Statement from Rick Glazier: NCGA should adopt measures to protect safety of protestors, repeal monument statute

RALEIGH (August 16, 2017) — Yesterday, in light of the recent horrifying events in Charlottesville – and the President’s equally stunning remarks equating victims with perpetrators and emboldening the white supremacist movement in the U.S. – Governor Roy Cooper called on the North Carolina legislature to repeal an unwise and unnecessary 2015 law that prevents the removal or relocation of Confederate monuments.

Doing so would allow cities, counties, and the state to have the authority to make these decisions and move these markers to museums, cemeteries, and other less provocative historical sites. The Governor directed his staff to immediately determine the costs and logistics for doing so.

The Governor also urged the Senate to defeat a bill shockingly passed by the House that gives immunity to motorists who strike protestors, stating “[t]hose who attack protestors, weaponizing their vehicles like terrorists, should find no safe haven in our state.”

The Governor is spot on, and such actions can be accomplished next week when the General Assembly returns to Raleigh.

These actions should be bipartisan. They are needed to increase vital public confidence in the safety of all residents of North Carolina; to counter the nationwide fear that has resulted from the evil on display by Neo-Nazi and white supremacist terrorist groups filled with hate, shouting slogans of hate, and carrying torched symbols of hate in Charlottesville; and challenge the stunning lack of Presidential understanding in response to those words and acts of violence.

Governor Cooper’s plan should be immediately adopted.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT Rick Glazier, rick@ncjustice.org, 919.856.3193; Julia Hawes, julia@ncjustice.org, 919.863.2406.