A Supreme chance to cage the gerrymander -- Sept. 28, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The Supreme Court convenes Monday after its summer recess and on Tuesday takes up a case that could end extreme partisan gerrymandering.

Justices will hear arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case from Wisconsin where, after Republicans took complete control of the state government in 2010, the state legislature redrew state Assembly districts, resulting, a federal court ruled, in unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.

The plan purposely favored Republicans and hurt Democrats to such a degree that it violated the constitutional guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause and the First Amendment right of association, the district court ruled.

Wisconsin appealed, saying its plan does not violate the Constitution and, besides, partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and granted the state’s request to block the lower court’s order to create a new redistricting plan by fall.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says Gill could be the most important case of the entire term.

And she told CBS’s Charlie Rose Tuesday: “It’s drawing a map so people think, `Why bother voting? This is a secure Republican district or this is a secure Democratic district, so my vote doesn’t count.’ That’s not a good thing for democracy.”

Gerrymandering creates “safe” political districts that make general elections uncompetitive and give party insiders greater power than constituents, a bipartisan group of current and former members of Congress said in a friend of the court brief, one of dozens filed in the case. Rep. Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, was among the brief’s signers.

The Supreme Court, mindful that redistricting is a state responsibility, has been reluctant to rule on political gerrymandering disputes, although it has kept a watchful eye on racial gerrymandering.

A question for the court now is how much partisan gerrymandering is too much. 

Judicial tea leaf-readers say the Supreme Court, by putting the lower court’s ruling on hold, suggests it may side with the state. Much depends on swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy and whether a majority can agree on standards for judging whether redistricting plans are so partisan as to be unconstitutional.

Whatever the court decides, two things are clear: Gerrymandering has been with us always – and it erodes voter confidence and trust in government.  

Charles Ledyard Norton tells the story of the term gerrymander in his 1890 book, “Political Americanisms.”

Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a bill in 1811 that adjusted legislative district lines. When artist Gilbert Stuart took a look at the map, he penciled in a few lines and told a Boston newspaper editor: “That will do for a salamander.”

“Salamander?” the editor riposted. “Call it a Gerrymander.”

Poor Gerry has been carrying the gerrymander burden ever since. But should he?

One of the first gerrymandering episodes actually took place years before in Virginia.

An “atmosphere of bitterness” hung over the first federal election in Virginia in 1789, following Virginia’s unconditional adoption months earlier of the Constitution, the editors of the James Madison papers explain.

Gov. Patrick Henry, a leader of the anti-Federalists, wanted revenge on the Federalists, so he changed voting lines to make Federalist James Madison run against anti-Federalist James Monroe for a seat in the U.S. House. Henry made Orange County part of an eight-county district that was strongly anti-Federalist and had opposed ratifying the Constitution.

Madison campaigned hard, and in the end he beat Monroe by 336 votes out of 2,280 cast.

In his biography of Henry in the late 1890s, Moses Coit Tyler wrote: “Surely it was a rare bit of luck in the case of Patrick Henry that the wits of Virginia did not anticipate the wits of Massachusetts by describing this trick as `henrymandering,’”

Henry “thus narrowly escaped the ugly immortality of having his name handed down from age to age in the coinage of a base word which should designate a base thing -- one of the favorite, shabby maneuvers of less scrupulous American politicians,” Tyler wrote.

Yes, Henry was lucky, but American voters are still victims of the shabby maneuver.

Gerrymandering may be as American as Patrick Henry, but if voters are lucky, the Supreme Court will agree with Ginsburg that extreme partisan gerrymandering is bad for democracy -- and end it.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Earthquake reveals heroic Mexico -- Sept. 21, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The nation watched with hope as Mexicans struggled together in the aftermath of a violent earthquake Tuesday that killed at least 250 people.

A doctor volunteered to climb through the ruins of the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school in Mexico City, risking his life to search for children trapped in the rubble.

