Syrian/American Artist Omar Offendum weigh in on #Charlottesville Incident

Omar Offendum

I had to report this on my blog! Omar is a friend, he's an inspiration & most importantly he's someone who believes in the equality of all. 

He just posted this picture & caption that I urge you to read right now.. its very important. Just Read it

I'm a proud Syrian-American Muslim immigrant. My wife is a proud African-American Jew. We both grew up in Northern #Virginia & graduated from @uva in 2003. I met her while walking home from classes at The #Architecture school, which was situated adjacent to the Department of Drama she was attending. I came to find out her mother was a direct descendant of #Holocaust survivors, & her father was the first black Secretary of Education in #Virginia history. She learned that my dad's hometown of #Hama had been bombed mercilessly a month after I was born, & he did all he could to provide his family with a safe & secure environment to thrive in; thousands of miles away from the horrors of the #Assad regime, believing wholeheartedly in the "#AmericanDream" ... It's 2017 now & we are blessed to have a baby boy of our own. He represents all the hopes & aspirations of generational survival our beloved parents & ancestors embedded in our DNA, & thus the tragic events that took place in #Charlottesville have been effecting us in a deep & profound way. We stand in solidarity w/ those who reject the hate-fueled ignorance that was on display there, & offer our deepest condolences to the families of those whose lives were taken &/or shaken by the heinous act(s) of white supremacist violence that were committed. The terrorist who drove his car into a crowd of innocent people held a deep contempt for all that my family is proud of being - #Black, #Jewish, #Muslim, #Immigrant, Open-Minded, #Free-Thinking & #Syrian (he even went so far as to post pro-Assad propaganda on his Facebook page) ... Some might find solace in the notion that this doesn't truly represent #America or #Jeffersonian ideals ... For the record, #ThomasJefferson carried out a well-documented destruction of Black families & held a belief that "their griefs (were) transient", while arguing that Black people’s ability to “reason” was “much inferior” to whites’, and that “in imagination they (were) dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” Despite (t)his callousness, we are a proud(ly diverse) family & will raise our beautiful son w/ an even greater sense of #pride insha'Allah ... #Sinsyrianly ✍🏽 #OmarOffendum.

A post shared by Omar Offendum (@offendum) on Aug 15, 2017 at 8:33am PDT