The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Staff Reports
Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 11:23 AM
Three More Protesters Arrested Wednesday For Toppling 100-Year Old Statue Of Confederate Solider In Durham NC
Dante Strobino, 35, and Ngoc Loan Tran, 24, were arrested when they attended a court hearing for another woman who was charged Tuesday for climbing a ladder to attach a rope to the bronze soldier. Peter Gull, 39, was arrested later Wednesday afternoon.
The Durham County Sheriff’s office said Tran and Strobino were charged with two felonies related to inciting and participating in a riot that damaged property.
The woman who climbed the ladder, Takiyah Thompson, was charged with the same counts a day before. She is a student at historically black North Carolina Central University.
The three are affiliated with the Workers World Party, which helped organize the Durham protest in response to deadly violence over the weekend during a white nationalist rally Charlottesville, Virginia.
The North Carolina statue, which was dedicated in 1924, was brought down after Thompson allegedly climbed up and attached a rope. Demonstrators then pulled down it down.
Seconds after the monument fell, protesters began kicking the crumpled bronze monument.
“I’m tired of
white supremacy keeping its foot on my neck and the necks of people who
look like me,” Thompson said at a news conference. “That statue
glorifies the conditions that oppressed people live in, and it had to
go.”
The Durham protest was in response to a white nationalist rally held in
Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, which lead to three deaths.
Although the violence in Virginia has
prompted fresh talk by government officials about bringing down symbols
of the Confederacy around the South, North Carolina has a law protecting
them, according to The Associated Press. The 2015 law prevents removing
such monuments on public property without permission from state
officials.
Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrews said Tuesday that his deputies were
working to identify others involved in the incident and plan to pursue
felony charges against them.
Late Tuesday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called for the removal of
any remaining Confederate monuments on state property, directing state
officials to study the cost and logistics of moving them to historical
sites or museums.
"We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of
America fought in the defense of slavery," Cooper said in a statement.
"These monuments should come down."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.