“I have not, and now I will not” talk to President Trump, says mother of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer pic.twitter.com/n40qJE1OIF
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) August 18, 2017
A couple of days ago, we watched with heartbreak as Susan Bro, mother of Charlottesville activist Heather Heyer, spoke at a memorial service for her daughter. She spoke to the fact that she wanted her daughter’s death to count for something, and encouraged all of us not to let it have been in vain, but to fight injustice as her daughter no doubt would have continued to do. Bro is now putting that into practice.
In the above interview with Good Morning America, Bro explains that she received her first call from Trump during her daughter’s funeral, so she didn’t respond. She then spent the subsequent few days recovering from the exhaustion of that experience as well as getting things moving on a foundation she’s creating in her daughter’s name to continue the kind of activism of which Heyer would approve. During those days, she says she received “frantic” calls from the White House press team that she never got back to in her exhaustion and grief.
Something else she didn’t do as she dealt with her exhaustion and grief was watch much of the news. When she did, she was in for a shock. Eventually, she saw Trump’s hateful press conference from Tuesday, during which he equated the counter-protesters with white supremacists by saying that there was violence “on many sides.”
“Many sides” didn’t kill Heather Heyer. That was a white supremacist behind the wheel of a car that did that.
Now that Bro is all caught up, she has no intention of ever talking to Trump. “I hadn’t really watched the news until last night, and I’m not talking to the president now, I’m sorry, after what he said,” she explained. “I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters … with the KKK and the white supremacists.”
She goes on to say, “You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving for that.”
Amen. You can’t minimize a young activist’s death, equate her to racist hate groups, and then expect to be able to use her grieving mother to help you win political brownie points. That’s not how this works.
(via The Daily Dot, image: screencap)
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