Dr. Pedro Serrano crawled on his stomach in crevices to a classroom, only to find a girl, a woman and a man dead, he told The Associated Press.

Then Mexico’s elite volunteer rescue team Los Topos, the Moles, combed through the school’s debris by hand, carefully removing pieces of concrete and lumber in their search for survivors.

Los Topos raised fists to command silence in hopes of hearing faint sounds of life. More than 25 people died at the three-story school when a wing fell onto itself.

As anguished family members waited, strangers rushed to the school and to similar scenes around the capital, bringing water and food and staying to pray. The 7.1-magnitude quake toppled dozens of buildings in the capital alone.

“This is the spirit of Mexico,” a volunteer in Mexico City told CNN. “That’s our community in general; it crosses classes – if you are rich or poor – and any other divide.”

The images were heartbreaking and heroic, just as they were after hurricanes in Houston, the Keys, along the East Coast and Puerto Rico.

Sadly, heroic is a word we seldom associate with Mexico.

Our politicians for generations have promoted a dark cartoon version of our southern neighbor.

Since after World War I, some politicians have blamed Mexicans for bringing crime and drugs into the country, although most Mexicans come to work and employers rely on them.

In 1919, a page-one headline in The New York Times warned: “Anarchists Flood Here from Mexico – Dangerous Aliens Smuggled Across Border at Rate of 100 a Day – Stricter Laws Needed.”

“During the 1920s, politicians and pundits in the Southwest made the eugenic argument that Mexican immigrants would `destroy white civilization,’” historian Neil Foley writes in his 2014 book, “Mexicans in the Making of America.”

During the Depression, the United States deported half a million Mexicans when jobs here were scarce, but during World War II, the U.S. welcomed tens of thousands of “braceros,” mostly farm workers, from Mexico.

In the 1950s, Operation Wetback again deported Mexicans, writes Foley, chair of the history department at SMU. A Mexican American, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Virginia.

The latest politician to malign Mexico and Mexicans to his benefit is Donald Trump. 

“They are not our friend, believe me,” Trump said when he announced his candidacy for president in June 2015 at Trump Tower. He blamed Mexico for stealing our jobs, hurting our economy in trade and exporting its problems.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said and added, grudgingly, “And some, I assume, are good people.”

His vow to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for it was a centerpiece of his campaign, and he still says that will happen.

After Mexico suffered an earthquake Sept. 7 that killed at least 90 people, Trump was criticized for his slow response in offering sympathy and support. This week, though, he quickly extended a hand, tweeting a couple of hours after the quake: “God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you.”

He called Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto Wednesday to offer condolences, assistance and rescue teams, the White House said.

The snapshots from earthquake-devastated Mexico and the hurricane-ravaged United States show that more unites than separates us. As humans, we all suffer from the capriciousness of nature.

The president is right to stand with Mexico in its hour of need. We’ll see how long the era of good feeling lasts, but it’s a start.

We need each other – as heroes more than scapegoats.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved,

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Not dead, poetry due for a comeback -- Sept. 14, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Have you read a poem in the past year? If so, you’re in the minority.

Just seven in 100 Americans read poetry even once in the past 12 months, government figures show, down from 17 percent in 1992.  

“Poetry is going extinct,” a headline in The Washington Post lamented in 2015, after the 2012 statistics, the latest available, were released.

But wait. Sometimes called the Cinderella of literary forms, poetry isn’t dead; it’s not even asleep.

I won’t go as far as a British newspaper, which earlier this year heralded a “genuine renaissance” in poetry in the United Kingdom. But, in the United States, poetry, like an endangered species that’s been protected, is showing signs of life.

Poetry Out Loud programs in all 50 states invite students in grades 9 through 12 to compete in contests by memorizing and reciting poetry. The Library of Congress this year named the first national youth poet laureate.

A new book, “Why Poetry,” urges people to stop thinking of a poem as a riddle or code to crack and read what the words say to them.

