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Boone Town Council Passes Resolution Declaring Boone a Welcome Community to All

The Boone Town Council voted to pass a resolution declaring the Town of Boone as a welcoming community to people of all backgrounds, national origins, races, ethnicities and cultures.

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the United States of America was conceived based on principles of inclusion and tolerance; and

WHEREAS, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the metaphor of a “crucible” or “smelting pot” was used to describe the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures and was used together with concepts of the United States as an ideal republic and a “city upon a hill” or new promised land, ultimately leading to the referencing of the United States as a “melting pot” of different cultures, origins and ethnicities to form a more perfect union, and thus a society of inclusion rather than exclusion; and

WHEREAS, many have observed, and testimony submitted this year to the J udiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives confirms, that white nationalism is on the rise in the United States and is a growing phenomenon worldwide; and

WHEREAS, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,020 active hate groups in the United States in 2018, many in North Carolina; and

WHEREAS, the FBI reported 7,175 incidents of hate crimes in 2017 (the most recent data available), a 17 percent increase from 2016, and increases for three consecutive years from 5,479 incidents in 2014; and

WHEREAS, there has recently been a rise in hate speech in the United States and around the world; and

WHEREAS, at a July 17, 2019 political rally in Greenville, North Carolina, people in the crowd chanted, “Send her back,” apparently referring to a congressional representative who although a citizen was not born in the United States; and

WHEREAS, people around the country and world interpreted the chants in Greenville as representing North Carolina as a whole and reflective of an unwelcoming attitude in North Carolina toward people of particular national origins, races, cultures, ethnicities and faiths; and

WHEREAS, as Albert Einstein observed, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing;” and

WHEREAS, as Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “You think that your silence on certain topics, perhaps in the face of injustice, or unkindness, or mean-spiritedness, causes others to reserve judgement of you. Far otherwise; your silence utters very loud: you have no oracle to speak, no wisdom to offer, and your fellow people have learned that you cannot help them;” and

WHEREAS, as Plato wrote, “To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent;” and

WHEREAS, the Town of Boone, North Carolina, is a multi-cultural and multi-heritage, racially diverse community in its own right,'”and is residence for people with a variety of national origins, races, ethnicities and cultures, in part due to the ethnic and racial diversity of Appalachian State University; and

WHEREAS, the Town of Boone, North Carolina depends upon and values citizens, residents and visitors of diverse national origins, races, genders and gender identities, colors, and faiths or no faith, and wishes to affirm that it is a welcoming community to all and in no way sympathetic to the hate speech displayed in Greenville, North Carolina and increasingly heard in political rhetoric; likewise wishing to decry and disassociate itself from the rise in white nationalism; and

WHEREAS, by not speaking out, we run the risk of being associated with such speech or having our silence construed as condoning the sentiments expressed;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Town Council of the Town of Boone, North Carolina, proclaims the Town of Boone a welcoming community to people of all backgrounds, national origins, races, ethnicities and cultures, and it denounces and rejects white nationalism and politics based on hate and hateful rhetoric.

Adopted this 15thday of August, 2019

Rennie Brantz, Mayor

Attested to:

Nicole Harmon, Town Clerk, Town of Boone, North Carolina