Confederate Divide – Man offers to help pay to remove Confederate monument – Rocky Mount Telegram

The Watch Dog response: They don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory

A former Twin Counties resident has offered to help pay for the removal of a controversial Confederate monument at Battle Park.

Gene Pittman lived in Rocky Mount as an infant and grew up in Whitakers. He now lives in Minneapolis. He said he wants to see the monument taken down, especially after the violence that occurred over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters over the removal of a Confederate statue.

“The events in Charlottesville have highlighted the horrible results of racism and bigotry,” Pittman said. “I fully support the removal of the Confederate monument at Battle Park as it is a signifier and sign of slavery. Being white, I witnessed racism and understood how it functions from that perspective.”

Pittman said in an email to the City Council that arguments about preserving history aren’t new and he heard the same thing decades ago. (Rocky Mount Telegram)

Confederate Divide – Mayor appeals for calm in monument debate – Rocky Mount Telegram

The Watch Dog response: It is times like these I would love to see the Rocky Mount Human Relations Commission hold meetings to discuss issues like these coming from locals Senator Angela Bryant and Governor Roy Cooper. But the supporters of the monument they don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory What does they mean by preserving Southern Ideas?

Mayor David Combs is calling for cooler heads in the escalating debate over the fate of a controversial Confederate monument at Battle Park.

Combs said he wants to avoid the violence that occurred over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters over the removal of a Confederate statue. He also wants to prevent the vandalism that occurred Monday in Durham when protesters pulled down a Confederate statue there.

“I’ve had more calls on this than anything else since I’ve been mayor,” Combs said, adding he never heard from anyone on either side of the debate until Monday’s council meeting.

Combs said he hopes to find common ground for everyone and that the City Council will look at all the options.

“There’s strong feelings on both sides,” Combs said. “We need to do this in a way that allows all people to be heard. I do hope there’s patience.”

While the mayor is asking for calmer heads to prevail, the Facebook page belonging to a city employee posted apparently inflammatory language in reference to the monument debate. (Rocky Mount Telegram)

Confederate Divide – NC NAACP President: It’s more important to attack policies that promote white supremacy – WRAL

The Watch Dog response: They don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory

NC NAACP President: It’s more important to attack policies that promote white supremacy

DURHAM, N.C. — The president of the North Carolina NAACP called a news conference Saturday in light of recent events, saying it’s not enough for activists to just remove Confederate statues.

Reverend Dr. William Barber said it’s more important that politicians topple laws that promote white supremacy.

“You test politicians by the policies they pursue,” he said.

Standing before a crowd at the Peace Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, Barber said there’s nothing courageous about condemning racist extremists.

“Question is, will these same political leaders renounce mean-spirited, race-driven and socially violent policies, the policies and agenda of white supremacy?” Barber said.

Barber has rallied against policies he feels are discriminatory against the black community for years with regular marches and protests.

In Saturday’s conference, he attacked state laws he claims suppress the black vote, and he demanded a full restoration of the federal Voting Rights Act. (WRAL)

Confederate Divide – How America forgot the true history of the Civil War – The Week

The Watch Dog response: They don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory

After the clashes and white supremacist terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, the latest dimension of our unfolding national meltdown is over monuments to the Confederacy. In retaliation for the violence in Charlottesville, demonstrators pulled down a Confederate statue in Durham, several cities in the North quickly yanked theirs down, and several other places are considering the same thing. President Trump in turn complained about the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”

Confederate statues are generally not very aesthetically memorable. They are far more important for what they represent: a bill still being paid for over a century of deliberate forgetting and rewriting of the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. (The Week)

Confederate Divide – I’ve studied the history of Confederate memorials. Here’s what to do about them.

The Watch Dog response: They don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory 

But the story of the monuments is even stranger than many people realize. Few if any of the monuments went through any of the approval procedures that we now commonly apply to public art. Typically, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which claimed to represent local community sentiment (whether they did or did not), funded, erected, and dedicated the monuments. As a consequence, contemporaries, especially African Americans, who objected to the erection of monuments had no realistic opportunity to voice their opposition.

A controversy in Reidsville, North Carolina in 2011, which failed to attract any national attention, offers a window into the origins of Confederate monuments and their contested “ownership.” That year, an errant driver plowed into the generic Confederate soldier memorial that stood precariously beside a major street in the small town, 25 miles north of Greensboro.

Because other motorists had previously hit the monument, the UDC, which had funded and erected the monument in 1910, decided the sculpture would be safer if it was moved to a nearby cemetery. But in a strange twist, the plan was blocked when the Sons of Confederate Veterans, another Confederate heritage organization, sued the UDC to prevent the relocation of the monument. Eventually, the UDC prevailed and the restored monument was rededicated in the cemetery in 2014. The city itself was a spectator in this legal fight. (VOX)

Confederate Divide – Why can’t white supremacists confront the fact that the source of their economic problems are white economic elites? Alternet

The Watch Dog response: They don’t want to hear these trues. It is all about #theirversionofhistory

There’s no disputing the white anger and rage seen in Charlottesville, even if conservative publications like the National Review say these “angry white boys do not have a political agenda.”

Their anger is real and grievances differ, even if they took the old path of joining mobs spewing racist filth. Yet these white supremacists are blaming the wrong slices of society for their angst.

Racial divides are not what’s plaguing vast stretches of white America — deepening class divides are. If you think about who is to blame, it is mostly powerful white capitalists and their government servants that decimated regional economies in recent decades.

Many Democrats keep saying inequality is the top economic issue, as Eduardo Porter wrote for the New York Times in a piece that recaps the party’s national political agenda. However, the conventional wisdom that Democrats need to “recover the support of the middle-class — people in families earning $50,000 to $150,000, whose vote went to Mr. Trump,” especially in swing states “where three-quarters of voters are white” — is not acknowledging the roots of America’s latest outburst of white supremacy. (Alternet)

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