Listen to Lisa’s Story
A temporary memorial to Heather Heyer on 4th Street.
“This is what community looks like!”
September 5, 2017, at 6:54 PM
“This tolerance of white supremacy treats these people as if they were naughty toddlers rather than menaces to our community. The dangers of white supremacy were clear to me from the outset, but for far too many others, this aggressive bigotry, this virulent hatred, was no threat. And that's what this image reminds me of.”
- Lisa Woolfork
Interview Transcript
Lisa Woolfork
My name is Lisa Woolfork, and I've lived in Charlottesville for 22 years. I was there when the car attacked the crowd, injuring dozens, killing Heather Heyer, and turning Charlottesville from a city into a hashtag. It was the most terrifying and chaotic experience of my life. Flashes of the scene remain sharp in my memory. Everything moving slow and fast at the same time. Truly awful. A truly awful moment. And yet there was still so much fighting left to do to rid our community of the racist relics that prompted those white supremacists, fascists and neo-Confederate to riot in our streets in the first place. I recall the widespread and nearly weaponized apathy from those who advised activists to ignore the homegrown terrorists. They said things like, “You're just giving them attention.” A local judge said something like, “No one had to go down there and confront those people.” The same judge said that the Lee statue was ‘innocent’. Appalling. This tolerance of white supremacy treats these people as if they were naughty toddlers rather than menaces to our community. The dangers of white supremacy were clear to me from the outset, but for far too many others, this aggressive bigotry, this virulent hatred, was no threat. And that's what this image reminds me of.
Music credit: Craft Case / Shipment / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com