Final Straw: Taking Down Racist Monuments and Growing New Worlds

Long running anarchist radio and podcast show The Final Straw brings us two interviews around the struggle to topple the Silent Sam statue in North Carolina.

This week on TFSR, we’re featuring two audios from affiliates of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Maya Little & Dwayne Dixon talking about resisting neo-Confederate monuments in the so-called U.S. south, in particular the statue called “Silent Sam” that was toppled August 20th, 2018.

Maya Little

First, we’ll hear graduate student worker and anti-racist activist Maya Little speak about their research into the racist history of the constructed landscape and neo-confederate symbols in and around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. Maya also speaks about the recent resistance to the the specific statue called Silent Sam at UNC Chapel Hill and the far right and cop repression faced by students and anti-racist activists to push for and eventually enact it’s removal. Maya can be found on twitter at @readkropotkin and contributes writing to the project @CuddlePotMag. Within a few days of the broadcast, we hope to have links to the pictures spoken about in Maya’s presentation and to integrate those into the youtube post of this episode.

Dwayne Dixon

Then, Dwayne Dixon, an adjunct professor of cultural anthropology at UNC and an anti-racist activist talks about personal experiences of coming up in a white, military family in the U.S., experiences of struggle against white supremacists and their symbols in the so-called US south in recent years and the inspirational strength of those struggles interlacing and expanding into ecological defense work, disaster response and the building of autonomous, anti-capitalist community infrastructures. Dwayne is also involved in the community defense group, Piedmont Redstrings, as well as Take Action Chapel Hill and @DefendUNC on twitter.

If you listened on the radio, you can find a longer version of the show (including Sean Swain’s segment and a few announcements) as a podcast up at our website and various streaming platforms.