The Vermont Public Interest Research Group’s Executive Director Paul Burns released the following statement concerning the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left at least three people dead and 19 injured:
VPIRG denounces the acts of violent terrorism perpetrated by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville over the weekend. Our thoughts are with those who were injured and with the families of those who were killed.
Responsibility for this violence rests with the white supremacists and those who encourage or condone their behavior. We believe that President Trump’s failure to explicitly condemn the Nazi sympathizers who staged the event in Virginia was shameful, as was his suggestion that blame for the acts of terrorism could fall “on many sides.”
We stand in solidarity with the victims in Charlottesville.
We support people of color and members of the LGBTQ and Jewish communities who’ve been the targets of discrimination in this country – economically, educationally, judicially, and time and again, through physical violence and hateful speech – for hundreds of years.
[Photo credit: Mark Dixon via Flickr — Creative Commons]