Vigils aim to heal US racial divide
Hunrdreds pray for Trump to have ‘change of heart’
IN SIGHT of one of the most notorious slave markets of the pre-Civil War south, the Rev Sylvester Turner asked hundreds of people on Sunday night to pray for US President Donald Trump to have a change of heart and heal the nation’s racial divide.
Several hundred people had gathered with clergy and politicians for a vigil around the towering Slavery Reconciliation Statue that represents atonement for Richmond’s role in the slave trade.
“Look over our president,” Turner thundered in prayer. “He may not be all, Lord God, that he can be at this time, but I believe that you are a heart-changing God. I believe that when prayer and praises go up, lessons come down.”
Activists throughout the country held vigils in response to the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday that erupted in violence and resulted in the death of one counter-protester and the injury of more than a dozen.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe told the crowd he had been angry on Saturday, but now he was sad.
“It’s been a rough couple of days for our beautiful commonwealth,” he said, adding he had been visiting families of the two state troopers who were killed when their helicopter crashed while monitoring the Charlottesville rally.
McAuliffe then spoke of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when a driver hit another car and pushed vehicles into a crowd of protesters.
“She was doing what she loved, she was fighting for democracy, free speech, and to stop hatred and bigotry,” he said.
Many of the multiracial crowd attending the vigil were from church groups. Several from local Unitarian Universalist churches wore yellow shirts that read “Standing on the side of love”.
Others held signs, including “Stop pretending your racism is patriotism” and “No one is free when others are repressed”, and one person waved a large American flag.
Parents held up small children in the hot sun. “We thought it was important to come together at such a time as this,” Delores McQuinn, who helped put together the vigil, told the crowd. Like many of Richmond’s leaders, she is African-American.
“We stand at this reconciliation statue as a symbolic gesture to remind us that we still have work to do. The battle to fight hatred, racism, prejudice and faces of evil is not over.”
Hundreds of people gathered in Charlottesville on Sunday for a vigil where Heyer was killed. – Washington Post