Rally vic’s ma vows to speak ‘even louder’
Heather Heyer was advocating for peace amid escalating racial tensions at a white nationalist rally last year when a neo-Nazi drove his car through crowds gathered in the streets and killed her.
“I never even got to see her until the day before her funeral,” her mother, Susan Bro, told USA Today. “I wish I could have seen her.”
Bro, a 61-year-old government secretary in Greene County, Va., recalled how she was left paralyzed by the devastating news of Heyer’s death, but nearly a year later she’s taken up her daughter’s cause and is working harder than ever to create something positive out of the tragedy.
Thousands of white nationalists and neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017 for the “Unite the Right” rally, an event aimed at protesting local officials’ decision to remove a Confederate war memorial from public a park. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, joined scores of others downtown to call for peace and to protest the racist groups marching through her city.
The car attack that claimed Heyer’s life brought an end to the rally, with officers forcing all crowds to disband. The driver, 21-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., was indicted at the end of June on 29 counts of federal hate crimes. He’s also facing state charges, which include first-degree murder.
“I turned my attention to carrying forth her message,” Bro said from the corner of a room in her daughter’s old law office. “I’m going to speak even louder.”
In the year since her daughter’s death, Bro has spoken with politicians and reporters in a “conscious effort” to amplify Heyer’s message of peace. She also runs the Heather Heyer Foundation, which awards scholarships to students interested in social justice. And while she isn’t sure the nation’s stark political divide will lessen in her lifetime — that’s why she’s “training Heather’s replacement.”
Asked what she believed her daughter’s message would be if she were still alive, the mother responded confidently: “Get your act together,” she said. “Stop hating, treat people the way you want to be treated.”