WNCN TV reports: about half-an-hour ago a raucous group of protesters outside the old Durham County Courthouse tied a rope around a bronze Confederate soldier statue atop a tall stone pedestal and pulled it to the ground, destroying it. See the link for raw video.
I recognize a few of the faces in this video from last night’s Charlottesville vigil in downtown Durham, when a loosely organized group of wobblies, anarchists and communists (as they identified themselves to me at the time) used bullhorns to interrupt the gathering organized by a collection of local Indivisible groups, declaring the vigil “bullshit.”
“How dare you sing ‘This Land is Our Land?’ This land’s not your land!” one of the black-clad crew declared when the Indivisibles invited a member of the anarchist group to take the mic for a few words. Quite a lot else was said, but as most of it was incoherent I really can’t recall anything else.
Personally, I expect this presages some hard times ahead for Durham. Knowing the local neo-confederate/kkk/nazi groups hereabouts as I do, they’ll do some stupid stuff in response, the anarkids will reciprocate, and people will get hurt.
I hate these statues. And I hate this shit.