Letter to the Editor: "To place blame on both sides is an abdication of the responsibility to take a stand."

A sign at Sunday night's rally at the Courthouse

(The following Letter to the Editor has been submitted by Robert Shedinger of Decorah):

"Sunday night I attended the candlelight vigil for peace and love held at the Winneshiek County Courthouse. This was an inspiring event, yet I was deeply disturbed by the presence of leaders of the Winneshiek County Republican Party displaying signs articulating a moral equivalence between supporters of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Neo-Nazi and KKK groups who recently marched in Charlottesville. There can be no moral equivalence drawn between those who stand up against racism and bigotry and those who, if given the chance, would seek to rain down terror on minority populations. To place blame on both sides is an abdication of the responsibility to take a stand, and I choose to stand against racism and bigotry, not to tacitly support it.

Many opponents of BLM like to rehearse the anodyne phrase "All Lives Matter"—as one gentleman did on Sunday evening—to avoid truly grappling with America's troubling past (and present) with racism and white supremacy. It is true that all lives do matter, but this beautiful sentiment is nothing more than an empty phrase if all lives are not being treated with the same respect and dignity. And they are not.

White lives were not subjected to two hundred years of institutional slavery. White lives were not subjected to another century of forced segregation, lynching and the terrorism of the KKK. White lives did not have to fight and die to secure civil rights in their own homeland. White lives are not today being disenfranchised by so-called voter ID laws making it more difficult to exercise one's constitutional right. White lives are not disproportionately represented in the prison population in what Michelle Alexander calls "The New Jim Crow." White lives are not subject to housing and job discrimination on an almost daily basis. White lives are not disproportionately ended during routine traffic stops by police. And it was not a white president whose American citizenship was outrageously questioned by the current occupant of the White House.

White lives are not under siege. Black lives are. To assert that Black Lives Matter is not to reject the sentiment that All Lives Matter. It is simply to raise awareness that the sentiment expressed in All Lives Matter is not a concrete reality in American society and to call us all to work to make it a reality. To equate this movement with Neo-Nazi and KKK supporters demonstrates an absolute disregard for the very lives that Neo-Nazi and KKK advocates would relegate to the trash heap of history if they could.

My father was a member of the Greatest Generation. He served his country in World War II, helping to preserve democracy and the ideal that "all people are created equal" in the face of the rising threat of Nazi fascism. It is in his memory that I stand with those resisting hatred, racism, and bigotry to work today toward making the ideal my father—and all those like him— fought for a concrete reality in the country that I love. I invite our Republican friends to cast aside the "moral equivalence" argument and take a stand in support of policies that will truly demonstrate in concrete ways that all lives do indeed matter."