August 12 marked the one-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. This event represented our reality under a Donald Trump presidency—one in which white supremacists not only incite violence and death in cities across the country but also make government policy. To mark the occasion, Jason Kessler, the same organizer who planned last year’s rally, planned a Unite the Right 2 in Washington, D.C. Kessler’s rally, which took place Sunday, was a complete flop, with about 40 supporters showing up only to be met by thousands of counter protesters. But prior to Sunday’s sad little showing by Kessler and his white supremacist friends, organizations and activists across the country were preparing online and offline actions in order to protest the rise of white supremacy in the United States. Daily Kos heard from activists in Charlottesville about their experiences over the last year and spoke by phone with Brandi Collins, senior campaign director at Color of Change, to learn about the work they are doing to fight racial injustice everyday.
Since the Unite the Right rally, activists in Charlottesville have been actively working on police accountability, immigration, housing and schooling, and removing confederate statues. This is not to say that this kind of work was not being done before. But last year’s events and the violent death of Heather Hayer offered the chance for residents to honestly take stock of the city’s long legacy of racial and social injustice. According to Zyahna Bryant, the Charlottesville activist who initiated the petition to remove the Robert E. Lee statue and rename Lee Park, white supremacy is always lurking beneath the surface in Charlottesville and is present across all its institutions.
“White supremacy and racism didn’t just arrive in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, it has always been here, and it has always been bigger than just a statue,” Bryant said. “Moving forward, we must stop erasing the names of women of color who built this movement from the ground up. Say the names of Sage Smith, Faye Tinsley, every victim of August 12, and every other person who has been a victim of racial terror in this city.”
The contributions of women of color, black women in particular, are all too often left out of the narrative when discussing civil rights and social justice activism. And yet, it is those women who are frequently on the front lines in communities like Charlottesville—organizing, protesting, tending to family and community and pushing for accountability. It represents their desire to create a future free of white supremacy and make a safer, more just city for its residents of color. This is the reason why Katrina Turner, a Charlottesville organizer and member of its police department’s Civilian Review Board, actively fights against injustice. For Turner, it embodies the same spirit of black and brown people who endured and fought injustice centuries before.
“I’m fighting white supremacy in hopes that by the time my grandsons grow up, they won’t have to continue my fight,” Turner said. “I go to meetings to organize. I go to court in support of people who have been wronged by the system. I’m fighting white supremacy so we as black and brown citizens can be treated with dignity and respect.”
Sadly, while nothing can be done to change the events that took place in Charlottesville last year, many of the students, activists, faith leaders and residents in the city understand that this is a moment for racial reconciliation and healing. That’s why hundreds of them turned out on Sunday to demonstrate. USA Today reports it was both a somber day to honor the victims of last year’s violence, move toward closure and continue working for change. Douglas Brown from Newport News, Virginia, who was in attendance and who also attended last year’s counter protests said, “I owed it to Heather.”
There are lots of questions to be asked about why the National Park Service approved Kessler’s request to hold another “white civil rights” rally this year. While his views, repugnant as they may be, are covered under his right to free speech and protest, we also know that last year’s rally terrorized and traumatized the community and resulted in death. The agency doesn’t consider the content of what is being presented when it reviews requests. But it should absolutely take into account the safety of the public and the potential harm that could come from such an event, particularly when it has before. Luckily, as The Washington Post notes, Kessler’s tiny group was met by huge throngs of people who successfully drowned out his message of hate and showed that they refused to be intimidated by Nazis and the KKK. While this kind of in-person, offline activism is important and effective, it is not the only way that people are pushing back. Eliminating white supremacy requires an approach that takes on structures and organizations as well as individuals.
Color of Change is centering part of its racial justice work on specific institutions. In conversation with Daily Kos, Collins described the group’s campaign to stop financial service companies from providing support to white nationalist groups. This work began six months before the events in Charlottesville, shortly after Donald Trump took office. Collins said this was due to the research of the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations that were documenting the increase in hate crimes and rising white nationalism across the country in response to Trump’s racist and nationalist rhetoric. It became a priority for Color of Change to understand how these communities were thriving and building power. So they began to investigate how they were making money online. They entered into conversations with organizations like Amazon, Discover, PayPal and Mastercard to get them to take a stand against hate by developing policies to track and ban hate groups and stop selling their merchandise.
Most companies refused, saying that they valued free speech. It was PayPal that first entered into conversation while the others were reluctant. But, as Collins noted, after Charlottesville there was a shift.
“After that, companies began recognizing the problem. Since then, PayPal and Mastercard have not only removed their services from dozens of hate sites, they’ve also created policies for tracking and banning hate groups. We’ve also been in positive conversations with Visa and Mastercard, in particular. American Express has a lot further to go and Discover hasn’t indicated any willingness. Amazon has been completely unresponsive.”
The point of the campaign, called Blood Money, has been to get corporations to take ownership and responsibility for the groups they work with and not to profit from hate. It has not been easy work and Color of Change has received various forms of pushback from different directions, including from some hate groups themselves. Still, Collins says that it’s important not to let corporations off the hook.
“We cannot afford to compromise our values … [or] allow our voices to be silent. If corporations say they hold values of diversity and inclusion, we need to force them to work for us. … We need to force a new normal.”
According to Collins, this new normal requires us to be more vigilant and active than ever. This includes political activism like supporting diverse candidates for office, organizing and fighting voter suppression. But it also involves community-based work as well as the kind of work Color of Change is doing with corporations. To that end, people wishing to support their work to end Blood Money can sign up here. They can also start their own petitions and support other community change campaigns at Organize For.
The Trump administration has moved white nationalist and supremacist policies and frameworks into the mainstream and is setting us up for a long, hard fight ahead. But it’s also ushering in an opportunity for a level of engagement and activism that can fundamentally transform America forever. Collins reminds us of the urgency of action and the power of the people. “They are setting up the country in a really bad way,” she said, “but we can push it in the right direction.”