Charlottesville Activists Drop Banners to Highlight Continuing Fight Against White Supremacy
“We call on our community to continue fighting white supremacy and fascism in all its forms”
Activists displayed five banners at select locations this morning, on the second anniversary of the white supremacist attacks here on August 12, 2017:
At the Market Street parking garage: “8–12–17 Cops didn’t keep us safe, we kept us safe”
At the Water Street parking garage: “No unity without justice”
At UVA: “Civility is tyranny”
At Dairy Road: “Support survivors, fight white supremacy”
At Rio Road: “From Cville to El Paso, fuck white supremacy”
The activists released the following statement:
We, a group of concerned anti racists and anti fascists, call on the community of Charlottesville to fight against white supremacy in all its forms.
We reject the notion that after two years we should all be healed from a traumatic, white supremacist terrorist attack. We reject a rampant, sensationalist media cycle that consumes our trauma for clicks or views. We reject politicians like Mike Signer and Terry McAuliffe using our trauma for political gain. We call attention to the lack of monetary and tangible support that has been provided to survivors of violence on August 11th and 12th of 2017. We support and uplift survivors of white supremacist violence, whether you are someone who was purposefully targeted by violent Nazis and racists, or you are an oppressed person suffering day-to-day at the hands of white supremacy.
We continue to hold strong in our convictions that the Charlottesville City Police Department, University of Virginia State Police and the Virginia State Police were purposefully negligent on and leading up to the events of August 11th and 12th of 2017. We, as firsthand survivors of those days, know that the police did nothing to protect us. We know now as we knew then that they will continue to do nothing to protect us. We affirm that the only people who can keep us safe are each other.
With our banner drops, we hope to shine a light on the white supremacy that still lives within our town. The foundation of this city is on stolen Monacan land; the community “landmarks” that white tourists flock to were built on the backs of enslaved black folks. While many black community members call out the inequities in the city and University’s portrayal of its history, white politicians and city leaders continue to silence those who rightfully point out the whitewashing of narratives around white supremacists like Thomas Jefferson or Paul McIntire. The demolishing of communities like Vinegar Hill, the purposefully racist, segregationist housing zoning, the monuments to white supremacists scattered around town, the continued targeted tactics by the Charlottesville Police Department like stop-and-frisk — these are all things that we cannot forget, we cannot let continue. We can no longer look the other way.
The city wants us to forget, to move on; they want to promote unity but don’t want to hold themselves accountable. The country would like to paint this as an isolated event, rather than an event that shows exactly how white supremacy manifests when it goes unchecked. But it will continue until we finally acknowledge it for what it is. We will continue to see it embodied in synagogue shootings, school shootings, concentration camps for undocumented community members, through state sanctioned violence like mass incarceration, the military industrial complex. We call on our community to continue fighting white supremacy and fascism in all its forms. There is no time but now. There are no both sides, only one side — the side of justice. The right side.
