This weekend, white supremacists from all over the country tried to take over Charlottesville, VA. They showed up with more firepower than the state police and used pickup trucks as weapons. Before the weekend was over, the senseless violence that necessarily follows from their vile rhetoric had killed Heather Heyer and injured many others.
At this very moment, a man sits in the White House who had to be persuaded to condemn the murderous actions of these white supremacists. Make no mistake, Donald Trump was reluctant to disclaim our home-grown Nazis because he is one of them in his heart.
There is no escaping the truth that the United States was build on the graves of Native Americans using the labor of enslaved African people. We went to war with ourselves because too many people thought it should be legal for one human being to own another. We’ve systemically brutalized black and brown people for centuries. We’ve denied them social, educational, political, and economic opportunity. We’ve snubbed them and shunned them. We’ve done everything we could to make sure they knew we didn’t see their humanity, and we’ve lived in denial of our crimes.
But we can make America’s future different than its past. We can refuse to allow white supremacists to start the Second American Civil War because they didn’t like the outcome of the first one. We can stand up, overwhelm them with our numbers, and calmly, peacefully tell them “no!”
On November 4th, I will be in the streets with Refuse Fascism demanding that our government find a way to end to this illegitimate presidency and peacefully transition power to people who have all our best interests at heart. I invite you join me.
