Durham mayor: White folks damaging property are co-opting racial justice movement

Protesters that damaged property in downtown Durham Wednesday night are co-opting the fight for racial justice, Mayor Steve Schewel said Thursday.

“The folks who inflicted this damage were white,” Schewel said at a press conference.

“This is an attempt to co-opt a racial justice movement,” he said. “And again, this is not something that we can accept.”

A group called DurhamBurn posted a flier on Twitter Wednesday after a grand jury decided not to indict police officers for Breonna Taylor’s death. The flier read, “JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR” and included a time and location, 7 p.m. at CCB Plaza, Durham.

Kentucky police officers shot Taylor, a Black woman, in her home March 13.

Former Officer Brett Hankison was charged with three counts of reckless endangerment for his role in the raid on Taylor’s home.

About 50 people showed up to protest, ABC11 reported.

Police Chief C.J. Davis said at the press conference the city does not yet know who is involved in the group. They bear the mark of anarchists, dressing in all black and committing vandalism, for example.

“Their plan was to get in quick, do damage quickly and before there was a unified response (sufficient to respond) ... there was a dispersal of the group,” she said.

Schewel said there were 13 reports of vandalism.

The police headquarters’ windows had “revenge” and “burn it down” spray-painted on them, and several windows of businesses were broken, ABC11 reported. Other TV stations reported more vandalized properties.

No looting occurred, said Chief Davis.

Demonstrators were “hostile” towards news media, said ABC11 reporter Joel Brown.

Nicole Thompson of Downtown Durham Inc. said she is still assessing the cost of the damage and had seen several broken windows during a walk-through last night, in an email to The News & Observer.

“A young woman lost her life. People are understandably angry,” Thompson wrote to The N&O. “The small and minority business and property owners I talk to are passionate about wanting a more fair criminal justice system as well. They don’t deserve to bear the brunt of our collective anger. I hope we can find a way to channel this pain that creates real change and long-term solutions.”

At his press conference, Schewel said he and Davis do not see a need for a curfew, as Raleigh enacted after protests there.

“What we do see a need for is for those people who are bent on this destruction not to be doing it,” he said.

“We understand very, very deeply and support righteous protests that are peaceful. We understand and support civil disobedience, but we do not understand or support violence,” he said, at the end of the conference.

Durham activist comments on protest

Minister Paul Scott, an activist in Durham for over 25 years, said he went downtown Wednesday to observe the protests.

“What I saw last night was a crowd that was, I would say, even liberally, 95% white,” said Scott, a founder of the Black Messiah Movement, a Black liberation and community activism group in the Bull City.

Scott said he is not against using whatever means necessary to produce justice, but takes issue in the case of Wednesday’s protest.

“I don’t want to see Black people used as political pawns,” said Scott. There is a political civil war going on right now between the left and the right, and Black people use being used as pawns in the middle.”

Scott said he thinks it is unfortunate that shootings in Durham do not produce the same level of outrage. Aggravated assaults in Durham, which includes non-fatal shootings, are up 42% this year compared to the same time last year, according to the Durham Police Department.

“We are outraged about the murder of Breonna Taylor. We are outraged about the murder of George Floyd,” said Scott. “But as far as my movement and me as an activist, I am just as outraged or even more outraged that in Durham, North Carolina, we have children being shot almost on a nightly basis.”

“There has to be a zero tolerance for Black murder, regardless of who’s hand it comes by,” he added.

This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 12:09 PM.