FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) - Following the clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, Alaska members of the NAACP met and reflected on the issues of race, bigotry and white supremacy that have dominated national attention.
Local NAACP member Esther Cunningham said Saturday she appreciates the statement of Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who said there was “no moral equivalence between those who are inciting hate and division and those that took it to the streets to make it clear that those views are unacceptable.”
Cunningham also said she has a better opinion of Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan after he condemned Trump’s remarks that both sides were at fault.
NAACP member David Bance said he wrote both senators, thanking them for their “unambiguous remarks supporting core American values.”
“I cannot abide the fact that our president is incapable of recognizing and calling out the disgrace represented by fascist terrorists marching in our streets,” Bance quoted from his letter.
Bance said Murkowksi’s staff responded to him immediately and said they would share his letter, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports (https://bit.ly/2ika2OT ).
NAACP member Ron Arnold said he believed the Charlottesville incident opened some people’s eyes to “the reality of what other groups who are nonwhite have been saying and have been facing.”
Arnold said he was approached recently by a neighbor who told him he was embarrassed because he had not realized the depths of racism in the U.S.
“I just want to make it clear that racism has been alive and doing very well in this country and in Fairbanks,” he said.
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