Current Events > Charges dropped for activists who tore down of Confederate statue in Durham, NC

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/durham-confederate-monument-charges-dismissed/553808/

Let me be clear, no one is getting away with what happened.

That was Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrewss warning on August 15, 2017. The day before, a protest had formed on the lawn outside the county offices in an old courthouse. In more or less broad daylight, some demonstrators had leaned a ladder against the plinth, reading, In memory of the boys who wore the gray, and looped a strap around it. Then the crowd pulled down the statue, and it crumpled cheaply on the grass. It was a brazen act, witnessed by dozens of people, some of them filming on cell phones.

Andrews was wrong. On Tuesday, a day after a judge dismissed charges against two defendants and acquitted a third, Durham County District Attorney Roger Echols announced the state was in effect surrendering, dismissing charges against six other defendants.

Acts of vandalism, regardless of noble intent, are still a violation of the law, Echols said during a brief news conference at the county courthouse. But he said the unfavorable decisions on Monday made clear the state would not be successful. For my office to continue to take these cases to trial based on the same evidence would be a misuse of state resources. Additional trials had been scheduled for April 2.

As a legal matter, these dismissals reflect the specifics of this case, especially the shockingly weak case brought by the Durham County Sheriffs Office and the DAs office. As a political matter, their effect could be wider. Actors on all sides portrayed the Durham case as an important one. Activists viewed the destruction of the statue as a blow against white supremacy and the hundreds of monuments that dot the country, paying tribute to a rebellion that sought to preserve the enslavement of African Americans. Their opponentsincluding President Trumpargued that the monuments represented a piece of history, and warned that allowing such destruction would sanction anarchy. The failure of the attempt to prosecute the guerrilla action in Durham shows how activists maintaining a united front can stare down a government divided over the proper approach to the controversial matter of Confederate monumentsand it may offer encouragement to activists elsewhere in the country, including in places where government cannot or will not act, to take monument removal into their own hands.

The destruction of the statue in Durham came two days after violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, left one dead, and it helped galvanize the effort to tear down Confederate monuments and statues across the country.
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When I spoke to Qasima Wideman, one of the erstwhile defendants, Tuesday evening, she was still in disbelief. She said she was proud of what the movement had done.

After the events of Charlottesville a lot of us were feeling like we were beat, she said. People were physically beaten, and murdered, in Charlottesville. Folks felt like the brave people of color and their allies who were on the right side of history were outnumbered. That was a really scary idea to entertain. This victory proves that thats not true.

Outside of court, protesters never seriously denied taking down the statue. Doing so would have been absurd, given the widespread coverage. Instead, they argued that they were following a higher law.

I did the right thing, Takiyah Thompson said the day after the protest, minutes before she was arrested. Everyone who was therethe people did the right thing. The people will continue to keep making the right choices until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone. That statue is where it belongs. It needs to be in the garbage.

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tl;dr:
There's not enough evidence that the people on trial for pulling down the statue, are the same people who actually pulled down the statue.

ClunkerSlim posted...

Antifar posted...

until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone

Once again, not every Confederate statue is a monument to white supremacy.

The entire purpose of the Confederacy was to uphold white supremacy

Quit the historical revisionism
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Fair, next
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Tag
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Are they going to tear down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson anytime soon?
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DirkDiggles posted...

Are they going to tear down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson anytime soon?

It wouldn't surprise me. Some have already protested Jefferson statues, if I recall.
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DirkDiggles posted...

Are they going to tear down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson anytime soon?

Washington/Jefferson - had lots of great ideas and accomplishments with a noticeable blight on their records.
Confederates - just that blight and killed a shitload of Americans, too.

Totally comparable.
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K181 posted...

DirkDiggles posted...

Are they going to tear down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson anytime soon?

Washington/Jefferson - had lots of great ideas and accomplishments with a noticeable blight on their records.
Confederates - just that blight and killed a shitload of Americans, too.

Totally comparable.

You're looking at it rationally and unfairly lending that rationality to everyone else.

A lot of activist types have tunnel vision on their pet cause. When they see Jefferson, they focus on the fact that he was a slave owner. Not the good things he did.
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Doesn't surprise me, given the current political climate. Hopefully the people responsible will be punished eventually. It sets a bad precedent to let criminals walk free.
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DirkDiggles posted...

Are they going to tear down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson anytime soon?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/09/14/uva-president-student-protesters-desecrated-jefferson-statue/665355001/

Getting there
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Every city should remove the statues. We got rid of ours, people were mad for a week, now you never hear about it. Out of sight, out of mind.
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Seems like a bad precedent, but I dont know the whole story either
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ClunkerSlim posted...

Antifar posted...

until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone

Once again, not every Confederate statue is a monument to white supremacy.

you do realize most were put up during the civil rights era....for that specific reason....
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The time for epic facepalms is when the thing on the side of Stone Mountain gets blasted away.

ClunkerSlim posted...

No, not all of them. I agree that there's a shit ton of those out there that should be taken down. But Lee does have statues much older than that, partly due to the fact that he was a positive figure in post-war reconstruction. A lot of these people had lives beyond the Civil War and did contribute to our country. I just hate to see legitimate monuments smashed along with the stuff that popped up in the 50s and 60s.

The vast majority of them were erected from the late 1890s to the 1920s, and absolutely had to do with the push of Jim Crow laws and when Plessy vs Ferguson was handed down.
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Good
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