MrBates2
Loves Spam
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2012
- Posts
- 831
She's been called a cross between Rosa Parks and Spiderwoman. On June 27, 10 days after the massacre in Charleston and after days of debate about whether the confederate flag belonged at the South Carolina State Capitol, Bree Newsome decided it didn't. She strapped on climbing gear, scaled a 30-foot flagpole on the capitol grounds, and took the flag down.
She was arrested as she came down, and charged with defacing monuments on state capitol grounds. She's now out on $3,000 bond, awaiting trial. In the meantime, she became an instant online folk hero. But Newsome, who carefully planned her act of civil disobedience with a group of fellow activists—and calls it an act of "collective courage"—isn't looking for credit. After the hate-fueled killing in Charleston, she just felt that something had to be done. And though people had been calling for the flag to come off state property since it went up in 1938, she couldn't wait any longer. The time was right.
"The fact is people have been pushing for the flag to be taken down since the beginning," she says. "But white supremacy is a part of our culture. It's taken this long for the culture to progress in such a way that you have enough people who are on the side of taking it down to make it actually happen. And for a long time, these racist policies and cultural practices that we have have been undergirded by violence, by the type of violence that we saw at the Charleston massacre. And so people have been afraid to do it—I was afraid to do it, because we could face possible retaliation for something like this."
Newsome spent two full days training for the climb with the help of fellow activists, driving from parking lot to parking lot looking for poles to practice on. It was her first foray into climbing anything.
She was arrested as she came down, and charged with defacing monuments on state capitol grounds. She's now out on $3,000 bond, awaiting trial. In the meantime, she became an instant online folk hero. But Newsome, who carefully planned her act of civil disobedience with a group of fellow activists—and calls it an act of "collective courage"—isn't looking for credit. After the hate-fueled killing in Charleston, she just felt that something had to be done. And though people had been calling for the flag to come off state property since it went up in 1938, she couldn't wait any longer. The time was right.
"The fact is people have been pushing for the flag to be taken down since the beginning," she says. "But white supremacy is a part of our culture. It's taken this long for the culture to progress in such a way that you have enough people who are on the side of taking it down to make it actually happen. And for a long time, these racist policies and cultural practices that we have have been undergirded by violence, by the type of violence that we saw at the Charleston massacre. And so people have been afraid to do it—I was afraid to do it, because we could face possible retaliation for something like this."
Newsome spent two full days training for the climb with the help of fellow activists, driving from parking lot to parking lot looking for poles to practice on. It was her first foray into climbing anything.
