Remembering Heather Heyer

This appeared in The Washington Post:

It took four days for Donald Trump to utter Heather Heyer’s name, in a tweet, and it appears that no one from his administration bothered to attend her memorial service on Wednesday. But Heyer, who died Saturday protesting the racist goons who descended on Charlottesville hardly needed official Washington’s imprimatur. Her principles and resolve were incontrovertible proof of her integrity — far more proof than a morally compromised president could possibly confer by his words.

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up,” said her mother, Susan Bro, at her daughter’s memorial service and pointing a defiant finger. “Well, guess what? You just magnified her.” She received a standing ovation.

Heyer never sought the celebrity she achieved in death. A 32-year-old paralegal with a high school education, she supplemented her income by working as a bartender and waitress. She was also, by all accounts, passionate about the injustice she saw around her. “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” she said in a Facebook post.

To protest against those hoodlums took guts, and Heyer confided to friends beforehand that she was nervous about getting hurt. In those circumstances, and in the face of that sort of evil, though, there are really just two choices: silence and action. Heyer chose action. She went to the rally.

There was no talk of revenge, and no one bothered to dignify Trump by mentioning his rant equating the violent racists who assailed American values with those who challenged them. “We’re not going to sit around and shake hands and go ‘Kumbaya’ ... it’s not all about forgiveness,” said her mother. “But let’s channel that anger not into hate, not into violence, not into fear ... into righteous action.”

In America’s long-running battles over civil rights, there have been many others whose convictions led them to take risks for which they sometimes paid dearly. On its website, the Southern Poverty Law Center devotes a lengthy page to such martyrs. Heyer is in that tradition of ordinary Americans of all races and creeds who perceived injustice clearly and, in standing up to it, lost their lives.