Protesters gather in Raleigh demanding Confederate monuments be removed

For the past two weeks, protests over the death of George Floyd, police violence and systemic racism have resulted in a string of rallies in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill that generally have been peaceful demonstrations.

Protest groups have gathered, their voices loud, demanding action, demanding change. Protesters have gone to the Governor’s Mansion chanting “We want justice!” They have held candlelight vigils, marched through downtown streets, placed a plaque on a 75-foot-high Confederate monument on Capitol Square to honor Floyd.

On Friday, a demonstration in Raleigh began at the State Capitol with around 100 people. Organizers sat at the foot of the large Confederate monument facing Hillsborough Street as two local pastors talked about the history of two of the monuments on the Capitol grounds.

While most of Capitol Square was closed off by metal barricades, protesters sat in the grass as the pastors, Chalice Overy and Melissa Florer-Bixler, spoke to the group.

Overy spoke in an interview about Confederate statues being removed from public property in other cities across the country, like in Richmond, Va.

“My honest response is God is at work,” said Overy, associate pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church.

“A few years ago it seemed like something that was unmovable, but that’s why we continue to talk and teach,” she said. “It builds the groundwork for the swell of momentum that comes where somehow people finally get it, and say, ‘No, these are oppressive images and this was an oppressive period that we don’t want to celebrate. And we’re going to take these things down.’”

Zainab Baloch, part of Raleigh Demands Justice, a collective of local activists, urged the protesters to sign an online petition for immediate removal of the monuments.

“Pressure the governor and legislature to get them removed,” she said.

Local activists followed the pastors, and then the group lined up to march to Nash Square, where another group of protesters were chanting and dancing, swelling the crowd to an estimated 200 people. They later returned to the Capitol, where a few protesters danced the Cupid Shuffle and Cha-Cha Slide, before marching to the Governor’s Mansion.

At one point, a Raleigh police motorcycle officer offered to assist the group, only to have protesters shout, “RPD go home!”

Plvto Sama, a 26-year-old organizer from UNITY by Truth Revealed Organization, led the group to meet with N.C. B.O.R.N. at Nash Square.

Sama talked about the effects of systemic racism: how he hasn’t jogged since Ahmaud Arbery was killed in February while jogging in south Georgia; how he encourages his 4-year-old son to only play with Nerf guns in the backyard; and how employers have encouraged him to cut his hair, which on Friday he wore long with pink highlights.

“Every day I have to master a second part of myself,” Sama said.

While Confederate statues may have been part of Friday’s focus, protesters have continued to speak out against racism, excessive police force and other police reforms.

Over the course of protests, Floyd and others killed by police have been at the forefront of their minds. In Floyd’s case, a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd said repeatedly “I can’t breathe,” bystander videos show. The officer was charged with second-degree murder.

Taari Coleman, an organizer of N.C. B.O.R.N., one of the activist groups, pushed for more than police reform.

“We can’t reform the police,” she said. “We’ve been trying.”

Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said this week that the Raleigh Police Department is committed to adopting the “8 Can’t Wait” policing reform initiative to reduce police violence.

Coleman used an expletive in referring to the initiative, saying, “Please don’t get distracted, y’all.”

At the end of the night, about 9:30 p.m., a group of UNITY by TRO organizers held a candlelit vigil at the Capitol, pasting photos to the statue and laying roses among wax candles.

Students protest in Chapel Hill

Earlier Friday, in Orange County, a march began in Carrboro and traveled up Franklin Street to UNC’s campus in Chapel Hill, with police clearing the way for the marchers.

Niya Fearrington, a Carrboro native who is going into her junior year at Howard University, said Friday she has been encouraged by the sustained number of protesters in Chapel Hill.

Despite UNC-Chapel Hill sending students home, the protests have been led by a diverse coalition of young students. Fearrington is part of a local group of students who have organized a handful of protests since Floyd’s death.

The protests have increasingly become more goal oriented, calling on the liberal college town to defund its police department, invest in affordable housing and address the achievement gap between Black and white students in its school system.

“Coming from a predominantly white town, it’s easy to think that the community will fall silent on an issue when it comes to Black life,” Fearrington said. “But I think we’ve shown up and shown out.”

And now is not the time to let up on protests, she said, if people want to see local officials in Chapel Hill and Carrboro take steps to defund the police.

Fearrington said it is her hope that Chapel Hill will take money away from the police department and invest it in educational programs and community centers, like the Jackson Center in the historically Black Northside neighborhood.

Fearrington said she and other local organizers attended a town council meeting earlier this week to advocate for defunding the police.

She said she left with “a little frustration, a little encouragement, a little disappointing — there was a lot of different emotions there,” she said, because it didn’t seem like Chapel Hill was ready to defund the police in a meaningful way. “Nonetheless, I think it was a better idea of how we need to move forward.”

“You also have to realize we have an entire new generation of people that are eligible to vote,” Fearrington, 19, added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 3:04 PM.