I'm not affiliated with this group or website, but I was glad to see this flyer today.
I wish the State of Georgia would please finally wake up to the continuing problem at Stone Mountain. They can honestly make it stop if they want to.
“Oh, that always happens at Stone Mountain,” someone will say.
Or, “That’s just Stone Mountain.”
AS IF IT DESERVES TO GET A FREE PASS.
Yet another permit was granted to a white supremacist group to rally there this Saturday, April 23—during Passover—and the State of Georgia, in complicity with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association and Herschend Family Entertainment, repeatedly allows the mountain to serve as a beacon of hate for white supremacists.
Where does the right to gather in a state park infringe on others’ expectations of safety and individuals’ pursuits of happiness in the same state park at the same time?
After the Klan held sway at the mountain and probably did unspeakable things there from 1915-1958, why would you ever allow another hate group to ever set foot there?
And during a religious holiday?
Don't tell me your hands are tied. That it's the law.
They have the power to change this.
What sheer perversity to pay $40 to potentially be exposed to white supremacists on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: why are people paying the daily or yearly parking fees not informed that THEIR money is used to maintain the memorials--that attract white supremacists like this (yes, there are Civil War buffs who are not white supremacists, and they will be coming, too, I hear)?
Shouldn’t consumers have a choice of whether to support the memorials or not and be allowed to enjoy the natural wonder of the mountain itself with a separate parking fee to a third-party other than the SMMA? I can only imagine how much the park—and Herschend Family Entertainment, which runs the attractions, and all of the park’s sponsors—profit from hate when these white supremacist rallies take place. Hate is good for the park's bottom line, so maybe we should stop footing the bill for what amounts to state-sanctioned hate.
If a nation can mobilize to practically shut down the entire state of North Carolina over hate, we cannot stop speaking up, singing out, sitting in, teaching by example, and unifying against old-fashioned hate right here in Georgia.
Further Reading
- WABE-FM
Closer Look: Protesting Stone Mountain Rally; And More - Southern Poverty Law Center
White Supremacists and Neo-Nazi Converge In Georgia This Weekend - Southern Poverty Law Center
Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy - The Washington Post
Confederate controversy means Mississippi flag will not return to Capitol corridor - Confederacy of Dunces