The Confederate flag has been temporarily removed from in front of the South Carolina Statehouse.
A black woman was about halfway up the more than 30-foot steel flagpole just after dawn Saturday when State Capitol police told her to come down. Instead, she continued up and removed the flag before returning to the ground.
The woman and another man who had entered the wrought-iron fence surrounding the flag were arrested.
This is Bree. An amazing black woman who climbed the pole and took down the racist flag. pic.twitter.com/DK07mcXRMo
— Ferguson Action (@fergusonaction) June 27, 2015More:
The woman, who has not been named by local authorities, was identified on social media as Brittany “Bree” Newsome, an activist from North Carolina. Her actions inspired the hashtag #keepitdown, which was a one of the top trending topics in the United States on Twitter Saturday. Later in the day the hashtag #FreeBree was also trending in the United States.
According to website BreeNewsome.com, which was linked to by a Twitter account belonging to a user with the name Bree Newsome and mentioned by numerous users in conjunction with the #keepitdown hashtag, Newsome is an activist and graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
I don't know what's going to happen to her. Given the way the Republican Party has (mostly) retreated on the Confederate flag, I suspect she won't be severely punished. She can be defined as an "outsider," however, so it's hard to know what will happen.
In any case, she was arrested. An observer from another planet whose understanding of America was based solely on the ranting of right-wingers might assume, from the wingers' apocalyptic cries of pain this week, that we lefties were now forming bloodthirsty mobs to enforce liberal correctness, and therefore the state employees who raise and lower the Confederate flag in Columbia are now at risk of being seized and beheaded by those mobs, after first being forcibly gay-married. Apparently that's not happening.
Yet.
(I'm kidding, righties!)
Just a reminder: Gay marriage and Obamacare are the law of the land, but some things are still in the process of changing, and feral crowds of lefties aren't running amok enforcing conformity just because some political and legal battles haven't gone conservatives' way. Bill Kristol is wrong:
We see a French Revolution-like tendency to move with the speed of light from a reasonable and perhaps overdue change (taking down the Confederate flag over state buildings) to an all-out determination to expunge from our history any recognition or respect for that which doesn’t fully comport with contemporary progressive sentiment.
French Revolution? Even now, it's being reported that the flag is back up now at the South Carolina capitol grounds. I guess we're gonna need a bigger tumbrel.
Writers, athletes, artists, philosophers, politicians, and even your father in law.
ReplyDeleteWe can and do every day commend people for their achievements and admirable qualities though we disagree with their politics, their religious beliefs, or other matters of no small importance to us.
As your children grow up you may be in for some unpleasant surprises, but with luck not so awful you cannot still love and respect them.
Oh, Ms Newsome's was an act of civil disobedience, well within the standard definition.
ReplyDeleteAnd a remarkably athletic one, too.
Hers should be no more than a token punishment, and with luck the state will bring down the flag officially, soon.
I just came across the Tattoed Professor' blog post and it's worth quoting for Bill Kristol and others
ReplyDeleteIf you’ve convinced yourself that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of slavery and racism, you’ve managed to ignore what pretty much every prominent Confederate of the 1860s said. That takes some doing. But if you haven’t seen the truth from reading this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or the literally thousands of other documents that attest to the centrality of slavery and race in the Confederacy, then there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. You have entered the realm of fantasy. You are a Silly Person. You have placed yourself in the same category as people who argue that the sun rotates around the earth or that the dinosaurs didn’t exist. You have plugged your ears and chanted la la la la la I’m not listening to you. I would be more successful in breaking through a brick wall with my forehead than in convincing you to, say, read a fucking book once in a while. I will not engage you, because you will not engage reality.
You can get the links he refers to here: http://www.thetattooedprof.com/archives/407
I am on an iPad so limited in my abilities to create links
Can Bill Kristol be in one of the first tumbrels?
ReplyDeleteMs Newsome's was an act of civil disobedience
ReplyDeleteIndeed it was. And more significant and effective than anything Mike Huckabee claims he'll do.
Wonder what the appropriate waiting period is for "reasonable and overdue changes"? Apparently, we're rushing things.
ReplyDeleteWith my high blood-pressure, I can’t indulge too much in the bitter and salty tears of our Reich-Wingers.
ReplyDeleteAh, what the hell!!!
Barkeep!
Give me a quadruple shot of Shadenfreude, and a triple shot of STFU!!!!!
Oh, and give my buddy Bill Kristol, here - my brother from an alien psychotic mother - a shot of sulfuric acid with a fifth of Draino as a chaser!
"Na zdarovyah - as we "Fifth Columnists" like to toast to the demise of your conservative "Christian" ideals of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and "Christian" intolerance.
SKOL!
Now, STFU!!!
"a shot of sulfuric acid with a fifth of Draino as a chaser!"
ReplyDeleteAnd Charlie Pierce smiles.
Douglas Feith is somewhere thinking "Dumbest fucking guy on the planet right now? I don't think so."
ReplyDeleteBtw, I think I know her from my anti-war/torture/rendition protests, and then Obama's campaign in 2008, in NC.
ReplyDeleteBut I can't be sure because I'm 57 and getting Sea-Lion... make that SeeDaNile...
Whatever........
This has been a great week which just keeps getting better.
ReplyDeleteWhat "respect" is due to the 19th century's Nazi swastika? Burn it. Cover it in human feces and burn it.
ReplyDeleteYou had me at "Bill Kristol is wrong," but I kept reading anyway.
ReplyDelete