This statement was updated on Aug. 30 based on the news that additional arrests had been made.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation expresses complete solidarity with the eleven anti-racist activists who were arrested in the aftermath of the courageous action that brought down a monument to the Confederate slavocracy in Durham, North Carolina. Among those arrested are Takiyah Thompson of the Workers World Party and North Carolina Central University, organizers with the Durham Solidarity Center and a PSL member. We join in with others around the country who are calling and protesting the Durham District Attorney to demand that all the charges be dropped.
The nature of the capitalist so-called justice system is clearly exposed. The Nazis and Klan members enjoy impunity, but anti-racist protesters are arrested and hit with heavy felony charges.
We demand that all charges be dropped against the protesters arrested in connection with the toppling of Confederate statues and monuments. They were erected all over the country decades after the defeat of the Confederacy and the slave system it sought to maintain indefinitely. These statues and monuments celebrating the defeated Confederacy are evidence of nothing more than the counter-revolutionary onslaught against Black freedom that followed the betrayal of Reconstruction by the Northern capitalist class and its political operatives.
This assault by the capitalist class against Black America accelerated in the decades after the end of Reconstruction and continues to this day. By removing the Confederate statue, the community and progressive movement in Durham carried out people’s justice in the face of the endless obstruction of justice by the government.
As we wrote in our statement about the events in Charlottesville:
“The fascist conference and rally was billed as one to ‘Unite the Right.’ While they have considerable ideological and tactical differences, they are coming together in the streets to oppose those who they see as their common enemy. Those on the Left must do the same, forging steadfast unity in the streets — as the heroes and martyrs of Charlottesville did today.”
