Long Read: “What Heather Heyer Knew”

BuzzFeed: New York lawmaker is proposing a bill to rename Trump State Park for Heather Heyer. https://t.co/Pr6Yn9HpIz

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 6, 2017

Gail Sheehy, at NYMag‘s ladyblog The Cut:

… Before Heather was even on the scene, blows were exchanged, people arrested. In the late morning, a state of emergency was declared and authorities tried to shut down the rally. But no one left — instead marchers on both sides just spread out into different parts of the downtown area. The Virginia National Guard was summoned to back up local police. None of the law-enforcement people seemed to know what to do, though.

Vice later posted a documentary revealing sentiments voiced that day by some of the leading white nationalists at the rally. One of the people Vice reporter Elspeth Reeve spoke with was right-wing podcaster Christopher Cantwell, who said, “I’m trying to make myself more capable of violence!” He told her he wants a president who is “a lot more racist than Donald Trump.”…

Heather arrived downtown shortly before 1 p.m. She was with her friends Courtney Commander and Marissa Blair, both of whom worked with her at a local family law firm. They joined a counterprotest making its way along Water Street. They began chanting rejoinders to the torch-bearing white supremacists who had invaded the city the night before. “Whose streets? Our streets,” the women shouted proudly.

The three women — and virtually all the counterprotesters — wore no offensive clothing, carried no weapons, had nothing in their hands other than cell phones and car keys. Heather was dressed in a plain black tee and pants, with her brown hair braided down her back. She stopped to engage a helmeted female alt-right protester in conversation, asking why she had aligned herself with a hate group of violent white men.

“She says she can’t comment,” Heather called back to her girlfriends. The persistent 32-year-old paralegal tried to draw out the alt-right woman’s arguments, calling on two of her greatest strengths — being a sympathetic listener and a strongly opinionated fighter for social justice. But in this case she wasn’t getting any traction…

Heather Heyer did not fit the profile of black or Jewish radical that white supremacists tend to depict as their enemies. For one thing, Heather was a working-class, white Southerner. As a child she routinely heard storm winds rip the skirting off the single-wide trailer where she was raised by her single mom. Heat would begin escaping, pipes freezing, and wild animals could move in under their home.

Susan Bro told me she is often pigeonholed as a dumb redneck by visitors who turn up at that trailer, where she still lives to this day. “They’re wide-eyed when they hear me talk like an intelligent person!” Bro said, chuckling. Her grandparents were coal miners, but her parents and their siblings worked hard to go to college. Bro herself made it halfway through a master’s degree at the tony University of Virginia while Heather was a toddler and her son was repeating kindergarten. She supported them alone with a 20-hour-a-week work-study program, while carrying a full course load, which left her only three or four hours a night to sleep. She settled for a certificate that would license her as a teacher in Virginia’s primary schools. She desperately needed a steady job.

What kind of a daughter did she produce? A compassionate girl, Bro told me, but also one who was stubborn, opinionated, and not afraid to challenge others. Always, Heather looked out for the underdog. She would bring home castoff kids and tell her mother, “They need a place to crash.”…

As much as Heather Heyer cared for other people, she seemed to have a hard time doing the same for herself. “She didn’t value her own work — she was a very good artist — or feel a sense of self-worth,” Bro said. Heather was raised a Christian, even though Bro had left the Evangelical church in which she was brought up. “The church didn’t have any use for single mothers,” she told me. Bro is as brutally honest about herself as she is about others. It always pained her to see Heather flinch whenever someone on TV made fun of “trailer trash.”…

In 2012, not long after meeting Lindsey, Heather was suggested by a friend for a paralegal job at the Miller Law Group. The local firm is dedicated to helping struggling people fight foreclosure on their homes, deal with indebtedness after catastrophic illness, and utilize bankruptcy law to put their lives back together. Heather, convinced she wasn’t qualified, only went reluctantly to the interview with Alfred Wilson, manager of Miller’s bankruptcy division.

“I only have a high-school degree, and I’ve never worked in a law office,” Heather protested straightaway.

“Why is that important to you? It’s not important to me,” Wilson replied. He was more interested in an employee’s way with people than their credentials. A black man married to a Palestinian woman, he told me he looks for workers who know how to communicate with, and appreciate, all different kinds of people.

“I know you work as a bartender — how much do you make in tips?” he asked.

“Oh, I can make about $200 a night.”

Wilson suspected this bartender was exceptionally good with people.

Heather downplayed her strength: “I talk to a lot of drunk people.”…

… “They are upstanding citizens today, and fully independent,” Bro said of the friends Heather had helped. All that kind of talk also carries a caveat from Bro, however: “I get very frustrated when people make her out to be a saint. She was a normal 32-year-old person who loved family and friends. But she took the extra step to do the right thing.”…

But Heather Heyer’s murder by an extremist has created a massive wave of support from around the the world. In the first ten days after her death, Susan Bro and Alfred Wilson launched the Heather Heyer Foundation to raise money to provide financial assistance to individuals committed to social-justice projects. (Donations can be made online or sent to: Heather Heyer Foundation, c/o Stifel, 1759 Worth Park, Charlottesville,VA 22911.)…