Mayors nationwide take up effort to combat white supremacy
by Joshua Eaton at Think Progress
https://thinkprogress.org/after-charlottesville-mayors-step-into-gap-left-by-trump-9fecf283d538/
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During a press call on Friday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Anti-Defamation League announced a ten-point plan to combat hate groups in cities and towns across the country. The move comes after President Donald Trump blamed many sides, including what he called the alt-left, for a violent white supremacist rally and a car attack on counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday that left one dead and dozens more injured.
It absolutely is a clear lack of a moral compass thats driving this, Shane Bemis, the Republican mayor of Gresham, Oregon, told reporters Friday. [Trump] has no moral clarity to speak on this issue. Mayors would never do that in their own communities. It absolutely is a lack of moral leadership.
At press time, 240 mayors had signed onto the plan, called the Mayors Compact to Combat Hate, Extremism, and Bigotry. Thats more than half the membership of the mayors conference, according to its CEO, Tom Cochran. While the conference does not track its members political affiliations, Cochran told reporters, he estimated that around a quarter of the mayors whove signed on are Republicans.
This is probably the strongest Republican response that we have in history, Cochran said when asked how many Republican mayors had signed onto the plan.
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