WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Republican and Democrat senators will introduce a joint resolution Wednesday to officially condemn the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which claimed three lives and injured many more last month.
Concurrent resolutions and simple resolutions are purely symbolic non-binding measures that do not require the President's signature, but the lawmakers' strategy to introduce the Charlesville condemnation as a joint resolution means that if passed, it will be sent to President Donald Trump, who will be forced to sign it into law.
The joint resolution is introduced by Democratic Party's Virginia Senators - Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, along with Republican Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.
Heather Heyer, a 32-year old civil rights activist, lost her life on August 12 when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-demonstrators who were protesting a rally of right-wing extremists over plans to remove a statue of Confederate leader Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville.
The resolution condemning the racist violence rejects White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups, and urges the Government to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.
Warner said in a statement introducing the measure that he will be pressing his colleagues to swiftly and unanimously approve this resolution in order to send a strong message that the Congress unconditionally condemns racist speech and violence.
'Let there be no mistake: what happened in Charlottesville was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by a white supremacist,' he added.
Trump's reluctance to condemn white supremacy in unambiguous terms had evoked widespread criticism.
The resolution has the support of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the Anti-Defamation League.
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