The 23-year-old elder care worker says he went to the counterprotests to have his voice heard. He didnt want to see racism win and destroy the city he was raised in.
Long said the only weapon he had was a can of spray paint that a white supremacist threw at him earlier, so he took a lighter to the spray paint and turned it into a flame thrower. And a photographer snapped the photo.
But inside every photograph is an untold story. If you look closely at Longs picture, theres an elderly white man standing in between Long and his friend. The unknown man was part of the counterprotests, too, but was afraid, and Long and his friends were trying to protect him. Even though, Long says, those who were paid to protect the residents of Charlottesville were doing just the opposite.
The cops were protecting the Nazis, instead of the people who live in the city, Long said. The cops basically just stood in their line and looked at the chaos. The cops were not protecting the people of Charlottesville. They were protecting the outsiders.