“Like classical music, poetry has the unfortunate reputation for requiring special training and education to appreciate, which makes us feel (unnecessarily) as if we haven’t studied enough to read it,” Matthew Zapruder, a poet and former poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine, writes in “Why Poetry.”

Tracy K. Smith is the new poet laureate of the United States, the 22^nd in a line of literary legends that includes Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur and Rita Dove. Dove also served as poet laureate of Virginia and holds the Commonwealth chair at the University of Virginia.

The author of three books of poetry, Smith, 45, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2012. Her 2015 memoir, “Ordinary Light,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. She and her husband, Raphael Allison, a literary scholar, teach at Princeton University and have three children.  

Smith said a few months ago that as poet laureate she would take poetry beyond the ivy walls of universities and urban literary festivals to places where it is seldom heard or read. She received invitations from communities struggling with addiction as well as from nursing homes, hospitals and hospices.

“Nursing homes are often overlooked” when we think of poetry, she said in a telephone interview Wednesday, before her inaugural reading at the Library of Congress. “Poetry can be very useful at the end of life.”

The U.S. poet laureate, who is chosen by the Librarian of Congress, has few duties beyond fostering a national appreciation of the reading and writing poetry. And, if you’re wondering, no, this is not a case of your tax dollars at work.

The poet laureate’s stipend is privately funded through an endowment created in 1936 by Archer M. Huntington, a philanthropist whose mother was from Richmond. Among Huntington’s many gifts was the money to start the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News.

The title originally was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. In 1985, Congress changed it to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

When he had the job in 1963, Howard Nemerov was only half joking, the library says in a history, when he wrote, “The Consultant in Poetry is a very busy man, chiefly because he spends so much time talking with people who want to know what the Consultant in Poetry does.”

For Smith, who still remembers the thrill of discovering Emily Dickinson in fifth grade, her job will be to make poetry less stressful and more enjoyable.

“People have anxiety about poetry,” she said. They see a poem as an object “that must be analyzed to death to be enjoyed or understood.”

But there’s no need to feel obliged to wrestle hidden meaning from poems. Plus, who couldn’t benefit from taking a few minutes from our busy, tech- and information-overloaded days to let poetry speak to us?

“Poems teach us how to read them,” Smith says. So, when her students read a poem for the first time, she starts with a simple question: “What do you notice?”

It’s a good question, one I plan to ask myself more often – and not only when I’m reading a poem.   

© 2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Get your curiosity on! -- Sept. 7, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

About 2,500 book lovers erupted in sustained applause when author David McCullough talked about a mantel in the White House. But this was no ordinary hunk of cold marble.

The audience at the National Book Festival in the Washington Convention Center Sept. 2 applauded the hopeful words inscribed in the mantelpiece:  “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”  

McCullough was doing what he’s done for half a century: telling America’s stories so we will remember who we are as a people and the values we share.  

He explained that John Adams, the first president to live in the White House, wrote the sentence in a letter to his wife, Abigail. Franklin Roosevelt had the words carved into a wooden mantel in the State Dining Room, and John Kennedy later had them carved in marble so they’d last forever.

“And I think it’s very important to understand . . .he (Adams) put honesty first, ahead of wisdom,” McCullough said. “Honesty.”

The redoubtable McCullough, a vigorous 84, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, didn’t utter the name Donald Trump. He didn’t need to.

The audience also applauded warmly when he said, again without the name, “None of our great presidents has ever been one who didn’t have any interest in history.”

Trump proudly says he doesn’t read books – history, biographies of presidents or anything else – because he’s so busy. Besides, his brain is so big he doesn’t need to read. He reaches the right decisions because he has a lot of common sense, he says.

With the help of ghostwriters, Trump has published about 10 books, mostly about his business acumen and success.

Not every president has been an intellectual, and some readers and deep thinkers in the White House have been accused of dithering instead of acting. During the campaign, McCullough was among historians who warned voters that the vulgarian Trump was a clown, unsuited for the job.

