One Year After Charlottesville Lets Remember Heather Heyer

A young woman gave everything she had so that all people may live in peace, with dignity and respect.
She gave her life.
She was white!

Who did­n’t see this coming?
What did you think the demo­niz­ing of col­ored immi­grants was about? What did you think pack­ing the courts with white male right-wing judges from the Heritage Foundation was about? The purg­ing of vot­er rolls which sum­mar­i­ly removed black vot­ers who may have exer­cised their right not to vote in every elec­tion? Redistricting. Lies about ille­gal vot­ing, restric­tive vot­ing rules, to include the mas­sive less­en­ing of ear­ly vot­ing days, mass incer­a­tion, and the resul­tant laws which take away the right of felons to vote?
Ask your­selves, what use­ful pur­pose is served by tak­ing the vot­ing right of peo­ple who have already paid their debt to society?

Yet these and the many oth­er glar­ing red flags have either been missed or large­ly ignored by the black community.
For its part, the brown com­mu­ni­ty has done it’s lev­el best to ignore the signs which ought to have informed it to align itself with the black struggle.
Instead, the brown com­mu­ni­ty hid in the back­ground con­vinc­ing itself it is safe, they are only after the blacks, look at me I am almost white.
All of that, how­ev­er, was before that June 16^th, 2015 esca­la­tor ride in which Donald Trump announced his can­di­da­cy for the American Presidency.

Jonathan Capehart opin­ion writer for the Washington Post wrote.
The night­mare began on June 16, 2015. Donald Trump descend­ed on an esca­la­tor to the gild­ed lob­by of his epony­mous tow­er on Fifth Avenue to announce his can­di­da­cy for the Republican Party’s nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent. Little did we know that that open­ing scene would be the per­fect metaphor for what was to come: A low and ugly cam­paign that defined devian­cy down in pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics by play­ing on fear, racism, xeno­pho­bia, misog­y­ny and a gen­er­al dis­dain for any­one not white, straight, Christian, able-bod­ied and male. 

Ah, Jonathan.….Little did we know that that open­ing scene would be the per­fect metaphor for what was to come?
How could you not have known?
No, Jonathan, the night­mare did not begin on June 16^th, 2015, the night­mare has been in exis­tence since the begin­ning of this repub­lic, you sim­ply chose to close your eyes to it.
As I laid out in the first para­graph, and so much more that I left out, the signs have always been there. The pre­tense is not a work­able strat­e­gy. Black peo­ple are not that sil­ly, they may be resigned to the blud­geon­ing, after all, its dif­fi­cult to with­stand four hun­dred years of what we have with­stood with­out dis­play­ing some degree of wear and tear.
But what is the sto­ry of the brown peo­ple, what is their excuse?
We could ask Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, we could ask Nikki Haley or Bobby Jindal.
Nah they are too busy pre­tend­ing to be white.

And so now the Browns are forced to deal with their own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in a coun­try which has a minor­i­ty of the major­i­ty so inse­cure it can­not exist out­side of ven­omous hatred.
It is from that group that Donald Trump emerged. It is on that dis­con­tent, resent­ment, and per­pet­u­al vic­tim­hood on which Donald Trump rode into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Browns nev­er both­ered to find com­mon cause with the strug­gles of African Americans. Their lighter shades con­vinced them that hey would even­tu­al­ly be assim­i­lat­ed into white soci­ety like the Irish, and Italians and the Catholics even some lighter skinned Arabs have.

Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Arabs, Muslims, and every­one not in that group Jonathan Capeheart so elo­quent­ly spoke about now find them­selves in the crosshairs of a new era of American fascism.
In oth­er words, there is a whole slew of new n*****s now.
Decades and decades of march­es and mil­i­tan­cy is the trade­mark of the Black American exis­tence, yet for the most part that exis­ten­tial strug­gle has seen far more white Americans strug­gling and dying with their black broth­ers and sis­ters for the sim­ple right to live lives of dig­ni­ty and respect than it has attract­ed brown people.

As white nazis get ready to march on Washington tomor­row to com­mem­o­rate the one year anniver­sary of their infa­mous Chorletsville tiki-torch march, we must nev­er for­get the life of Heather Heyer.
A young woman who could eas­i­ly have stayed home con­fi­dent in the built-in pro­tec­tions guar­an­teed by her white skin. She chose to stand up to big­otry and racism, ful­ly con­ver­sant that we rise togeth­er or we die together.
Her life was snuffed out by a worth­less piece of trash who lacked the basic under­stand­ing of the val­ues she so brave­ly stood for.

There is much going on in America which may pro­vide glee to some. To those, I sug­gest a lit­tle research and read­ing up on Adolph Hitler’s rise and the inevitable fall of Nazi Germany.
It is incon­ceiv­able that sol­diers of all col­ors, includ­ing American sol­diers, gave their lives on the beach­es of Normandy in 1944 to defeat Naziism and to pre­vent the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews just so that Nazis can con­tin­ue to kill as they did last year right here in America.

The storm clouds are ris­ing. The dem­a­goguery about foot­ball play­ers, Mexicans, Muslims, Immigrants and every­one not white male are in no way dis­sim­i­lar to the dem­a­goguery and depor­ta­tions which pre­ced­ed the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
We ignore them at our peril.