Burlington, NC: Wobblies Take on White Nationalists and Neo-Confederates

Submitted to It’s Going Down

Burlington, NC – Saturday, November 26, 2016 – yesterday, the Triangle Area Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized a counter-protest to shut down a rally being held by the white supremacist group “Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County” (ACTBAC) on the steps of the Burlington Municipal Building.  About fifty people broke out of the police-defined “protest zone” to rally between the neo-Confederates and the street, so that they couldn’t spread their racist propaganda.  They chanted slogans and held a banner that read “IWW: Fighting Nazis and Other Scabs since 1905.”

Eventually, the neo-Confederates, who only had just over a dozen people at their rally, were forced to back away from the street and spent the rest of their rally huddled together in a circle, surrounded by a roughly equal number of Burlington cops. When one of their leaders left, several comrades broke off from the protest and chased him back to his car, while the police escorted him.

BACKGROUND ON ACTBAC

Since the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol building of South Carolina, ACTBAC has been campaigning and raising money to put up Confederate flags along Interstate 40. ACTBAC is a neo-Confederate hate group that organizes out of Snow Camp, NC, “wanting and willing to preserve our southern rights.”  The group’s cover photo on Facebook is a North Carolina Flag with the dates “May 20th 1775” (the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence) and “May 20th 1861” (the date that North Carolina joined the confederacy).  The group is modeled after the “Virginia Flaggers,” a group with similar aims and means in VA, which is tied to the League of the South (who itself is staffed by Matthew Heimbach and has ties to open Neo-Nazi organizations).

“WELL-MEANING LIBERALS” WEARING SAFETY PINS

Meanwhile, another crowd of people stayed in the “protest zone” that the police set up and, for the most part, stood by and watched.  Several, however, came over to our group and urged us not to be so mean to the white racists.  One white guy, who said that he spoke for both the NAAACP and Alamance Pride, said that he could have made some phone calls and gotten a thousand people to come out, but that he “didn’t want to give them the time of day.”

Several folks in our line responded that if you ignore white supremacist groups, you normalize their behavior and empower them to grow. “Ignoring fascists never words,” they said.  Others then came over and tried to start a chant “love trumps hate” and “they go low, we go high” (from the Hillary Clinton campaign). When that didn’t work, several crossed the police line to try to “reconcile” with the neo-Confederates and spent much of the rest of morning essentially joining their rally.

In an illustration of how racists get emboldened when you try to dialogue with them, Garry Williamson, the “founder and organizer” of ACTBAC, went to the “protest zone” and started pontificating to those gathered there while most of them silently listened. Two of us went over and stood as close to him as possible on either side to try to make him a little less comfortable.

Immediately, four or five of these “well-meaning liberals” got in our faces and, for the fist time all day, got angry. They asked if we had served in the military, and told us that “he has a right to his opinion.” All of them were wearing safety pins, a fad that has gotten popular with white liberals since Donald Trump got elected to signal that they are “allies” of oppressed communities.  “Do you see this safety pin?” one of them yelled. “Do you know what this means? This means that I am a safe person. This means that this is a safe space. This means that this is a safe space for him.” Meanwhile, Williamson quietly crept back to the neo-Confederate side of the municipal steps, having lost his audience.

NEXT STEPS – LEXINGTON, VA ON JAN 14th

ACTBAC, and several of their sibling organizations in other North Carolina counties (e.g. “Orange County Taking Back Orange County”) will be heading north, to Lexington, VA, to team up with the “Virginia Flaggers” for a rally on January 14th to observe “Lee Jackson Day” (commemorating Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson). Meanwhile, Triangle IWW, along with our Fellow Workers in the union throughout the country, will continue to organize, to make connections with people who do not want these racists to represent their communities, to organize the working class to fight back against the capitalist class and their white supremacist patsies, and to take action to shut them down. There is also the upcoming mobilization to shut down the KKK on December 3rd happening in NC.

Email me at [email protected] or get in touch with us on Facebook if you’d like to get involved, or find one of our members at the next anti-racist action coming to a barricade near you! Fascists, Klansmen, Neo-Confederates, and other white supremacists are scabs and enemies of the working class! An injury to one is an injury to all!  Fuck white supremacy!