Charlottesville Mayor Calls For Confederate Statue Removal

Following a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the city's mayor said in a statement on Friday that he was in favor of relocating Confederate statues to a different location. "With the terrorist attack, these monuments were transformed from equestrian statues into lightning rods," Mayor Mike Signer said. "We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek. And so for the sake of public safety, public reassurance, to magnify Heather [Hayer]’s voice, and to repudiate the pure evil that visited us here, I am calling today for the removal of these Confederate statues from downtown Charlottesville." Signer previously voted against the proposed removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.