Act now: reverse the decision to reinstate Confederate school names[ [link removed] ]Will you sign the petition to permanently ban Confederate school names?

Dear MoveOn member,

The all-white Shenandoah County School Board in Virginia has just voted to
restore the names of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and other
Confederate military leaders to two public schools, in a backlash against
the racial reckoning that followed the police murder of George Floyd in
2020.^1 

Confederate leaders, who fought for the subjugation and enslavement of
Black people, shouldn't have ever received these types of public
honors—not when these schools were named, not in 2020, and certainly not
today. But they did, and now our communities must reconcile with the
horrific legacies of our past that so actively shape our present. 

[ [link removed] ]Will you add your name to the petition to demand that the Shenandoah
County School Board ban Confederate school names NOW?

But these name changes are much more than a "restoration"—with this vote,
the district appears to be the first in the country to return Confederate
names to schools that had removed them after the summer of 2020, according
to researchers at the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery,
Alabama.^2

As a result of the vote, Mountain View High School will return to its
pre-2020 name, Stonewall Jackson High School, and Honey Run Elementary
School will once again be named Ashby Lee Elementary School—honoring three
men who were seminal in leading the attempt to secede from the Union in
defense of slavery.^3

[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition to demand the Shenandoah County School Board reverse
its decision to restore Confederate school names honoring Robert E. Lee,
Turner Ashby, and Stonewall Jackson!

Demand the Shenandoah County School Board permanently ban Confederate
school names! 

[4]Sign our petition

For years, protests against police violence and racism have sharpened the
focus of a long-standing debate about the place for and relevance of
Confederate-era monuments and iconography.^4 It's become more and more
clear that when we allow monuments to Confederate leaders to remain, we
applaud our nation's painful history of white supremacy and exploitation.
And with white supremacist propaganda and white supremacist groups
reaching historic highs in recent years (peaking at a record 155 white
supremacist chapters in existence around the country in 2019), the need to
mobilize against the glorification of white supremacists could not be more
urgent.^5

[ [link removed] ]Add your name now to demand the Shenandoah County School Board reverse
its decision to rename two schools after white-supremacist Confederate
leaders!

Defenders of Confederates downplay that criticism and say it's about
history, but statues to Jackson and other Confederate leaders were erected
in 20th-century eras to symbolize racial terror, especially as some
embraced a revisionist history of the Civil War.^6 Our country will never
be able to achieve a vision of racial justice if Confederate leaders, who
were unapologetically fighting for the right to enslave Black people, are
publicly celebrated. [ [link removed] ]Add your name now to demand that the Shenandoah
County School Board reverse its decision to rename Mountain View High
School and Honey Run Elementary School, and that it permanently ban
Confederate school names.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to
your friends.

Thanks for all you do.

–Soraya, Jaira, Kelsey, Emma, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two public
schools,” The Guardian, May 10, 2024
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

2. "Schools in One Virginia County to Reinstate Confederate Names," The
New York Times, May 10, 2024 
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

3. "Virginia school board votes to restore schools' Confederate names,"
Axios, May 10, 2024
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

4. "Confederate monuments become flashpoints in protests against racism,"
Axios, June 7, 2020
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

5. "White Nationalist," Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed May 20, 2024
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

6. "Confederate monuments become flashpoints in protests against racism,"
Axios, June 7, 2020
[ [link removed] ][link removed]

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