structure. Members use civil disobedience to oppose what they see as systems of oppression like racism, capitalism, and the police.
On Feb. 17, Watler and five compatriots from Mercy Junction were detained and given a traffic citation for disrupting traffic at University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK). It was their protest against a speech by Heimbach, a key figure in assembling the Unite the Right Rally at Charlottesville, Virginia last summer where a young woman, Heather Heyer, was killed by a car.
Charlottesville made white nationalist activity a national issue to be addressed by the White House and the national press. Anti-Semitic incidents spiked 182 percent post-Charlottesville, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). According to the ADL’s annual audit of 2017, when comparing data from last year to the previous year, incidents increased by 67 percent in 2017. On college campuses, there was a 59 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents within the first three quarters of last year compared to a similar period in 2016.
Heimbach notably chose to speak in the state of Tennessee, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is the state with the second most hate groups in the nation. Heimbach’s event was closed off from the public in a university building while protesters demonstrated outside in the rain. “Heimbach… knew what he was doing by renting a space at UTK and being inside,” Watler said. “That delegitimized counter protesters who were outside in the cold and rain while he was inside.”
UTK police set up a designated protest area equipped with a metal detector and forbid a list of items including weapons, masks, liquids, and food. Large areas of the campus were shut-down. Beth Foster, co-director of Mercy Junction, claimed that all public restrooms were locked. Mercy Junction members refused to enter the area, or as Foster put it, “Mercy Junction has made the decision in Knoxville and other places, we will not go into cages created by the state.”
The six members of Mercy Junction who protested – co-director Beth Foster, Rev. Alaina Cobb (pastor), Laura Richardson (elder), Watler (elder), Kaitlyn Brock (member), and Thomas Kopp (an associate) – decided to step out of the protest area with a sign that read “God Condemns White Supremacy” to disrupt traffic while singing “This Little Light of Mine.” Very soon after stepping out, all six were handcuffed by the police. According to Watler, all members of the congregation were willing to be arrested to “disrupt the status quo to make a point heard.” The banner they held was destroyed. Watler was handcuffed and escorted by two police officers, in contrast with the rest of the group, and began singing “Shalom Aleichem.” Several Jews in the crowd of adjacent protestors, according to Watler, sang with her as she and her fellow activists were escorted off the premises. For Watler, her song choice was a “Jewish call to action” as a song “sung by Jews during times of stress and oppression.”
Watler, who had brace on her hand due to an injury from her work as a massage therapist, informed the police her wrist was hurt. The police told her they would loosen the restraint but instead tightened it, causing her pain, Watler stated. Pastor Cobb, kneeling in prayer, was allegedly roughly yanked to her feet by an officer before and escorted away with the other members of Mercy Junction to a police transportation vehicle and detained until sometime after Heimbach had spoken. After an hour or more passed, Mercy Junction members were released by the police and given a traffic citation. All six pled guilty to the offense in court.
The police tell a different story. UTK Public Information Officer Lt. Mike Richardson stated over email, “UTPD did not handcuff or detain anyone during the event.” But Mercy Junction members Watler, Foster, and Alaine all maintained the same narrative over separate phone interviews. Additionally, Joel Willis a Mercy Junction videographer provided a supporting account, as well as video evidence that confirms the handcuffing and detainment.
For Watler, she had no choice but to act at UTK – or any time she sees oppression in any form she perceives it to take, be it from police or any kind of authority. She said she is acting upon the knowledge that Jews, as a people with a storied history across continents, oceans, and many exoduses, understand what it’s likes to suffer discrimination, no matter what cloak it wears.
“As a Jew who knows my history and knows what authoritarianism can do to a people, if I, a Jew who understands that… I have no other options but to stand up to that and fight for [what] is good in this world,” she said. “It is my duty as a Jew.”
Spencer Wells is a New Voices reporting fellow studying journalism at Western Kentucky University.
