Opposing the Confederate Flag Flying Racists at Stone Mountain
August 10, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a member of the Revolution Club, Atlanta:
On August 1, 2015, several hundred racists rallied in support of the Confederate Flag at Stone Mountain, several miles east of Atlanta. The organizers of the rally built for the event as part of a national call by a group that calls themselves the Confederate States of America (CSA) to “fly the Confederate flag.”
These AmeriKKKans have taken the name of the CSA, the Confederacy—the slave states that fought to preserve slavery in the Civil War. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the CSA as “A group that hopes to recreate the government that lost the Civil War, is linked to both militia leaders and militia-derived ideology. The South, according to the CSA, is ‘an occupied nation’…The CSA wants to repeal all Constitutional amendments beyond the first 10—meaning the citizenship of blacks, the right of women to vote and the federal income tax, among other things, would be withdrawn.”
The CSA called for this rally in the wake of the Charleston massacre where Dylann Roof, a devout-ideological racist, carried out the murder of nine African Americans attending a church Bible study. In the wake of the massacre, pictures of Roof holding the Confederate flag appeared throughout the media and suddenly politicians (despite their hypocrisy at being fine with the Confederate flag prior to this) and major corporations started calling for the removal of the Confederate flag; after much struggle, where all kinds of people, including many in government, stepped up to defend the Confederate flag, it was removed from several state capitols, including South Carolina.
No way the people were going to let these defenders of white supremacy go unopposed. The Revolution Club and Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN) called for people to go and stand up against and protest this ugly, racist Confederate gathering. Even a small group calling out these racists were able to break into the media and challenge the pro-Confederate BULLSHIT lie of “heritage not hate.” Video of the pro-confederates and militia members carrying assault rifles yelling at protestors taking on their ugly white supremacy can be seen all over the Internet. Coverage of the event included photos of people holding a large banner that said “STOP MURDER BY POLICE,” with dozens of photos of people killed by the cops.
In addition to the demonstration called by SMIN and Revolution Club, another grouping associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in Atlanta, entered the rally, burned a Confederate Flag, and called out white supremacy. Racist flag supporters have harassed some of these demonstrators since the rally, threats have been made against them and some of their home addresses have been posted on Facebook.
The recent removal of some Confederate flags from government buildings in the South was a concession to calm people’s outrage and resistance against the ongoing oppression of Black people, most especially concentrated in the epidemic of police murder. Think about what it says about AmeriKKKa that this fucking flag—which symbolizes SLAVERY—was still flying like this 150 years after the Civil War. The fact that it flew, and continues to fly, all over this country is one more damning indictment of how deeply the oppression of Black people is embedded in the whole system. And now you these rabid racists coming out, wailing at this blow to their “heritage” of slavery, oppression and the KKK. The rally at Stone Mountain was held to embolden and mobilize some of the most vicious elements in this country to mobilize and defend white supremacy.
Stone Mountain is in all respects a monument to and celebration of the Confederacy. The main roads leading into the park are adorned with the names of Confederate generals; the main road is General Robert E. Lee Drive. The face of the mountain is like a Mount Rushmore to the Confederacy with massive carved images of “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. The original conception of the memorial that never came to fruition featured Robert E. Lee leading KKK members across the mountain summit.
The history of Stone Mountain and the Ku-Klux-Klan are inseparable. In 1915 on Thanksgiving Day, a minister named William Simmons, inspired by D.W. Griffith’s racist film Birth of a Nation, rebirthed the KKK on top of Stone Mountain. The group of about 16 burned crosses on top of the mountain and reignited the modern KKK, which gained about five million supporters by 1920 and brought lynching and terror to Black people in the South. It was no mistake that this rally was held at Stone Mountain—the symbolism was intentional and the intent was real.
Supporters of the Confederate flag are calling for another rally at Stone Mountain later this month and it is very important that many, many more people come out this time to oppose these forces. Some people say we shouldn’t mobilize opposition to these groups, claiming that this only gives them legitimacy. But this is BULLSHIT! The United States was founded on white supremacy. It continues to live and breathe today with the unrelenting murder of Black people by the police and the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration. It continues to live in the poisonous ideology that feeds killers like Dylann Roof. The Confederate flag rally viscerally represents the core on which this country was founded. And it is very important for the people to be out there opposing and exposing this ugly shit.
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