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Courthouse News Service reports
A woman climbed a flagpole and cut down the Confederate flag in front of the South Carolina statehouse Saturday before promptly being arrested and seeing the banner raised again less than an hour later.
Bree Newsome, dressed in climbing gear, spoke respectfully with police gathered at the base of the flag pole as she continued to move ever closer to the flag. A video of her climb captures Newsome, a resident of Raleigh, North Carolina, talking to police from about two-thirds the way up the 30-foot pole, evidently acknowledging her imminent arrest.
"I know sir. I'm prepared", she says.
"Ma'am, come down off the pole", the officers yell as passing motorists honked their horns at the scene.
"You cannot get to me with hatred and oppression and violence", Newsome shouted as she cut the flag down. "In the name of God, this flag comes down today."
The New York Daily News identifies the woman as Brittany Ann Byuarium (Bree) Newsome of Charlotte, NC and continues
[...] When she reached the bottom, State Police took the flag out of her hands and arrested her. Another North Carolina activist, James Tyson, climbed over the four-foot wrought-iron fence and held the pole to make sure Newsome didn't fall, Lewis said. He was arrested alongside Newsome as a group of onlookers cheered off camera. The 30-year-olds were charged with defacing a monument on state Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor that can bring up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
A judge ordered $3,000 bond for each of them and said they were free to travel to other states.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday June 29 2015, @05:49AM
What better flag to fly in the face of disputed federal intervention than the one of ultimate defiance? The defining battle of American politics is what jurisdictional areas belong to which layer of government. Do we accept complete and limitless power held in the hands of the feds? Or do we use the Tenth Amendment to let states decide what is not expressly reserved by the feds? Take a look at cannabis and hemp politics and you'll see the same discussion - the federal government has no right to limit intrastate trade.
The Southern flag has been losing its racist meaning for some time now, becoming effectively a regional pride flag. It has been worn by black rappers like Ludacris. Was Lynyrd Skynyrd's prominent use of the flag racist while they were playing music that was strongly influenced by black artists? Maybe to people in other parts of the country who only see the flag on television view it as solely racist, just as people who only see black people on television news have warped views of black people being only criminals.
For a not insignificant portion of white (and some black) Southerners, the Confederate Battle Flag stands for the valor and sacrifice of their ancestors. To coastal urbanites, this sort of sense of history and legacy isn't something we have. How many of us here know our family history back more than a century and a half? To those Southern folks, having an official state government building proudly showing the flags makes sense. Remember that the men who fought and died under this flag were doing so under the authority of the very states where this flag flies on state grounds.
I'd rather see more use of the flag, even by proud black Southerners, than to see it slandered and hidden.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by mendax on Monday June 29 2015, @06:39AM
It seems that South Carolina needs reconquered once again to remind those nutcases once again that they lost the Civil War. The adage coined by James Petigru, one of its senators I believe in 1861, when South Carolina left the union remains an accurate statement today: "South Carolina is too small to be a state and too large to be an insane asylum." The war is over, the South lost, live with it.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @01:43PM
> The war is over, the South lost, live with it.
The South didn't lose, the slavers lost. Plenty of people in the South were not on board with fighting for the right of the rich to keep slaves, they just didn't have economic clout to impose their will on their neighbors. It is important to stop giving the slavers and racists false legitimacy by conflating their loss with a defeat for South as a whole. The rest of the South actually won when the slavers lost.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:15PM
>The rest of the South actually won when the slavers lost.
Well, that might have been true, if not for the carpet-baggers and other exploitation levied against the South following their defeat. Not to mention all the friends and family who lost their lives after being drafted by the Confederate army. Being on the losing side of a drawn-out shooting war is rarely a victory, no matter whose ideology you might support.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Monday June 29 2015, @06:52AM
You're wrong on just about everything you say.
The confederate flag has been GAINING racist meaning for decades. As others have pointed out, the flag wasn't used till the 60s.
There are a lot better flags with a lot less racist overtones to wave in the face of the feds. Try Gadsden flag.
If being a racist is how you think you will control the federal government you are sadly mistaken. Guys like you empower federal overreaching.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday June 30 2015, @02:12AM
Gaining? With the Klan and racist politicians largely unable to have any significant impact for the last few decades I'd say that's not true at all. The future is bright, despite the media's narrative.
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