![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Respectfully submitted
Aug. 14th, 2017 07:59 pmCharlottesville, Virginia, has a statue of Robert E. Lee in what used to be called Lee Park. Back in April, the city council, voted 3-2 to sell and relocate the statue; they also voted unanimously to rename the park. They held a city-wide contest for a new name, and in June, chose the name Emancipation Park. The white supremacist rally this past weekend, in which the counter-protester Heather Heyer was murdered, was against the removal of the statue.
On Facebook, I tossed out the suggestion that Charlottesville replace the Lee statue with a memorial to Heather Heyer. I got a good deal of favorable response, and someone who is a member of a Democratic committee in Florida, asked me to draft a letter. I did so. It is below. I have no experience, however, on how to start a viral campaign.
To Honorable Mike Signer, Wes Bellamy, Kristin Szakos, Kathy Galvin, and Bob Fenwick, members of the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia:
We, the undersigned, request that the City Council replace the statue of Robert E. Lee, which you have voted to remove from the park you have renamed Emancipation Park, with a memorial to the late Heather D. Heyer.
As you know, she was murdered on August 12, 2017, while taking part in a counter-demonstration against a rally of white supremacists. They had come to Charlottesville from across the United States, bearing weapons and torches, and screaming racist and anti-Semitic slogans, to protest your decision to remove the Lee statue and intimidate the people of Charlottesville. Heather Hayer’s killer was among these avowed Nazis and Ku Kluxers. He killed her and injured nineteen others because he violently hated to see them march against violence and hate.
We believe Heather Hayer deserves to be memorialized by the city she called home. She is now mourned not only by her family, her friends, and her Charlottesville neighbors, but by millions who, like her, want to emancipate America from racism, bigotry, and injustice. She is a martyr for that great cause, and we believe Emancipation Park would be fitting place for her memorial. Placing it on the site of the Lee statue would be a powerful statement that the people of Charlottesville repudiate everything that the white supremacists preach.
Respectfully submitted,
On Facebook, I tossed out the suggestion that Charlottesville replace the Lee statue with a memorial to Heather Heyer. I got a good deal of favorable response, and someone who is a member of a Democratic committee in Florida, asked me to draft a letter. I did so. It is below. I have no experience, however, on how to start a viral campaign.
To Honorable Mike Signer, Wes Bellamy, Kristin Szakos, Kathy Galvin, and Bob Fenwick, members of the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia:
We, the undersigned, request that the City Council replace the statue of Robert E. Lee, which you have voted to remove from the park you have renamed Emancipation Park, with a memorial to the late Heather D. Heyer.
As you know, she was murdered on August 12, 2017, while taking part in a counter-demonstration against a rally of white supremacists. They had come to Charlottesville from across the United States, bearing weapons and torches, and screaming racist and anti-Semitic slogans, to protest your decision to remove the Lee statue and intimidate the people of Charlottesville. Heather Hayer’s killer was among these avowed Nazis and Ku Kluxers. He killed her and injured nineteen others because he violently hated to see them march against violence and hate.
We believe Heather Hayer deserves to be memorialized by the city she called home. She is now mourned not only by her family, her friends, and her Charlottesville neighbors, but by millions who, like her, want to emancipate America from racism, bigotry, and injustice. She is a martyr for that great cause, and we believe Emancipation Park would be fitting place for her memorial. Placing it on the site of the Lee statue would be a powerful statement that the people of Charlottesville repudiate everything that the white supremacists preach.
Respectfully submitted,
