Following the violence that erupted at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, some nonprofits are calling on the White House to remove aides they say sympathize with white nationalists, including top presidential adviser Steve Bannon.
One of those organizations, the NAACP, reported that thousands of people contacted it over the weekend to ask about how they could “take a stand against hate.”
“Guess it’s hard to disavow bigots and hate when they are amongst your key strategists,” the venerable civil-rights group said on Twitter, referring to a much-criticized statement from President Trump on Saturday that didn’t specifically denounce white supremacists but condemned hate from “many sides.”
Mr. Bannon, the former editor in chief of Breitbart News, once called the conservative news outlet “the platform” for the growing alt-right movement — with which many of the white-nationalist participants at Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally explicitly identify.
Civil-rights organizations also urged supporters and fellow nonprofits to get involved in combating racist extremism.
“You can tweet, march, donate, mobilize, vote,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, on Twitter. “Action can take many forms. It isn’t bounded by politics. Only limit is your creativity.”
Many groups encouraged supporters to participate in marches Sunday opposing white nationalism and to attend vigils held for those injured at Saturday’s rally when a car police say was driven by a white nationalist rammed into counterprotesters.
One counter-demonstrator, Heather Heyer, died in the incident, which many have called an act of domestic terrorism. A crowdfunding campaign on the website GoFundMe had raised more than $225,000 for her family at the time of publication.
There is white supremacy, and there is America. There is good, and there is evil.
Confederate Symbols
Mr. Greenblatt said the president should work with Congress to craft a plan to combat racist extremism and direct the Justice Department and the FBI to train local law enforcement on how to deal with the problem.
He also called on Congress to fund a grant program to aid efforts to counter violent extremism and for the Department of Education to prioritize anti-hate content in schools.
Some nonprofits urged officials across the country to continue efforts to remove monuments dedicated to Confederate figures, moves that have triggered white-nationalist rallies — including Saturday’s, which was called to protest Charlottesville leaders’ plan to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee in a city park.
“We cannot allow these white-supremacist terrorists to intimidate us from confronting and working to dismantle systemic white supremacy,” states a petition pushed by Color of Change, a civil-rights and advocacy organization. “Confederate statues are a symbol of white supremacy and its current political power.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center is seeking signatures for a petition asking President Trump to “take responsibility for the surge in white supremacy and hate that he has unleashed.” The document also calls on the president to apologize for what the center terms his “racist and xenophobic” campaign and to fire Mr. Bannon.
“No, Mr. Trump, there are not ‘many sides’ to this,” Richard Cohen, the SPLC’s president, said in statement. “There is white supremacy, and there is America. There is good, and there is evil.”
