A few of the less enlightened comments elicited by my article of last night, reporting on the anarkids-led downing of a confederate statue in our dearly beloved Durham, NC:
Beautiful sight.
Oh those rowdy bands of liberals...OMG they toppled a statue. Cue FOX news with the headline....it's the end of the world! Call out the national guard to protect our heritage.
There was no alternative so the people liberated themselves from a symbol of oppression.
Just keep voting!! Working great!
It’s not tearing down. It’s liberation.
Time to harden up a little, if you are sad about vigilantes attacking statues.
If you don’t understand that violence begets greater violence… If your grasp of history is too weak to appreciate the profound power of non-violence… If you’re ignorant of the situation here in North Carolina, where white supremacists are just itching for a fight… If you’re too simple to understand that an escalating cycle of violent disorder is exactly what the white supremacists in the White House yearn for and are doing their best to promote… If you’ve never put your body on the line in non-violent civil disobedience, yet feel no qualms about encouraging violent ‘action’… If you agreed with the anarkids that the preceding evening’s peaceful Charlottesville vigil was “bullshit”… If you think radicalization has ever fed a hungry child, or healed a sick person, or sheltered a homeless one, or otherwise left the world a better place than it found it...
And if you have such obvious disrespect for our state’s Forward Together movement, its inspiring accomplishments, and the wise words of its founder, our Rev. Dr. William Barber…
...Then please go celebrate sophomoric stupidity and encourage a spiraling cycle of violence in your own city, not ours. Right now we’re too busy here in Durham, preparing for the worst, to offer you much in the way of remedial education just at the moment. But we’ll get back to you on that. The real fight — against voter suppression — is taking a back seat this morning, as we scramble to fight looming violence.
Because violence is the ultimate step back.