Attorney compares those charged in UNC’s Silent Sam protests to civil rights ‘heroes’
Protesters and their supporters fueled up with biscuits and doughnuts Tuesday before heading into a brief court hearing with 11 defendants charged at Silent Sam demonstrations on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.
The judge was not yet in Orange County District Court when attorneys Scott Holmes and Tom Cadwallader spoke privately with Assistant District Attorney Bill Massengale. Holmes then walked to the front of courtroom and told the group, who describe their movement as anti-racist, that the cases had been continued.
The cases were continued to Nov. 5. Another group of protesters is due in court Oct. 18.
Holmes made a brief statement in front of the courthouse after conferring with his clients.
“These folks have been characterized by folks at the university and elected officials as unruly, or vandals, or a mob, but history will tell us and will look back on these folks and see that what they were doing is [like] a long line of folks who have resisted white supremacy,” Holmes said. “The same folks who committed the crime of trespassing, sit-in counters and were reviled then are now heroes because they resisted white supremacy.”
“The real problem here is not these folks behind me, but the public nuisance of that symbol of the violent defense of human enslavement that sits on our campus and that responsible leaders would understand at this point needs to come down,” he said.
About an hour before the hearing, activists and members of the Raging Grannies political protest group set up tables of biscuits, doughnuts, coffee and snacks. A poster taped to a table laid out rules for police, from no pepper spray use to no flipping tables, a reference to the group’s Sept. 8 potluck protest where tables of food were overturned during an arrest.
“It’s 8:45, and UNC Police have not thrown themselves into our table yet,” organizer Maya Little told the crowd.
Little is scheduled to be in court Oct. 15 to face a charge of defacing, writing on, marking or injuring a public statue or monument. The UNC doctoral student was charged in April after she smeared a mix of her own blood and red paint on the Silent Sam statue.
Those attending Tuesday’s rally also were invited to write letters to political prisoners with October birthdays, including Rayquan Borum, who is accused of murdering Justin Carr on Sept. 21, 2016, during demonstrations held after the Charlotte police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott.
Activists who support Borum have said he is a scapegoat and that Charlotte police shot and killed Carr with a rubber bullet. The case is scheduled to return to a Mecklenburg County courtroom on Dec. 3.
Organizer Gina Balamucki also urged the group to ask Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger to pressure prosecutors to drop the charges against 25 of the 26 people who have been arrested since Silent Sam was toppled Aug. 20. The other person is a Silent Sam supporter.
Defend UNC and others called last month for a similar campaign to pressure Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall to drop the charges.
It’s important for the community to stand with the anti-racist protesters who have been arrested, Balamucki said.
“The fact that we have 25 defendants related to what happened in our tiny town of Chapel Hill is really incredible, especially because if you see the videos from the arrests, it’s clear that these people aren’t doing anything wrong,” she said.
Those charged since Aug. 20 are:
▪ Jody Anderson, 21, of Raleigh, charged with assault on a government official. He is a senior at N.C. State University.
▪ Jaya Athavale, 18, of Carrboro, charged with resisting a public officer and failure to disperse.
▪ Lauren Aucoin, 23, of Hillsborough, charged with two misdemeanors: causing a public disturbance and defacing, writing on, marking or injuring a public statue or monument.
▪ Ian Broadhead, 28, of Vilas, N.C., charged with two misdemeanors: resisting a public officer and concealing his face during a public rally.
▪ Barry Brown, 40, of Liberty, charged with simple affray after he punched an anti-racist protester who tried to take Silent Sam memorial flowers from him. Simple affray is defined as a public fight between two or more people. Brown is member of the Confederate heritage group Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County.
▪ Thomas Bruefach, 18, of Charlotte, charged with two misdemeanors: resisting a public officer and causing a public disturbance. He is a sophomore at N.C. State University and has no prior offenses.
▪ Dwayne Dixon, 46, of Durham, charged by Patrick Howley, editor-in-chief of the Big League Politics news site, with simple assault. Howley says Dixon hit him at the Aug. 20 protest. Simple assault means no weapons were used and an incident did not cause serious injury.
▪ Kristin Emery, 26, of Durham, charged with misdemeanor resisting a public officer.
▪ Jayna Fishman, 22, of Raleigh, charged with assault on a campus police officer.
▪ Jonathan Fuller, 27, of Durham, charged with two misdemeanors: causing a public disturbance and defacing, writing on, marking or injuring a public statue or monument.
▪ Raul Jimenez, 27, of Raleigh, charged with two misdemeanors: causing a public disturbance and defacing, writing on, marking or injuring a public statue or monument.
Jimenez also was charged with toppling a Confederate statue in Durham last year. He was found not guilty in that case of injury to real property, defacing a public building or monument, and conspiracy to deface a public building or monument. He was accused of holding a ladder and manipulating a strap used to bring down the statue.
▪ Alexander Joustra, 30, of Carrboro, charged with misdemeanor injury to real property.
▪ Joseph Karlik, 27, of Carrboro, charged with resisting a public officer and failure to disperse.
Karlik was one of eight people charged in the toppling of a Confederate statue in downtown Durham in August 2017. Durham County District Attorney Roger Echols dismissed the charges against him and four others in February after a judge acquitted one suspect and dismissed charges against two others.
▪ Joshua Mascharka, 25, of Chapel Hill, charged with assault on a government official, resisting an officer, weapons on educational property (two knives) and failure to disperse.
▪ Shannon MacLaughlin, 24, of Vilas, N.C., charged with misdemeanor resisting a public officer.
▪ Michael Mole, 20, of Cary, charged with misdemeanor simple assault.
▪ Cammy Morgan, 25, of Vilas, N.C., charged with misdemeanor resisting a public officer.
▪ Timothy Osborn, 23, of Sussex, N.J., charged by a citizen, R. Barbee, with misdemeanor affray. Osborn is a graduate student at UNC.
▪ Lillian Laura Price, 20, of Chapel Hill, charged with misdemeanor injury to personal property.
▪ Julia Pulawski, 30, of Siler City, charged with resisting a public officer and assault on a campus police officer.
▪ Mary Rosen, 23, of Charlotte, charged with misdemeanor resisting a public officer.
▪ Margarita Sitterson, 18, of Chapel Hill, charged with misdemeanor riot and misdemeanor defacing of a public monument.
Sitterson’s grandfather was J. Carlyle Sitterson, who was the chancellor of the university from 1966 to 1972, CBS17 and Spectrum News reported. Although UNC has not confirmed her status as a student, she reported having an on-campus address to police.
▪ Brandon Alexander Webb, 27, of Richmond, Va., charged with disorderly conduct at a protest (setting off smoke bomb) and resisting a public officer.
▪ Christopher David Wells, 30, of Carrboro, charged with resisting a public officer and failure to disperse. He is a Durham Tech student and Defend UNC organizer.
Two other cases have been resolved:
Carrboro resident John Quick, 35, accepted a deferred prosecution agreement on Sept. 20 in Orange County District Court. His misdemeanor simple assault charge will be dropped in March if he completes 24 hours of community service and stays out of trouble for six months.
Dannielle Shochet, 47, of Raleigh had his charge of simple assault dismissed Sept. 20.
This story was originally published October 9, 2018 at 11:26 AM.