Heather Heyer: A Hero at a Time When Humanity Needs Heroes
August 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
“I want her death to be a rallying cry for justice.”
—Susan Bro (mother of Heather Heyer, who was murdered by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, August 12)
Heather Heyer was a 32-year-old paralegal in Charlottesville, Virginia. When armed, violent Nazis, KKKers, and other white supremacists mobilized in Charlottesville Saturday to protest the planned removal of a statue commemorating Robert E. Lee, she took to the streets with hundreds of other counter-protesters to confront and oppose them. A cowardly white supremacist drove his car into an intersection full of counter-protesters, killing Heather and injuring 19 people.
Heather’s mother, Susan Bro, told the Huffington Post there was no question that Heather would protest the neo-Nazis and others: “She always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, she always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair. Somehow I almost feel that this is what she was born to be, is a focal point for change. I’m proud that what she was doing was peaceful, she wasn’t there fighting with people.”
A neighbor in Charlottesville told HuffPost, “She lived her life like her path—and it was for justice.”
Heather Heyer’s last Facebook post before joining the counter-protests was, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville declared, like the lynch mobs of not so long ago, that they were bringing weapons and they threatened to use them. Heather Heyer, and hundreds of others, defied the threats and dangers, and Heather heroically gave her life doing that.
Bob Avakian has written:
There is a place where epistemology and morality meet. There is a place where you have to stand and say: It is not acceptable to refuse to look at something—or to refuse to believe something—because it makes you uncomfortable. And: It is not acceptable to believe something just because it makes you feel comfortable. (BAsics 5:11)
That is a critical principle under any circumstances, but it takes on extreme urgency at this moment. Fascism has direction and momentum. The time to stop it is now. And that will take physical, and intellectual, courage.
Vigil, and Memorial in Charlottesville on Wednesday, August 16
Over a thousand people held a candlelight vigil and march Wednesday night on the UVA campus in Charlottesville, Virginia. The marchers said they wanted to “Take back the Lawn” following the grotesque KKK/Nazi/white supremacist torchlight march last Friday night. The Wednesday night march traced the exact route the fascists took, that had ended in a vicious assault on a group of students who had courageously opposed them at the UVA Rotunda. The vigil ended at the rotunda, where people sang songs. The vigil was completely organized without use of social media, so that the white suspremacists and fascists would not know, and dare to come and assault the vigil.
Earlier in the day a Memorial was held for Heather Heyer at the 1,000 seat Paramount Theater at the downtown mall in Charlottesville. The young paralegal died after she and 18 other counterprotesters were run down by one of the white supremacists on Saturday. The speakers included Susan Bro and Mark Heyer, Heather’s mother and father, and her grandfather Elwood Shrader. In a moving, powerful statement, Susan Bro said, “They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her.” (Watch her compelling statement at right). One of her co-workers at the law firm where she worked also spoke. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine also attended the memorial.
Photo: Twitter/@Suarez_CM.
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