Pulling back from direct criticism of the sitting president, McCullough now reminds people of the strain of intellectual curiosity that has run through the White House:

John Quincy Adams spoke many languages and may have had the highest IQ of any president. Jefferson was a genius in many fields. The brilliant Theodore Roosevelt wrote many books, including a definitive history of the Naval War of 1812.

Woodrow Wilson was a professor of history at Princeton. Dwight Eisenhower himself wrote every word of “Crusade in Europe,” a classic about World War II, without the help of any ghostwriter.

McCullough, who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for biography for “Truman,” praises Harry Truman, who lacked a college degree but loved to read, including Latin.  

John F. Kennedy wrote three books of history, including “Profiles in Courage,” which is still read.

“Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages” is one of McCullough’s favorite lines. But our educational system is letting us down.

“We are raising several generations of young Americans…who are by and large historically illiterate, and it’s not their fault,” he said. “We have to stimulate curiosity.”

McCullough’s latest book, “The American Spirit,” is a collection of speeches he’s given around the country over the years. He wrote it mindful of Trump, but it’s aimed at helping readers gain perspective.

At an immigration and naturalization ceremony at Monticello July 4, 1994, McCullough said Thomas Jefferson “was an exceedingly gifted and very great man, but like the others of that exceptional handful of politicians we call the Founding Fathers, he could also be inconsistent, contradictory, human.”

So Jefferson wasn’t perfect, but his “absolute belief in education” is part of his lasting legacy. Jefferson “said any nation that expects to be ignorant and free . . . never has been and never will be,” McCullough said.

For many of us, the start of the school year feels like New Year’s without the hangover. Fall is a time of possibilities and a second stab at resolutions.

No matter our politics, it’s time to rev up the curiosity that separates us from cabbages. What are you reading this fall?   

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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How parades, poitics and beer shaped our Labor Day holiday -- Aug. 31, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At the first Labor Day parade on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, about 10,000 working men carrying banners marched alongside musical bands through the streets of New York City.

The workers were orderly and cheerful, “having the recreations of a beer garden in prospect,” The New York Times reported. Among their long-term dreams that day was something we take for granted: an eight-hour work day.

The size of the crowd was disappointing – union leaders had predicted 20,000 or more would show up – but Labor Day caught on. Unions in other cities sponsored Labor Day parades and speeches to air their grievances. The first state to declare an official Labor Day holiday was Oregon in 1887. Other states followed.

Were it not for President Grover Cleveland, though, many of us still might be toiling the first Monday in September.

Cleveland, you recall, was our 22^nd and 24^th president, the only one elected to two non-consecutive terms, in 1884 and 1892. The first Democratic president since the Civil War, he was the first to have a White House wedding. His bride was the beautiful Frances Folsom, 21 years old, 27 years his junior.

Politically and socially conservative, he opposed women’s suffrage on the grounds that God created men and women to have different places in the world and women’s didn’t include voting. But I digress.

He was also no fan of the turbulent labor movement, so it’s ironic that we have him to thank for the federal Labor Day holiday.

In 1894, the Pullman Palace Car strike paralyzed the nation. Workers who made the luxury sleeper cars walked out after they suffered a severe pay cut but no reduction in their rent on company-owned homes in the company town of Pullman, Illinois, outside Chicago.

The workers appealed to the American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs, who asked his members not to handle Pullman cars, which were in passenger trains all over the country.

The strike spread to 27 states and 150,000 workers. Strikers derailed and burned rail cars, hobbling rail service. When the U.S. mail was stopped, Cleveland stepped in.

Over the objection of the Illinois governor who wanted no federal troops, Cleveland ordered 12,000 armed federal troops to Pullman to break up the strike. In the riots and chaos that ensued, it’s not clear how many people were killed. Estimates range from about a dozen to more than 30.

Cleveland was running for re-election in 1896 and wanted to make amends with  union members and other angry voters. A bill to create a federal Labor Day holiday had languished in Congress for years. He rushed it through Congress in six days. It passed without a single objection.

