FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Contact:

Tony Ndege, co-chair -- cochair@ncgreenparty.org

NORTH CAROLINA GREEN PARTY SUPPORTS CHAPEL HILL PROTESTERS, REMOVAL OF CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS AND SYMBOLS

The North Carolina Green Party (NCGP) stands in solidarity with protesters in Chapel Hill who removed the “Silent Sam” Confederate statue on University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill campus on Tuesday, August 21.

The NCGP calls for all current and future charges against protesters of Silent Sam to be dropped, including all charges against UNC doctoral student Maya Little for dousing the statue in ink and blood last April.

The NCGP encourages supporters to send donations to bond funds such as the Durham Solidarity Center’s “Freedom Fighter Bond Fund” (http://durhamsolidaritycenter.org/bondfund/) that cover bail and legal fees for protesters in such situations.

The Green Party of the United States platform calls for removal of Confederate symbols and monuments. “White Americans need to confront our country’s history,” said NCGP vice chair Michael Trudeau. “These monuments have been allowed to stand for generations because too many conservative and liberal white Americans do not take the United States’ criminal history of slavery seriously enough to see why they need to come down. They appreciate the need to remove Nazi symbols in France and Germany post–World War II but do not recognize the need to remove monuments to slavery and racism and genocide here in the US. That is perpetuation of white supremacy.”

In light of the Chapel Hill protest, NCGP co-chair Tommie James pointed to the words of Martin Luther King in Letter from Birmingham Jail: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

NCGP co-chair Tony Ndege added, “Removing Confederate statues is not violence or ‘lawlessness.’ When the people remove these monuments, it is an act of defense against hundreds of years of systemic violence as well as an act of defense against the state’s own lawlessness and recklessness. The institutionalized racism and celebration of the United States’ violent slaveholding history embodied in these statues, and codified by the state, is the true violence at work.”

The NCGP supports the careful, planned removal of such monuments by the community as in Chapel Hill on Tuesday and in Durham on August 14, 2017, especially when it is evident that the state will not remove them. “The state of North Carolina codified a pernicious law that makes it impossible to remove monuments like this legally,” said NCGP member Jan Martell of Durham. “For now, this kind of direct action is the only way and will draw attention to the need for the state to reverse its infringement on our municipal rights, including the right to be free of these oppressive symbols.”

The North Carolina Green Party is an anti-racist, feminist political party composed of dues-paying members committed to social, racial, economic, gender, and environmental justice. This year, the state party earned ballot access for the first time in history, and it is now running four candidates for office in November's elections.



MORE INFORMATION:

NCGP website: www.ncgreenparty.org

NCGP Facebook page: www.facebook.com/officialncgp/

NCGP Twitter: @NorthCarolinaGP

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