A year after Charlottesville, are we standing up for what’s right?

A year ago today, the country watched in horror as White supremacists from around the nation came together to march, unapologetically and unhooded, in Charlottesville, Virginia for a “Unite the Right” rally. This rally left one counter-protester, Heather Heyer, dead.

Heather Heyer was one of the young people that took to the streets one year ago today because they saw a call to action: Nazis and White supremacists were openly organizing and someone had to stand up to them.

American history is rife with moments where citizens were called to stand up and speak truth to power. I remembered reading Roots in the sixth grade and wondering if I would have had the courage to try to help people escape from bondage and into freedom. I remembered, in middle school, learning about the Holocaust and wondering if I would have had the courage to provide shelter to Jewish people. I remembered, in college, asking a White woman who had taken part in the Freedom Rides why she had participated, and her simple answer: “It was the right thing to do.” I remember wondering if I could have done the right thing in that moment.

I realized, during Charlottesville, that we are living in such a moment.

I grabbed my phone and tweeted, “If you’ve wondered what you would’ve done during slavery, the Holocaust, or Civil Rights movement…you’re doing it now. #Charlottesville”