Why now?

In the face of all these horrors, we are not powerless. Immediately after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, 40,000 people took the streets to shut down white supremacists in Boston. Across the Southeast, Confederate monuments – once thought untouchable – came crashing down through protest and mass action. In April 2016, anti-racists converged on Stone Mountain to shut down the KKK, and in 2019 a FLOWER coalition held a victory celebration through the streets of downtown Stone Mountain after racists were forced to cancel their planned rally.

In 2020, the massive Black-led uprising after the murder of George Floyd has led to a new reckoning for racist monuments across the world. The day will soon come when the carving on the side of Stone Mountain is sandblasted away, but until then, it serves as a lightning rod for white supremacists all across the southeast, and the community of Stone Mountain will need to be defended from them.