Naomi Greenfield, the Arlington Human Rights Committee member who organized the event, stood next to State Senator Cindy Friedman, D-Arlington, microphone in hand, and addressed the crowd of over 200 in front of her. She introduced the night’s action items: writing postcards to elected officials, writing letters to residents of Charlottesville, Virginia in the wake of a deadly white supremacist rally last weekend, signing a “Commitment to Change” poster that will hang in the Robbins Library and creating posters for a counter-protest planned in response to an Aug. 19 “free speech rally” that some people fear is actually a white nationalist rally similar to the one in Virginia.
Friedman spoke at the beginning of the gathering, before everyone dispersed to action stations. She described her own sadness about the events that occurred in Charlottesville and called for action after the gathering ended.
“We move forward only to find ourselves coming back to the same issues,” Friedman said. “We are responsible for being voices of tolerance and understanding. We all need to expand tonight’s actions and we’ll need to put ourselves out there.”