Racial Harmony is a Black and White issue

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The march, which kicks off at 8 a.m., is part of Councilmen Tara Wicker and Trae Welch's "One Blood" campaign, an effort to reduce racial tensions in the city.

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The "One Blood" campaign was launched after recent turmoil at the Metro Council over race created heated public controversy It happened when Wicker, a black Democrat, cast the deciding vote that allowed the widow of Buddy Amoroso to fill his vacant seat after Amoroso, a white Republican, died in a bicycle accident this summer. The other black Democrats on the council likened Wicker to Judas for breaking party and racial lines. They had wanted Wicker to side with them in their effort to weaken the council's white Republican majority by blocking Denise Amoroso's appointment.

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Wicker and Welch, one of the white Republicans on the council, announced the campaign during a subsequent council meeting, using a piece of paper with drops of her blood and Welch's on it to drive the point home that everyone is the same on the inside.

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Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who says she will attend the March, believes the campaign's message of racial unity is important, but feels it's more important to acknowledge the race and cultural differences within the community and have conversations that steer people toward accepting those differences and learning how to respect and love one another despite of them.

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"This is a hard conversation to have a lot of the time, but the more times you have the conversation, the more time you have an opportunity to get some else's perspective," Welch said. "We tend to make up stories about someone else to make the narrative about them be what we want to believe."

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The march, which kicks off at 8 a.m., is part of Councilmen Tara Wicker and Trae Welch's "One Blood" campaign, an effort to reduce racial tensions in the city. "This is an opportunity for those who believe we are all in this together," Wicker said. "The march is symbolic of that."

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