“So long as the laboring man can feel that he holds an honorable as well as a useful place in the body politic, so long will he be a loyal and faithful citizen,” said the House Committee on Labor’s report on the bill.

Critics saw the new holiday as nothing more than a sop for unions, but it was popular.  

“Labor unions in cities such as Boston, Nashville and St. Louis celebrated with parades and picnics. Large turnouts in Chicago (30,000) and Baltimore (10,000) underscored the holiday’s popularity,” according to a House history.

But it didn’t help Cleveland. He lost his re-election bid.

Much has changed over the years. Unions have been in decline for decades. Only about 11 percent of American workers belonged to labor unions last year, down from 20 percent in 1983.

In Virginia, about 4 percent of workers were union members last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Conservatives aim to curb union power further. Republicans in the House Education and Workforce Committee unanimously approved three bills June 29 they said would bring fairness to the workplace. Democrats said the bills would make it more difficult for unions to organize workers.

For us, Labor Day weekend is less to honor the working man and woman than to celebrate at the unofficial end of summer, although, we too may have “the recreations of a beer garden in prospect.”

Happy Labor Day.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Boycotts rarely work -- but we love 'em anyway -- Aug. 24, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem last year, some conservatives boycotted the National Football League.

Angry at what they saw as unpatriotic behavior, veterans and others rallied around the hashtag #BoycottNFL. Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, tweeted: “Here’s a peaceful protest: never buy another shoe, shirt, or jersey of rich spoiled athletes who dishonor our flag.”

Now the tables have turned.

The Atlanta chapter of the NAACP recently asked fans to boycott the NFL and a group of black pastors in Alabama released a video calling for a blackout of NFL games until a team signs Kaepernick.  

Kaepernick kneeled during the anthem to protest police brutality against blacks. Other athletes joined in, and the protests have continued in the pre-season, with white players taking part. A free agent, Kaepernick hasn’t been signed for the season that begins Sept. 7.

A huge crowd of Kaepernick supporters protested outside NFL offices in New York Wednesday, contending owners have blackballed him for his activism, which the league denies.

This is the age of voting with our wallets.

Fans of Donald Trump boycotted Budweiser over its inspirational Super Bowl ad praising immigrants. Trump’s foes boycotted L. L. Bean after the granddaughter of the company’s founder contributed to his campaign and Trump urged people to “Buy L.L. Bean.”  

People similarly shopped or stayed away from Macy’s and Nordstrom after the stores dumped some Trump merchandise. Social media and sites like grab-your-wallet.com, which lists stores that carry Trump merchandise, give boycotts more exposure.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many boycotts announced in a short period of time,” says Brayden King, professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University.   

Boycotts -- more than marching in the streets or firing off an angry screed on social media -- make us feel powerful. There’s something immensely satisfying about just saying no and walking away.

Only one problem: Boycotts typically don’t accomplish much.

Not all are failures. The Montgomery (Ala.) bus boycott started in December 1955 and lasted 13 months. It ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation on public buses unconstitutional.

Viewership of NFL games on TV networks dipped last year, but the national anthem protest was only one reason, a J.D. Power survey of fans found. Off-field domestic violence and the presidential campaign were also factors.

Experts say boycotts fail because there are too many of them, our attention span is short and we simply don’t like to be told what not to do or buy. A boycott perversely can generate more sales for the item being boycotted.

Despite Uber’s many PR catastrophes and boycotts, its gross bookings and number of trips taken have risen, according to news reports.

Rather than judge a boycott’s impact on sales, it may be better to judge its media attention, King said.

Several Kennedy Center Honors award winners announced they’d boycott the pre-ceremony reception at the White House or the event itself. They include hit singer Gloria Estefan, TV producer Norman Lear and dancer Carmen de Lavallade.

