Three summers ago, when we were in our first campaign for Congress, Lizzie sent an email in response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia.  As we meet this moment, I was reminded of her commitment to moving us forward that she shared then, and thought it was useful to share with you now.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Lizzie Pannill Fletcher
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2017 2:05 PM
To: Erin Mincberg
Subject: Charlottesville

Dear Erin,

My heart has been heavy this weekend thinking about the hate, the violence, and the fear stoked by the tragic events in Charlottesville.

As I said on Saturday, the torches and violence are the vision of a minority who want to return America to the Jim Crow era, where mobs and terror reigned, where discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, and national origin was both practice and policy, and where the basic humanity of our fellow citizens was denied.  We must not let this happen.

The rejection of this vision is what led me to this campaign for Congress.  If you have heard me speak in the last few months, you have likely heard me tell this story, but I think it bears repeating here after what we saw this weekend.

In college, I came across a collection of essays — and one in particular — by the writer Lillian Smith.  It was titled The Winner Names the Age.  Writing in what she noted some were calling “the Age of Anxiety,” she observed that an age is always named for its triumphs.  For its big ideas.  For the things that advance our human civilization.  But every age has a dark side, too, like the one we saw this weekend in Charlottesville.  Smith reminds us that the period we know as the “Age of Reason” or the “Age of Enlightenment” was also a time when most people could not read or write, when human beings owned other human beings, when the mentally ill were chained, and when men were drawn and quartered in public squares.  But, she said, that is not how we now see that era.  Because the winner names the age.

We cannot name our own age, she cautioned.  But what we can do is pick the winner.

We can choose to reject hate, bigotry, and racism.  We can work for equality, justice, and freedom for all Americans.  We can elect leaders who do it with us; who speak out forcefully against the hateful vision of America we saw on display in Charlottesville, not denounce “all sides.”  And we must.

There is no doubt that our history is complex; we are an imperfect people with an imperfect past.  Examining our society, our history, our privileges, and our biases is not always an obvious or easy process.  For some, the hate and bigotry on display by the KKK, Nazis, and other white supremacists in Charlottesville was a shock and a wake-up call.  For others, it was a demonstration of something they — our fellow citizens — have been telling us for some time: racism, bigotry, and hatred remain a powerful forces in American life.

We also saw in Charlottesville clergy, students, and other citizens standing up to the racist mob, rejecting their ideas, and denouncing hate.  And we saw that last night in front of Houston’s City Hall, as we gathered together in solidarity with one another.  Now we must protect those ideals we believe in: civil rights, liberty, justice, freedom, and democracy and ensure that these ideals define this age.

The “age of anxiety” Lillian Smith spoke of is what we now call the Civil Rights Era.  It is our job to ensure that we are the winners of this age, and that the name of our age is something we can all be proud of.  I am running for Congress in an effort to make it so, and I hope that you will join me.