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Aug
13
2017

Reflections on Charlottesville

Good afternoon!!!  Hope you all are doing well!!!

It’s been more than ten years since that tragic day of April 16, 2017 when 32 students and faculty members lost their lives – they were taken from their family members and and the Virginia Tech university community.

After right after the treacherous act happened, it was wonderful to see the immediate and voluminous support from the University of Virginia community and the City of Charlottesville, VA for Virginia Tech and the Town of Blacksburg.  We still see this ten yeas later from our the university community in Charlottesville:

We fast forward to August 12, 2017 – and let’s call it like it is and not mince words – a white supremacist/white nationalist march (neo-Nazis, skinheads, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacist groups were all there) was held in Charlottesville, VA. The purpose of the march was to protest the removal of some Robert E. Lee statues.  The march got really ugly.  A car drove into a street filled with protestors leaving 1 dead and 19 injured persons.  That number increased to three later in the day.  Both of those articles are from the Washington Post.

Governor Terry McAuliffe had the best response white supremacists/white nationalists who visited Charlottesville, VA:

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who had declared a state of emergency, said at an evening news conference that he had a message for “all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”

He could not have said that better.

The counter-protesters – many of them – were University of Virginia students – and they showed a lot of courage to protest against a hateful message.

Virginia Tech certainly is an athletic and academic rival to the University of Virginia – but after you leave the fields and the classroom, respect for humanity is what counts.

I know that John Swofford, the ACC commissioner says this all the time – the schools in our conference standup for inclusion and diversity – and white supremacy/white nationalist is not part of that dialogue.  It’s not part of our values.

We at All Sports Discussion are praying for our friends in Charlottesville, VA – we’re in 2017 and white supremacy/white nationalism has no place or home in our society.

Here is how you can support Charlottesville:

Thanks for reading – have a great Sunday!

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