Heather Heyer Memorial, Charlottesville VA

Street memorial to Heather Heyer, 4th Street at the corner of Water Street, Charlottesville, Virginia.

From Wikipedia: This memorial has been kept up in honor of Heaather Heyer, who was murdered by a car driven into a crowd by James Alex Fields Jr  during the  rightwing Neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally  in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.. Thirty five other people who were protesting against racism were injured in this attack. 

Fields was convicted in a state court of the first-degree murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, eight counts of malicious wounding, and hit and run. He also pled guilty to 29 of 30 federal hate crime charges to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years for the state charges, with an additional life sentence for the federal charges.

Heather Heyer was fatally injured in the attack… Her friends described her "as a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world's injustices", and said that she "spoke out against inequality and urged co-workers to be active in their community".According to her mother, Susan Bro, Heyer would ask people of opposing views why they had come to their beliefs. Bro said that they both advocated for Black Lives Matter, which Bro said fights for equal treatment.

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."- Heather Heyer's mother, Susan Bro.

See also this report by NBC News.

This memorial has been kept up by the community in her honor.  

Never Forget. Compassion, peace, and justice for all.

Shrine to opioid victim | 5700 block Columbia Pike, Bailey's Crossroads VA

I encountered this memorial to a teenager who died of an opioid overdose in the parking lot of the Aldi supermarket parking lot in Baileys' Crossroads, Virginia.

May this young man rest in peace, and his family be spared further grief.

From a post on FairfaxNow: "Two 16-year-old boys overdosed on Sunday (June 25, 2023) — one of them fatally — in a car parked outside Aldi (5725 Columbia Pike) in Bailey’s Crossroads, the Fairfax County Police Department reported yesterday. Officers were dispatched to the grocery store’s parking lot at 7:21 p.m. after receiving a call for two individuals found unconscious in a vehicle “with foam coming out their mouths,” according to a dispatcher.“[The] caller did bang on the window. However, they are not responding,” the dispatcher said.

Emergency medical services personnel with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department were dispatched to the scene around 7:23 p.m. First responders began administering CPR and Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Responders were able to detect a pulse from one of the juveniles after two doses of Narcan, an officer told the dispatcher at 7:28 p.m.

Both juveniles were taken to local hospitals in conditions considered life-threatening. One person later died at the hospital, while the other “remains hospitalized in critical condition,” the FCPD says. Preliminarily, police believe the overdoses are related to opioids,... Fairfax County has seen a surge in opioid overdoses since 2019, particularly among youth and often involving the drug fentanyl."

Quarantine Diary 28 part one | On the street in DC (American investigations)

Some recent sights around Washington DC.

The anti-Tr*mp signs are ubiquitous.

Shrines photo in Academy Art Museum Exhibition

I have a photograph of one of my DC shrines in an exhibition, New Photography II, at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland. The exhibition was curated by Phillip Brookman.

Quarantine Diary 24, part one | DC streets (American investigations)

From a day in Northeast and Southeast Washington DC. 

The two street shrines are updates of older memorials that have been posted earlier on Washington's Other Monuments. 

Strange times we are living in. Hopefully transformational.

And flowers, too.

Memphis Suite 4 - Respect for the struggle for justice

Photographs at the US Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. It is built into the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, while helping to lead a strike by sanitation workers for the right to form a union.

It presents a deep and thorough history of the grassroots and organized struggle for civil rights in the United States, from the beginnings of slavery four hundred years ago to recent times.

We found it profoundly moving.

"Justice, justice shall you pursue."- Deuteronomy 16:20