WES BELLAMY:
I would like to think of our city as one that has kind of kicked off the awakening of sorts.
To be very honest, Charlottesville was a city, in my personal opinion, that consistently perpetuated or operated in covert racism. So it was the kind that is polite. It's the kind that might smile in your face. It's the kind that might say, hey, well, we don't have those issues here, when, in fact, we do.
And it's built around a system of systematic oppression for people of color. But what we have been able too do is truly open the eyes of not only our community, our city and our surrounding communities, but the nation, for that matter.
And what we see is that in our city, we have ripped off the Band-Aid. We have pulled the scab off the wound, if you will, and now we're able to do the surgery.
For the first time ever, we have two African-Americans on our City Council. For the first time ever, we have an African-American female mayor. You see more civic engagement than you have ever seen. You see people joining boards and commissions that normally wouldn't have.
You see literally hundreds of people attending our City Council meetings, paying attention to different things. And, most importantly, in my opinion, the conversation has begun. I was all getting kind of hate mail and people upset that we were having this convo.
But now, in our schools, at the grocery store, at our public parks, wherever you go, people are dealing with the topic of race, white supremacy, and just the effect that it has on our community.
So in order for us to move forward, we have to have that conversation, which was what we're doing now, and now we're able to implement policies to push us in a better position.
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