Mayor and faith leaders denounce Va. violence amid rifts in local community
Hundreds of people, some carrying children on their shoulders while others carried signs with slogans such as “Make racists afraid again,” “Patriots not Hate-riots” and “White silence = violence,” gathered Monday evening on the Santa Fe Plaza to decry last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Va., and the racists who prompted it.
Various local politicians, religious leaders and civil rights activists were among speakers who took to the Plaza bandstand during the event, one of many such rallies across the country since the death of Heather Heyer, 32, who was killed Saturday when a motorist plowed his car into a crowd of people protesting against white supremacists who had come to Charlottesville for a “Unite the Right” rally.
“We are far from eradicating racism in this country,” said Walema Kwanza Ntele, a preschool teacher at Temple Beth Shalom. “… It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetrated by police and racist acts of terrorism by white supremacists.”
Rabbi Neil Amswych, president of the Interfaith Leadership Alliance of Santa Fe, said, “No baby comes out of the womb a racist … we learn to be racists. We learn from our fear, we learn from our mistrust
of others. And if we learn racism, we can unlearn racism. But first we must acknowledge that we have learned racism.”
New Mexico House Speaker Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, said white nationalists, the Ku Klux Klan and antiSemites “can not be treated as just people with another point of view. They must be shunned, they must be excluded and reminded that there is no place for them in our society. Their disgusting ideology cannot be tolerated now or ever.”
Mayor Javier Gonzalez blasted President Donald Trump, saying the violence in Charlottesville was “the direct result of the hatred that’s been nurtured and sheltered by the president of the United States. We have a message for the president tonight. … There are not two sides to blame on this issue, period. There are racists. There are white supremacists and neo-Nazis carrying torches through our streets … and there are those who oppose them. Only one side has blood on its hands, Mr. President, and you are leading their ranks.”
Trump, who has received vocal support from many white supremacists, had been criticized by Democrats as well as many Republicans for his initial response on Saturday, when he didn’t call out white racists, instead blaming “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” On Monday, Trump belatedly condemned “criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” for the violence in Charlottesville.
While these and other speakers were applauded by the crowd, there were some discordant voices.
After representatives from various religions said prayers, one man yelled, “Where are the Native [American] prayers?”
And after the final speaker was done, several people got on the bandstand to chant “Abolish the Entrada,” a reference to the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe’s re-enactment of Don Diego de Vargas leading the reconquest of Santa Fe after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Before the rally, former City Councilor Patti Bushee posted on her Facebook page Monday afternoon that she was conflicted about attending.
“I am conflicted about attending a rally called for by our Mayor for two reasons,” Bushee wrote. “The first, he held a similar rally after the Orlando shootings and, from my perspective, it was just a bunch of political speeches.
“The second, is that this man is still employed with our police department after this outrageous post,” Bushee wrote, referring to an internet meme that Sgt. Troy Baker had shared on his Facebook page in February showing a cartoon rendering of a vehicle running over three stick figures. A headline read, “All Lives Splatter” as well as “Nobody cares about your protest. Moral of the story .. Stay off the road!!”
Santa Fe police Chief Patrick Gallagher said in February that there would be an internal affairs investigation of that post as well as others by Baker. Nearly six months later that investigation is still ongoing, city police spokesman Greg Gurulé said Monday.
“We are still within the 180-day period set up in the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the Police Officers Association,” Gurulé said in a statement. “We do a thorough job of investigating and evaluating concerns since this involves an officer’s reputation and livelihood.”
Monday’s rally was the second public gathering dealing with racism called by the mayor in less than a week. Last week, about 50 people gathered at City Hall to protest the tactics of Santa Fe Power, a group that includes two members who recently sent overtly racist messages using Facebook.
On Monday, the group posted a message on its Facebook page that said, “The 2 individuals who were a part of [Santa Fe Power] posted racist pictures as individuals, not as representatives of our group. There is no excuse, and we as SFP are not condoning these actions. It was unexceptable [sic] and of bad taste. I hope they have since realized the impact and acknowledge their part of bad judgment created a false narrative of the mission of this group.”
This message was a marked contrast to initial responses last week in which the group attacked The New Mexican and one of its reporters for writing about the racist postings.
The violence in Charlottesville involved hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who had come to the town for a rally next to a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that the city plans to remove. After law enforcement ordered an end to the rally when violent incidents broke out, a motorist — reportedly a Nazi sympathizer who had marched shortly before with members of a white supremacist group — drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heyer.
Police in Virginia arrested James Alex Fields Jr. 20, of Maumee, Ohio, charging him with second-degree murder and other crimes. Authorities said Fields also injured 19 other people. Dozens of others were injured in clashes between the white supremacists and counterprotesters.