Charlottesville mayor criticized for graphic poem about city

The mayor of Charlottesville, Va., was criticized on Wednesday for posting a graphic poem about the city, comparing it to a rapist.

“Charlottesville: The beautiful-ugly it is,” Mayor Nikuyah Walker wrote in her original poem posted to Facebook and Twitter. “It rapes you, comforts you in its c– stained sheet and tells you to keep its secrets.”

After the reaction to her initial poem, Walker published a longer version of the poem, which removed the graphic word in the original. 

Walker, who was appointed mayor in 2017, indicated that the first poem had been reported to Facebook. She started her post by saying, “Is this better? I’m asking the person who reported my short poem to FB.”

“Charlottesville is void of a moral compass,” part of the longer poem said. “It’s as if good ole tj [Thomas Jefferson] is still cleverly using his whip to whip the current inhabitants into submissiveness.”

The University of Virginia in Charlottesville was founded by the former president, who owned slaves.

“Charlottesville rapes you of your breaths,” it continued. “It suffocates your hopes and dreams. It liberates you by conveniently redefining liberation. It progressively chants while it conservatively acts. Charlottesville is anchored in white supremacy and rooted in racism.”

pic.twitter.com/f8p1Sws4Rt

— Mayor Nikuyah Walker (@NikuyahWalkerCC) March 24, 2021

The mayor did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. Brian Wheeler, a spokesperson for the city, declined to comment. 

The tweet with the short poem had almost 800 likes as of Wednesday night, while the post with the long poem had 245 likes on Twitter.

The poems gained traction online, including from the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s son Christopher Scalia, who retweeted the poem with the text, “And now, a word from the mayor of Charlottesville.”

Walker was embroiled in another controversy last month when she announced she was under investigation for paying for gifts for community members who spoke at City Council meetings with her city credit card, according to the Daily Progress.  

The U.S.’s attention turned to the college city in 2017 when its plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park brought white supremacists to the area to demonstrate. The protest turned deadly when a man drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman.