WINSTON-SALEM – The hullabaloo over ‘Silent Sam’ has died down a bit (for now) in Chapel Hill, but that’s not say there aren’t opportunities to rage against the pressive nature of inanimate objects. Just west, in Winston-Salem, another Confederate statue is coming under fire and an organized group of Social Justice Warriors are planning a protest while thumbing their noses at the required permitting process.
A Leftist mob lacking concern for the rule of law? Say it ain’t so.
From the Winston-Salem Journal:
“Miranda Jones, one of the organizers of the “Get Hate Out of Winston-Salem” protest scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday said she and others putting together the event ran into problems getting a permit for an event in 2017, so they decided not to apply for one this time.
The city requires a permit for gatherings drawing 25 people or more. On the Facebook page for the protest, more than a hundred people say they plan to go, with almost 600 people saying they are “interested” in attending.”
Surely the city officials are demanding a permit be secure before a large protest, right? Wrong.
“But City Manager Lee Garrity said that because of potential high emotions over the statue of a Confederate soldier, the city won’t crack down on demonstrators on either side of the issue just because they don’t have a permit. [… ]”
So, let’s get this straight. Permits are required, by city ordinance, or what you would call ‘local laws,’ to have large demonstrations UNLESS there are a lot of emotions. If emotions are high, then *wallah!* no permit required.
How asinine is that? What kind of protest event, in which people are motivated to take to the streets and make demands, is not charged with emotions? If this is the new standard of permitting, then no permits would ever be required of any group.
Of course, the story, like most, has a bit of nuance:
“The controversy over the monument has featured fast-changing developments: After at first saying it would stay out of the fight, the owner of the renovated courthouse apartments where the statue stands now says it wants it gone.
Winston Courthouse LLC, the building owner, had its attorney write a letter Tuesday asking the United Daughters of the Confederacy to move the statue by Jan. 31, the same date the city requested in a separate letter dated Dec. 31, 2018.“
The courthouse is privately owned and converted into residential apartments. The owners don’t want mob violence, hardly uncommon among the Leftist agitators, taking place right in front of their development. That sort of thing tends to be bad for business.
The nuance continues in that their seems to have been a reasonable solution offered, that would satisfy the building owners, and those who want the historic memorial preserved relevant to its purpose.
“City officials say their offer to help the UDC move the statue still stands, although an exact cost hasn’t been pinned down. One estimate has been that it could take $20,000 to move the statue and its base, which would likely have to be moved in sections.
The city wants to move the statue to Salem Cemetery, where Confederate soldiers are buried near each other in one section.”
A monument to the confederate dead, located in what amounts to a Confederate cemetery in the same town, seems to be wholly appropriate, especially because the private property owners in question would rather the statue, and the controversy, be off their doorstep.
There is one party to this debate that is sure to UNsatisfied with such a logical compromise – the Grievance Studies Scholars. The Leftist mobs won’t be satisfied until the statue is torn down and stomped upon so that they may signal their ‘woke’ virtues to the rest of their ilk. If indeed the statue was moved to the cemetery, it would not surprise us in the least if protesters moved to vandalize it there, along with desecrating the graves of Confederate soldiers.
City officials and protest organizers, though, are still unsure if the protest will even happen. In a great bit of irony provided by mother nature, a winter storm this weekend could interrupt the planned outrage of the social justice snowflakes.
Read more from the Winston-Salem Journal here.
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