The Justice Department and FBI must investigate yesterday’s attacks in Charlottesville for what they are – acts of domestic terrorism. These agencies must throw their full weight behind their investigations of this act of white supremacists terrorism and not treat it as an isolated incident. If they treat yesterday as an isolated incident, more terrorist acts will surely follow.

We join the millions of people in America and around the world today in mourning those lost and praying for the recovery of those injured in the attack.  

Those victims felt the brunt of this atrocity, but it also was an attack on every American and on the values that define us as a nation. The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville and who are enjoying a resurgence in much of our nation have singled out Jews and people of color as the targets of their anger, and their other enemy is our democracy itself. We have seen and defeated such agents of hate before, in our country and across the world, and we will do so again. We will not allow our UNITED states to be ripped apart by hate and fear. 

Every American should be vigilant in insisting that the Justice Department honor its obligations to run a thorough investigation and conduct vigorous prosecutions of those responsible for this attack. But we need more than an investigation and prosecution from the President, his administration and our elected officials. The poisonous and divisive rhetoric of President Trump’s campaign and his administration have fed the hateful impulses that led to the Charlottesville attack. We call on him and on all politicians in Washington and in the states to abandon the politics of dog whistles and hate. The poisoned state of politics in the U.S. today must change and our current elected officials must help lead that change.