Texas Activists’ March for History Boosted by Make It Right Project Posters

On August 10-12, Texas activists took part in the “March for History,” an effort “to call attention to the real, and often untold, story of the Civil War in the Lone Star State.” The 20-mile pilgrimage stretched between the cities of Comfort and Fredericksburg, and included presentations by local historians and scholars, as well as stops at historical landmarks along the way. Organizers noted the march honored “German Texans who faced death en route to Mexico rather than serve the Confederacy.”

Led by De-Confederate Austin, the three-day march was supported by Texas Freedom Network and the Make It Right Project.

“De-Confederate Austin is part of a growing national network calling for historical accuracy and moral clarity about the racial history of the United States, especially around the Civil War. Since you can’t honor someone for doing something that you know is wrong, we can’t honor people for Confederate service while also understanding that the Confederacy’s cause was slavery and that the cause was wicked: the monuments obscure historical and moral reality. And they are a slap in the face to Americans who have struggled for freedom,” Bryan Register, the lead organizer of De-Confederate Austin, wrote in a message.

“We’re marching shortly before the State Board of Education meets to reconsider our public schools’ social studies curriculum standards and a few months before the state Legislature seems likely to consider removing a dishonest neo-Confederate plaque from the Capitol building or, on the other hand, forbidding the removal of Confederate monuments anywhere in Texas. We hope that the event will show how Texans will stand for our history and our country’s moral aspirations.”

Below is a photograph of marchers along the route with posters provided by the Make It Right Project. For more on the event, click here.

Make It Right Project Responds to the North Carolina Historical Commission Vote to Keep Confederate Monuments Standing

New York—The Make It Right Project today responded to the North Carolina Historical Commission vote not to remove three Confederate monuments at the state capitol in Raleigh, deciding in agreement with a study panel’s recommendation. The vote was taken in response to a request from Democratic Governor Roy Cooper to move the monuments to the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site in Four Oaks. Commission members voted 10-1 to keep the statues where they are and to add historical context about slavery. The decision comes two days after a Confederate statue called “Silent Sam” was toppled by protesters at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“The only way to truly contextualize racist monuments and white supremacist statues is to take them down from their lofty positions of public reverence—particularly in centers of power such as the capitol grounds,” said Director of the Make It Right Project, Kali Holloway. “The Commission and study committee had an opportunity today to correct the historical record and help bring an end to the era of white supremacist Lost Cause mythmaking. Instead, they chose moral ambivalence and hostility to historical truth. The vote was yet another example of the frustrating institutional decisions that have led community outrage to boil over.”

“I’m disappointed by the Committee’s decision, but I’m not really surprised at all. It’s what I expected them to do—privileging politics and their own individual considerations over the good of the future of the state,” said William Sturkey, a history professor at UNC Chapel Hill. “In refusing to remove these tributes to the Confederacy, not only are they validating a white supremacist historical interpretation of the past, they’re also complicit in helping to continue normalizing white supremacy in ways that will help ensure that we remain so divided.”

Former Orange County Historical museum director Candace Midgett, who retired in 2017, added, “James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, has said that these statues were meant to create ‘legitimate garb for white supremacy,’ and queries why we would put up a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson—or, I would add, Silent Sam—in times of real suppression of civil rights of people of color in places like Raleigh, in places like Chapel Hill. There’s only one meaning to be extracted from that, and that is that these monuments are about touting white supremacy and intimidating people of color. That is why they were made and that’s what they continue to reflect where they stand. I believe the board of the university and the administration have this one chance to be on the right side of history and I’m hoping they find a way to take it.”
 

The Make It Right Project is dedicated to working with multiple groups—activists, artists, historians and media outlets—to remove Confederate monuments and develop post-removal protocols to tell the truth about history.

Activists Boosted by Make It Right Project Posters to Remove ‘Silent Sam’ Confederate Monument

The very first protests against “Silent Sam,” the Confederate monument that stands on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, happened in the days just after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. More than a century after industrialist Julian Carr used the statue’s dedication ceremony to praise Confederate soldiers for protecting the “welfare of the Anglo Saxon race,” students continue to demand the school remove the odious homage to those who fought for black enslavement.

The Make It Right Project has been working alongside, and in support of, those Chapel Hill activists who are tirelessly campaigning to take “Silent Sam” down. The collaboration is visible in posters, designed by Make It Right with input from the community, and placed by activists in venues near and on campus.

Check out pictures below.

 

 

 

Here’s the poster in case you’d like to share:

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Hours Before Trump Picked Him for Supreme Court, Kavanaugh Wrote Majority Opinion Against IMI Fellow’s Case

IMI Deep State project Fellow Jeff Morley got first-hand insight into the jurist philosophy of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh just hours before Trump nominated him. Kavanaugh issued a majority opinion from the D.C. Supreme Court of Appeals that exhibits his penchant for “unbridled executive branch power,” as Morley argues. Writing for The Intercept, Morley explains:

ON A MONDAY AFTERNOON, on July 9, the D.C. Court of Appeals handed down a 2-1 decision against me and in favor of the CIA in a long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. At 4:20 p.m., Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, filed a 14-page opinion with the clerk of the court in Washington. They ruled that the CIA had acted “reasonably” in responding to my request for certain ancient files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Appended to their decision was a 17-page dissent from their colleague Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson who strongly objected to their decision.

That evening, President Donald Trump announced to the world that Kavanaugh was his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. In his remarks at the White House event, Kavanaugh touted his “Female Relationship Resume” and declared, “My judicial philosophy is straightforward: A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.” …

Kavanaugh’s ruling in Morley v. CIA was of a piece with his record as an advocate of unbridled executive branch power. His view that a sitting president cannot be indicted, or even subpoenaed, is well known. Less known is his permissive treatment of the CIA. In my case, as in another key FOIA case from 2014, Kavanaugh ruled that the agency could not be held publicly accountable for its actions — even ones that occurred more than 50 years ago.

Read the rest at The Intercept.