Responding to a group that’s trying to raise a giant Confederate flag in Orange County, county commissioners Tuesday unanimously voted to move forward with plans to amend the county’s land use rules to restrict the size and height of flags.
Commissioners voted after hearing comments from residents, all of whom spoke in favor of the amendments – and against the Confederate flag.
“This flag has nothing to do with Southern culture or heritage – and frankly, Southern culture deserves better than it,” said Maya Little, a resident of Carrboro and a PhD student at UNC. “The flag, historically and today, serves to intimidate and threaten people of color, and to promote an ahistorical understanding of the Civil War, of Jim Crow, (and) of the last 150 years of our history, rather than to create real bonds within this community.”
The call to action from residents came in response to the possibility of massive Confederate flags being raised along U.S. 70 in Hillsborough and NC-54 outside of Chapel Hill. It’s part of a statewide push to raise giant Confederate flags in every county in the state; organizations involved include the North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Alamance County Taking Back Alamance (ACTBAC), a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified identified as a neo-Confederate hate group.
ACTBAC is also considering locations on Interstates 40 and 85.
Grace Barger of Hillsborough, a former Cedar Ridge High School student, also spoke at the meeting. She said during her time as a member of Cedar Ridge’s Hate-Free Schools Coalition, ACTBAC attempted to intimidate the group during their efforts to ban the Confederate flag from the Orange County Schools dress code.
“They have made it clear that putting up this flag in rural Orange County is a direct act of retaliation to our work from last year and other progress towards equity in Orange County,” Barger said.
The First Amendment prohibits commissioners from banning the Confederate flag outright, even if they wanted to do so. But local governments are allowed to enact “time, place, and manner” restrictions governing the size and height of flags, provided those restrictions are “reasonable” and enforced neutrally without regard to content.
Commissioner Renee Price said the amendment would be a step in the right direction.
“I think that the public should understand…as we’ve heard from many of you who’ve had the courage to come up here and speak, that the Confederate flag is offensive,” Price said. “As much as people try to say that it is their heritage, it is offensive to many people.”
The county’s planning board will take the next step, meeting in April to develop specific language for an amendment. Commissioners will then hold a public hearing, likely on May 1, after which they’ll vote on whether to adopt the change.
How is this even legal?
The Board of Commissioners are responding to leftists that have no respect for the First Amendment. Furthermore, many board members have made anti[-Confederate Flag statements, so this amendment is NOT content neutral because they are doing this specifically to limit the display of the Confederate Flag. Answer-NO it not legal. If they enact the change they will be sued in Federal Court and have to pay for some of these flags with taxpayer dollars.
Wow, UNC apparently does a terrible job of teaching history. The student, Maya Little, seems to know, as her name implies, little about history. It’s also silly that the article criticizes one group, ACTBAC, by sourcing a known hate group, the SPLC. Very disturbing.
It’s also sad to see that some commissioners, like me. Price, fail to understand that it’s government’s job to protect people’s rights, not tell them what to think.
“This flag has nothing to do with Southern culture or heritage – and frankly, Southern culture deserves better than it,” said Maya Little, a resident of Carrboro and a PhD student at UNC. “The flag, historically and today, serves to intimidate and threaten people of color, and to promote an ahistorical understanding of the Civil War, of Jim Crow, (and) of the last 150 years of our history, rather than to create real bonds within this community.”
Really Maya? Might wanna check this out and see just how little understanding YOU have:
http://southernfriedcommonsense.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-epic-failure-of-hate-true-faces-of.html