Last weekend's deadly rally in Charlottesville was sparked by a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who descended upon the city to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.
Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old activist, was murdered when James Alex Fields, Jr. plowed his car into a group of counter-protestors. In the wake of her tragic death, people are signing petitions to replace Lee's statue with one of Heyer, who undeniably died a hero.
"Let's replace the Confederate Statue, which is a disgrace to the United States, with a Statue, plaque or monument of this brave woman who gave her life defending Justice," reads a petition on Care2.
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A separate petition on Change.org calls on Mayor Michael Signer to provide "an open refutation of the twisted ideology [the white nationalists] stand for."
In the wake of the Charlottesville rally, cities and states have accelerated their plans to remove Confederate monuments from public property. But the public is also eager to take action and stand up against the hatred and bigotry that was on display last weekend.
A crowdsourced spreadsheet has been created to identify all Confederate monuments in the United States, because there are more of them than we may think. It includes information about the statues' locations and whether there are protests planned to remove them. Users from all across the country have already identified almost 200 Confederate monuments, statues, plaques, and memorials in 20 states.
The goal of the spreadsheet is to ultimately remove all Confederate tributes, but the petition to replace Robert E. Lee's statue with one of Heather Heyer is particularly powerful. Her devastated friends and family members have vowed that they'll carry on the good fight so Heyer's death won't be in vain and a statue honoring this brave young woman would send the message that our country must stand for equality and tolerance.