The local Sheriff in Durham announced on Monday that the department would be seeking charges against the protestors who tore down a Confederate statue over the weekend. Just a day later, a young Black woman has been charged.
Takiyah Fatima Thompson, 22, of Riot_revolt was charged with participation in a riot with property damage in excess of $1,500 and inciting others to riot where property damage exceeds $1,500. These are both felony charges.
She was also charged with damage to real property and disorderly conduct by injury to a statue. These charges are in connection to Thompson climbing a ladder to tie a rope around the statue so that other protestors could pull it down.
“I’m tired of white supremacy keeping its foot on my neck and the necks of people who look like me,” Thompson said at an earlier news conference. “That statue glorifies the conditions that oppressed people live in, and it had to go.”
The removal of these monuments has become a hot button topic across the country, especially in places where they’re more common – although statues, schools and roads n can also be found in places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
While local lawmakers refuse to rename or dismantle many of these, citizens continue to demand they do. Hence, a stalemate that boils over in events like Charlottesville or Durham.
“Every day that these monuments to white supremacy remain standing on North Carolina’s public land, our government sends a message that it endorses the oppression and inequality that they represent,”
Most people likely underestimate just how many memorials there are to the Confederacy throughout the same country it hoped to overthrow. It’ll likely take a while to remove them all, or even most of them, but the progress is still necessary.
Thompson’s charges have been dropped and the DA and Sherrif of Durham have since been voted out of their respective posts.
