Protesters Destroy Another North Carolina Statue And Post Pictures Of Celebration On UNC Campus

jonathanturley

8 years ago

download Earlier this year, I was critical of the handling of the prosecution of various protesters in North Carolina who torn down a statue in public and then celebrated their criminal acts in broad daylight. Because the statue of a civil war memorial, the act of property destruction was condoned by many and Durham District Attorney Roger Echols caved to the pressure in dropping all charges against everyone. It was effective immunity for a popular criminal act — a dangerous concept in any legal system. Not surprisingly, others are now claiming the right to unilaterally destroy property. The latest were protesters on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s campus who took it upon themselves to destroy the controversial Silent Sam Confederate statue.

Silent Sam has stood at the spot since 1913 as a memorial to the “sons of the University who died for their beloved Southland 1861-1865,” according to UNC’s website.

There has been simmering debate over these statues, including Silent Sam. The college community was debating its removal when these protesters decided that they did not have to wait for any decision or permission. Given Echols’ earlier action, it is not surprising that they viewed themselves as immune from criminal laws.

What is astonishing is that this took hours but the college and police did nothing. Protesters started during the day and then finally destroyed the statue by nightfall. They then filmed themselves celebrating and kicking the statue with no concern for arrest as shown by the CNN affiliate WRAL-TV.

One person was arrested and that person was not arrested for the destruction of the statue but “concealing one’s face during a public rally and resisting arrest.”

Last November, Maya Little, a second-year PhD student in UNC’s History Department, appeared at a public meeting to call for the statue’s removal. Months later, she took matters into her own hands and smeared her blood and red ink on the statue. At the time, she faced expulsion and criminal charges for the incident.

There is a good-faith debate over the removal of civil war memorials, though I have been critical of the increasing calls for the removal of a wide array of memorials and statuary across the country from images of Columbus to Jefferson. The merits of this debate however are irrelevant to the immediate question of whether citizens now have license to violate criminal law when such crimes are popular with the majority. The destruction at UNC is the natural consequence of the decision of people like Echols who yield to public pressure to protect those who take the law into their own hands. This is simply a form of vigilante justice. The government enable such conduct by portraying criminal destruction of property as excusable or remain passive in the face of such destruction. The media also contributes to this growing problem by portraying such actions as a form of free speech as opposed to criminal conduct.

Again, I think that this is a debate worth having and that reasonable people can reach different decisions on the criteria and conditions for the removal of statues and memorials. However, we should all agree that none of us has a right to make such decisions unilaterally or to claim immunity from criminal laws because our cause is just.

What do you think?

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