About 200 members of antiracist and progressive groups held signs and waved flags. The group included liberals as well as people further left on the political spectrum, a coalition that was sometimes prickly. Pittsboro locals were joined by people from Hillsborough, Durham and Charlottesville, some of whom also protested Silent Sam, the Confederate monument at UNC-Chapel Hill that activists brought down last year.
The News & Observer:
The demonstrations began several weeks ago when “the county Board of Commissioners decided last month to give the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which donated the statue to the county in 1907, until Oct. 1 to come up with a plan for its future.”
Currently, the statue sits on public land and if the “Daughters” do not remove the statue by November 1, the county will consider “the statue as trespassing on public property and make their own plans to remove it.”
The demonstrations held yesterday consisted of a few dozen, far-right, neo-Confederate groups, several armed, who faced off with over 200 anti-racist and progressive groups who want the statue gone.
The White Supremacists set up camp around a Confederate flag they erected on private property directly facing “Horton Middle School, named for George Moses Horton, an enslaved poet.” The middle school is quite diverse and kids get to see the traitorous flag everyday.
Yesterday’s demonstration drew members from the League of the South, a well known Hate Group that promotes southern secession. Unlike previous demonstrations, which have remained cilvil, this one turned somewhat ugly.
Hours into the confrontation, an antiracist protester sat down in front of a tractor that was approaching the middle school adorned with a Confederate flag.
The driver, who wore a surgical mask and a red Trump 2020 hat, stopped, and law enforcement soon arrived, ushering the crowd that gathered back onto the shoulders of the road.
No arrests were made.
This is us, 2019:
