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By now, you’ve probably seen pictures of the toppled Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina all over your Facebook timeline.
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On Monday, Black activist Takiyah Thompson fastened a rope around the neck of a statue of late Confederate Army leader Robert E. Lee, allowing a group of protesters on the ground to pull it down.
Protesters chanted “No KKK! No fascist USA” and slogans condemning right-wing attacks that took place just two days earlier in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Just before Thompson was arrested Tuesday, teleSUR spoke with the 22-year-old student activist to get her thoughts on the action and broader race relations.
When asked about why she decided to tear down the statue, she said it represents “a vestige of white supremacy, a reality that continues to exist to this day.”
Such monuments, she stressed, represent the throngs of a society built on the premise of white superiority and serve to embolden it.
She also described the statue as a symbol of capitalism, which she said together with white supremacy, work like peas in a pod to create "new iterations of chattel slavery.”
A student at North Carolina Central State University and a member of Workers World Party, Thompson affirmed that there are Confederate statues in 35 states, which she described as “intolerable.” The number well exceeds the 11 states which comprised the Confederacy.
According to a recent study by USA Today, over 1,000 Confederate monuments remain throughout the United States.
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The monuments, which have long offended many African Americans and anti-racists, are even seen in states like California and New York, places where many wouldn’t expect them to be.
Acknowledging that she helped knocked down a Confederate statue during Black August, a month dedicated to highlighting Black resistance, Thompson emphasized that she follows a long line of people who are not “powerless,” but who have agency and self-determination.
This legacy, she concurred, includes Haitian independence heroes Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, the Jamaican Maroons, Mabel and Robert Williams, the Shakur family, members of the Black Panther Party, supporters of the Republic of New Afrika, and others.
Connecting the fight against racism in the United States with liberation struggles around the world, Thompson stressed the importance of global solidarity.
She emphasized that her local struggle is intricately tied to understanding the "role of the United States globally,” describing U.S. sanctions against independent countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe as extensions of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws practiced on an international scale.
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“The struggle for Black liberation in this country (the United States) is the same as the struggle against U.S. imperialism,” she added.
Reaffirming the need for internationalism, Thompson said it is impossible to separate the gentrification of Black communities in the United States from the invasions of Global South countries. She attributed both phenomena to global capitalism in crisis.
Both are part of the same war being "played out on different turfs,” she said.
Thompson has been charged with disorderly conduct by injury to a statue, damage to real property, felony participation in riot with property damage in excess of US$1,500 and felony inciting others to riot, according to jail records. Her bond is set at US$10,000. Activists have since set up a legal fund to help her win her case, according to WTVD.
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