Headline USA ‘When we have a complete understanding of how we got to the present, we are better prepared to improve our shared future…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As part of a long-anticipated move, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is using the state’s newly elected Democratic legislature to enact a radical agenda.
On Thursday, he announced the latest component, his “Historic Justice and Equity Agenda,” which includes eliminating the legal protections for Confederate monuments in the state—where much of the fighting occurred during the Civil War.
The package also would confer new protections on black cemeteries—along with a quarter-million dollars in funding for their maintenance.
“Virginia’s history is difficult and complex, and it is important that we tell the full and true story of our past 400 years,” Northam said in a statement.
“When we have a complete understanding of how we got to the present, we are better prepared to improve our shared future,” he continued. “These proposals will help us to tell the story of people and places that for too long have been neglected or marginalized and continue to build a modern, diverse, and inclusive Commonwealth.”
Confederate heritage played a central part in the fatal 2017 protests in Charlottesville, which saw right-wing extremists clash with Antifa and other leftist groups over the city’s failed attempt to remove statues of Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Other prominent monuments—notably a stretch on the eponymous Monument Avenue in the state capital of Richmond—have also come under attack since activists during the Obama era intensified nationwide efforts to remove any vestiges of Confederate history from the Southern states.