Jefferson Davis Highway will be renamed in Alexandria said the Alexandria City Council over the weekend. Thanks to everyone who participated in the public discussions or submitted public comments. It's been an amazing journey. On May 3, 2015 I started this online petition. Then seven weeks later a Neo-Confederate white supremacist was charged with killing nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. giving rise to a nationwide movement to remove symbols and iconography honoring the Confederacy. The online petition then started receiving a lot of media attention. I provided comments to over 20 news outlets during the summer of 2015 and was featured in a documentary film about Confederate symbols in Northern Virginia. The attention it received reached as far as the Eastern Europe where I was interviewed in a segment on Czech TV News. The petition also incurred the wrath of the alt-right white supremacist movement. My email inbox and law firm voicemail was showered with hateful, vengeful messages peppered with all kinds of colorful language and insults you can imagine. One person told me that I was consumed with "white guilt" and that I should move out of Virginia. But, in truth, I felt guilty of nothing. I commuted daily to work on peculiarly-named Jefferson Davis Highway for seven years. I actually drew inspiration to start the petition from my late father Marvin Zim who as a journalist for Time magazine during the 1960's and 1970's had spent years covering the Civil Rights struggle. In so doing, he exposed some painful issues that the nation needed to hear. In one story, he interviewed white parents who pulled their children from public school and enrolled them in private school, at a great expense to themselves, because they did not want their kids to learn alongside black students. He also wrote about the discomforting feeling that white Mississippians experienced felt sitting next to black patients in a small town doctor's waiting room. By asking the questions and writing about the things he witnessed and heard, my father gave a voice to people who had no voice. For that I feel most proud of him and wanted to continue the legacy in some way. And so, we have now entered a new phase of the Civil Rights Movement, the goal being to de-glorify the villains of history who committed high treason against the United States in order to expand and preserve slavery and oppression. These initiatives do not come without significant public costs but, as LaDonna Sanders who sat on Alexandria's Ad Hoc Committee so aptly noted: "It may seem inconvenience or expensive to change street names, property deeds, websites and business brochures but decades of racial discrimination have been very inconvenient for African Americans, and it has also been very expensive costing them economic opportunities." That is exactly the reason we must press on with the movement to remove from public places, street names and symbols idolizing the people who championed a racist vision of America and replace it with a positive, uplifting vision. We hope that the Virginia General Assembly will follow the leadership that the Alexandria City Council has shown by renaming Jefferson Davis Highway statewide. Note: The goal of this petition was to rename Jefferson Davis Highway statewide. While renaming the three-mile stretch in Alexandria is definitely a victory we have fallen short of our goal of removing the name throughout Virginia. Since other regions like Arlington are exploring their options for renaming Jefferson Davis Highway in their communities this petition will likely remain open. Expect an announcement in the coming days. Thank You!