Honoring Charlottesville Victims by Rejecting White Supremacy and Trump’s Racism

 

These are trying times to be an American. Two years ago today, in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, we watched the sleeping dragon of racism and hatred emerge and spread death in its wake. This incident in question occurred at a “Unite the Right” rally on August 12, 2017 at a protest to remove a statue of General Robert E Lee.

 

A neo-Nazi and white supremacist named James Alex Fields Jr., plowed his speeding car into anti-racist counter-protesters killing Heather Meyer, 32, and injuring 19 others. Death, hatred, dire though these are, are they worse than watching our President defend white supremacy? Can such damage ever be undone? Recent mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, indicate not – at least not until Trump is out of office.

 

We must take a stand against domestic terrorists, klansman, white supremacists and Nazis like the members of the Unite the Right Movement who contributed to the boiling pot that led to injury and death in Charlottesville. Those who marched with loaded guns, do not understand our nation’s history and the progress we have made to repair the past. Yes, we have a long way to go, but these domestic terrorists are taking us back to a tortured part of American history. They would be in good company with their beloved Hitler. Indeed, we hope their movement follows the path he ultimately set: utter defeat and cowardly self-destruction,To the Klan and other fascists we say: We have fought back against your madness many times. When Hitler and his “master race” plunged the world into war, our fathers and mothers rallied and stopped you. But even before that, when Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis sought to remake a part of the Union as a land of freedom for the slaveholder, we came from the hills and the plains by the hundreds of thousands to stop them. In both of these crusades for freedom, people of color laid down their lives in the field of honor by the hundreds of thousands to defend your freedom, freedom you now claim to preach race hatred. What sane person would honor your cowardly attacks on the memory of these soldiers who fought for your liberty?

 

There is only one race, the human race. We may have all come here on different ships, but we are in the same boat now. Praise to the counter protesters for putting their bodies on the line to stand up for what all patriotic Americans believe in. They are the ones who are making America great.

 

To quote our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, encouraging his countrymen to take up the fight against the evil of slavery: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”