The president and first lady announced they’ll stay away “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

At least 20 charities reportedly have dropped plans to hold galas at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Florida. Among the big names that have canceled: American Red Cross, America Cancer Society, Cleveland Clinic and the Salvation Army.

“Charities hosting large galas can pay Trump's club between $125,000 and $275,000 for a single night's revelry. Even lunchtime events can cost charities between $25,000 and $85,000,” The Washington Post reported.

Why charitable organizations choose such pricey locales for their fund-raising events, even if they do raise big bucks, is a question for another day. But the cancellations do send a message of disapproval to others inclined to book Mar-a-Largo.

“If you have a conscience, you’re really condoning bad behavior by continuing to be there,” Laurel Baker, executive director of the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce, told the Palm Beach Post.

The boycott affects a prized Trump property, and that’s a sure way to grab the businessman’s attention. 

But will it change the president’s policies? That will be the true measure of the boycott’s success.

 © 2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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It's time for monuments to go -- Aug. 17, 2017 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

When Baltimore removed four Confederate-era statues between midnight and dawn Wednesday, a former president of the Maryland United Daughters of the Confederacy grumbled, “Rats run at night.”

But Carolyn Billups conceded she was glad an angry mob hadn’t torn down the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument the Maryland Daughters erected in 1903, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Earlier, a Confederate statue in Durham, N.C., was lassoed, pulled down, kicked and spat upon.

In the wake of the deadly violence in Charlottesville last weekend, Richmond is rethinking whether to remove the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue. Other Southern cities are taking similar actions and renaming Confederate schools and highways.

The rally in Charlottesville was ostensibly to protest removing the statue of Robert E. Lee in a city park but actually was a way for hate mongers to hurt others, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said, and for them to gain worldwide attention and recruits.

Heather Heyer, 32, lost her life when a Nazi sympathizer allegedly drove his car into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters.

President Donald Trump alienated almost everyone but David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, when he blamed “both sides” – white nationalists and counter-protesters -- for the violence and criticized efforts to remove Confederate monuments. Some “very fine” people were at the white supremacist rally, he said.

Trump Thursday denied he had said there was a moral equivalence between white nationalist protesters and counter-protesters. He also tweeted he’s “sad to see the history and culture of our great country ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” 

Tweet by tweet, Trump is building a wall – not on the border but between himself and most Americans.

A president should inspire and lead, but Trump has made himself almost irrelevant on moral questions of the day. The two living former Republican presidents were so alarmed by Trump’s comments they felt obliged to remind Americans of our shared values.

“America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms,” Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush said in their joint statement Wednesday.

“As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: We are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights,” the Bushes said.

Groups like the UDC and Sons of Confederate Veterans have relied for years on the argument that Confederate monuments represent their heritage, not hate, but they have not spoken out forcefully enough against those who have appropriated their heroes and symbols.

The bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia wrote in a letter to parishioners this week:

“Many Americans lovingly cling to their heritage, which provides them with pride and identity. Some suggest that the white people who gathered to protest in Charlottesville were there to proclaim and protect Southern heritage. However, Nazi and fascist flags, symbols, salutes, slogans and uniforms are not and never have been part of the heritage and history of the American South.”

What Trump did not say, corporate leaders did.  

“Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville. I believe the president should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous about that point,” Denise Morrison, president and chief executive of Campbell’s Soup, said in her statement resigning from Trump’s Manufacturing Jobs Initiative.

Republicans have been reluctant to confront Trump by name, but House Speaker Paul Ryan said there can be “no moral ambiguity” when it comes to the “repulsive” ideology of white supremacy.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida fired off a series of tweets that began: “The organizers of events which inspired & led to Charlottesville terrorist attack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons.”

What’s next? Removing the Confederate monuments is a first step, but it will take more to heal the nation. It will take all of us.

“You need to find in your heart that spark of accountability,” Susan Bro, Heyer’s mom, said at her daughter’s memorial service. “`What is there that I can do to make the world a better place? What injustice do I see?’”

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