North Carolina legislature moves to protect racist Confederate monuments

By Scotty Reid

The North Carolina legislature which is controlled by Republicans who are behind the voter id bill that is being challenged in the Supreme Court of the United States, just fast tracked a bill to protect monuments to the traitorous and racist confederacy.

The state House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to pass the “Historical Artifact and Patriotism Act,” which makes it virtually impossible for local communities to move Confederate monuments. In North Carolina there are numerous confederate monuments on the grounds of court houses and one is located at a polling place in Stanley, North Carolina.

The bill, which came out of the so-called House Homeland Security Committee, bans the removal of monuments considered “objects of remembrance” without the General Assembly’s approval.

One racist monument to confederacy which thanks soldiers for fighting to maintain white supremacy was vandalized recently in Charlotte, North Carolina. However, Charlotte isn’t the only city to see monuments glorifying those who fought to enslave Africans even if they did not “own” any were vandalized in Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Cornelius.

The North Carolina NAACP Chapter President called for Governor Pat McCrory to veto the legislation.

“Rushing to protect monuments of the Confederacy rather than readily protecting the citizens of ours state is extreme and wrongheaded,” he said in a statement. “The urgency with which the majority of our state representatives raced to protect Confederate monuments is appalling and shameful, given that hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians live without health insurance due to the General Assembly and Governor’s refusal to expand Medicaid; given that thousands of North Carolinians need a living wage, that teachers need job security, that public schools need adequate funding, that our environment needs adequate protections.”

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