Using Our Words: How My Small Business in Charlottesville, VA Reacted After the Unite The Right Rally

Three years ago, I stepped back into the studio after the horrors of August 12th.

My studio is a block from the infamous statue...blocks from the site of the murder of Heather Heyer and the life-changing events that took place that day.

I’ll never forget the heaviness in the air, everyone I saw had eyes swollen from crying or laced with fear and anger. The air was heavy and quiet. Curious people walked around, some taking photos. Reporters were everywhere.

It was the first time that I realized that I had a voice as a business owner in this town. I had a window to write on that was visible to all. I had a marquis that I put out daily. I did not know what to write...nothing is the right thing.. .and who am I to speak? But the words “Love is how we move” kept pulsing through my head and I nervously wrote it with a shaking hand on my marquis.

I was not the only business with a message that day. Each of us used our voices in the ways that we could.

Later, I had a local artist write these words in the window at the studio that faces towards the statue and the mall... an end cap of the mall... and there it has remained. Today as I sit in my studio, I see people walking by, taking photos...others paying their respects.

I know love is not the only answer. I know that the system is broken and we need to rebuild from the ground up. I know our society was built on the business of injustice.

Yet this still remains.

May we move forward and make decisions with love and humility as a part of our truth. May love be a part of how we move.

— Carla