When I was a kid growing up in Ormewood Park, we used Confederate Avenue almost every day. It was how we got to Grant Park and the Zoo, it was part of our route to Braves games, and it was where I waited for the school bus. We used it so much I never thought much about the name. It was normalized.

We can't normalize hate any more. Symbols are meaningful, and allowing Confederate flags, statues, and street names serves only to perpetuate the fallacy that the hate they represent deserves equal time and attention from our society. In response to the increasingly vocal population of white supremacists in this country, Atlanta must stand up and declare that neo-Confederates, Nazis, white nationalists, and their allies are not welcome here, and neither are their symbols.

It's absurd for there to be a street in our city named after racist secessionists. It's time to change it. The signers of this petition call on the civic leadership of Atlanta to rename Confederate Avenue, as a part of a larger effort to remove symbols of hate from our city.