[Glamour] A year ago the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, rally broke open the conversation about Confederate monuments and their place in our nation’s public spaces. Today women are taking that conversation another step forward. The death of Heather Heyer, the brutal beating of DeAndre Harris and the shatter of Marcus Martin's lower leg as he pushed then fiancée Marissa Blair from the path of James Alex Fields's Dodge Charger weren't enough to stop another white supremacist rally from taking place exactly a year after the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
On Sunday the world will watch as right-wing groups, white nationalists and neo-Nazis observe the anniversary of a deadly day in history‐this time in Washington, D.C.‐that marked a turning point in national dialogue about Confederate monuments and racism. The groups rallied on August 12, 2017, to protest Charlottesville City Council’s vote to take down a monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which a 2016 petition demanded be removed from one of Charlottesville’s parks.
That petition was written by Zyahna Bryant, a Charlottesville High School senior with serious eyes and a quick wit who sliced through the rapid rhythm of her words. Bryant was just 16 when she penned the petition, inspired after watching human rights activist and artist Bree Newsome snatch the Confederate flag from atop a pole on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds in June 2015. "This flag comes down today!" Newsome shouted, clad in all black, dark brown dreads swinging beneath a helmet.
"It blew my mind," says Bryant.
Many who are taking to the streets for the Unite the Right Rally 2 would argue that there's no harm in keeping these symbols. But when is a statue more than a statue? At this moment in America's present reality, we question: Are monuments to men who rebelled against their mother country to preserve the institution of slavery appropriate in public spaces? How can a flag marked with stars and bars be a visceral symbol of shame to some, and pride to others? Women‐like Newsome and Bryant, of different ages and heritages and in every quadrant of the country‐are galvanizing efforts to remove, contextualize, and understand these symbols of who we were to help us determine who we are. But for all that we lost in Charlottesville, we gained something else too; a seismic shift in public consciousness.
Women are organizing to confront not just men of the Confederacy, but the problematic figures we've revered who used the tools of patriarchy and power to hurt women and people of color.
The message is clear. Women have had enough of bad men. And they aren't going to let them stand forever.
