A North Carolina appeals court ruled Tuesday that local leaders who refused calls to remove a Confederate monument from outside a county courthouse acted in a constitutional manner and kept in place the statue at its longtime location in accordance with state law.
The three-judge panel unanimously upheld a trial court judge’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30 foot (9.1 meter)-tall statue, which features a Confederate infantryman perched at the top. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued the county and its leaders in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take the statue down.
Confederate monuments in North Carolina, as elsewhere nationwide, were a frequent focal point for racial inequality protests in the late 2010s, and particularly in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. North Carolina legislators enacted a law in 2015 that limits when an “object of remembrance” such as a military monument can be relocated.
Or you could “borrow” a big ol’ dump truck from a construction site (there are several construction sites in Alamance). If I did this I would back into the statue base to knock it over without destroying the engine, to make it easier to get away. I’m betting that at some of these sites, they might leave the keys in the truck just in case someone forgets theirs.
Eh. A missing or damaged dump truck is gonna get noticed, also back in 2010 or so there was a massive crime wave that chopped construction vehicles so security remains mostly for anyone that had the big stuff.
Even if the keys are in there most big trucks have gps and geofenced alerts.