We released the following statement regarding the events surrounding Charlottesville:
Montgomery County Council Statement on President Trump’s Comments on
White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville
Montgomery County has a long history of cultivating a welcoming community filled with acceptance and tolerance for all residents. We stand together to reject bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. We also stand with the people of Charlottesville, Virginia who reject hate in all forms and who were sickened by the August 12 rally of white nationalists who converged on their community.
Our residents, like others throughout the country, look to our President in these challenging times to speak to and remind all Americans of our highest ideals and our most fundamental values–not to debase them. It was unconscionable for the President’s first words regarding Charlottesville to emphasize that “many sides” were responsible for what took place there, as though there was a moral equivalency between those there solely to advance hate and division and those there to stand on behalf of our common humanity. When the President then subsequently doubled down on that sentiment by blaming “both sides”, the President lost all moral authority. It is unconscionable to equate white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members, neo-Nazis, and other alt-Right white nationalist groups with those who participated in counter-protests. In so doing, the President has justifiably earned condemnation from most Americans and has only won the praise of the white extremists that he emboldened. He owes the American people an apology.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Heather Heyer, those injured during the counter-protest, and Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates, who lost their lives serving the people of Virginia.
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