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Watch the Exact Moment South Carolina Finally Lowered the Confederate Flag

Mother Jones

In a short, historic ceremony on Friday morning, the Confederate battle flag was finally lowered and removed from South Carolina’s statehouse grounds, three weeks after nine black parishioners were murdered at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. The removal comes more than 50 years after the state first raised the battle flag to protest the civil rights movement.

The removal of the flag, which quickly emerged as a national issue following last month’s massacre, was met largely with praise during Friday’s brief ceremony, where chants of “take it down” could be heard, though protestors were also present.

On Thursday, Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill into law calling for the flag’s removal.

“Twenty-two days ago, I didn’t know that I would ever be able to say this again, but today, I am very proud to say that it is a great day in South Carolina,” she said during the bill’s signing ceremony, where family members of the people killed in Charleston were in attendance.

South Carolina’s House of Representatives voted to take it down on Thursday by a 94-20 vote.

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Watch the Exact Moment South Carolina Finally Lowered the Confederate Flag

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Bree Newsome Explains Why She Tore Down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina

Mother Jones

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On Monday afternoon, Bree Newsome, the woman who scaled the flagpole at the South Carolina statehouse on Saturday and took down the Confederate flag, made her first public comments since her arrest, which were published on the progressive website Blue Nation Review. She detailed her recent history of activism and described her motivation:

The night of the Charleston Massacre, I had a crisis of faith. The people who gathered for Bible study in Emmanuel AME Church that night—Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson and Rev. Clementa Pinckney (rest in peace)—were only doing what Christians are called to do when anyone knocks on the door of the church: invite them into fellowship and worship.

The day after the massacre I was asked what the next step was and I said I didn’t know. We’ve been here before and here we are again: black people slain simply for being black; an attack on the black church as a place of spiritual refuge and community organization.
I refuse to be ruled by fear. How can America be free and be ruled by fear? How can anyone be?

So, earlier this week I gathered with a small group of concerned citizens, both black and white, who represented various walks of life, spiritual beliefs, gender identities and sexual orientations. Like millions of others in America and around the world, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and President Barack Obama, we felt (and still feel) that the confederate battle flag in South Carolina, hung in 1962 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, must come down. (Of course, we are not the first to demand the flag’s removal. Civil rights groups in South Carolina and nationwide have been calling for the flag’s removal since the moment it was raised, and I acknowledge their efforts in working to remove the flag over the years via the legislative process.)

We discussed it and decided to remove the flag immediately, both as an act of civil disobedience and as a demonstration of the power people have when we work together.

Explaining why she worked together with fellow activist James Ian Tyson, she continued:

Achieving this would require many roles, including someone who must volunteer to scale the pole and remove the flag. It was decided that this role should go to a black woman and that a white man should be the one to help her over the fence as a sign that our alliance transcended both racial and gender divides. We made this decision because for us, this is not simply about a flag, but rather it is about abolishing the spirit of hatred and oppression in all its forms.

Read Newsome’s whole statement here.

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Bree Newsome Explains Why She Tore Down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina

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Here’s How Fast Politicians Are Now Fleeing From the Confederate Flag

Mother Jones

UPDATE 6/23/15, 3:25 p.m. ET : An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the company would pull all Confederate flag merchandise.

Within a week of the murders of nine black church congregants in Charleston, South Carolina, southern politicians and GOP presidential hopefuls have been pressured to address the continued flying of the Confederate flag. Previously justified as a symbol of Southern pride and history, the flag—and all its racist baggage—has become more difficult for prominent supporters to defend. This became increasingly clear over the weekend when a website apparently belonging to suspected shooter Dylann Roof emerged, featuring a racist screed and photos of Roof posing with white supremacist insignias and a Confederate flag license plate.

Right after the murders, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “It’s him, not the flag,” but by Monday afternoon, flanked by a bipartisan group at a news conference, she announced her support for the flag’s removal from state Capitol grounds. Standing next to her was Sen. Lindsey Graham, another former flag supporter. Since then it has been like Dixieland dominos, with conservative politicians, southern state leaders of all stripes, and corporations including Walmart coming forward to support the flag’s removal.

The shifting tide has been accompanied by some telling statements:

South Carolina State Rep. Norman D. Brannon

The day after the murders, Republican South Carolina State Rep. Norman “Doug” Brannon, a former Confederate flag supporter, announced plans to sponsor legislation that would have the flag removed from the state Capitol grounds. Brannon was close friends with state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims in the church attack, which catalyzed his move to abandon the flag. “What lit a fire under this was the tragic death of my friend and his eight parishioners,” he told the New York Times last week. “It took my buddy’s death to get me to do this. I feel ashamed of myself.”

Mississippi’s Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn

Gunn was one of the first to speak out after Haley’s announcement. He took to Facebook, where he left the following message:
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We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us. As a Christian, I believe our state’s…

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

On Friday, Graham defended the south’s affinity for the Confederate flag, saying it is “part of who we are,” but by Monday he was standing with Haley opposing it. “After the tragic, hate-filled shooting in Charleston, it is only appropriate that we deal once and for all with the issue of the flag,” the senator and presidential hopeful said in a statement following his appearance behind Haley. “I hope that, by removing the flag, we can take another step toward healing and recognition—and a sign that South Carolina is moving forward.” While Graham wants to remove the flag from the Capitol grounds, that doesn’t mean he is totally against its use. In a tweet Monday, he indicated it should still be flown and not completely eliminated.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

Taking to social media, the senator waited until Monday before releasing a statement on the Confederate battle flag:

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe

On Tuesday, Gov. McAuliffe took steps to ban the Confederate flag from state license plates. “Although the battle flag is not flown here on Capitol Square, it has been the subject of considerable controversy, and it divides many of our people. Even its display on state issued license tags is, in my view, unnecessarily divisive and hurtful to too many of our people,” McAuliffe said in a statement. Prohibiting the flag on license plates falls in line with a a recent US Supreme Court ruling that gives states the authority to restrict certain plate designs.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

Over the weekend, Walker spoke at the Road to Majority 2015 convention, where he told the room of religious conservatives that he denounced the Charleston massacre. While he was quick to call the shooting a “racist” and “evil” act, he was uncharacteristically reticent about the Confederate flag. Walker said he predicted South Carolina would have some “good healthy debate” about the topic, but that it should be contained to “South Carolina among officials at the state level.” Following Haley’s announcement and the other GOP candidates backing her decision, Walker has discovered his opposition to the Confederate flag, tweeting:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich

The potential presidential hopeful also took to Twitter to express his support for Haley:

GOP Presidential Nominee Hopeful Ben Carson

The retired neurosurgeon will not say if the flag should stay or go, noting that all these statement supporting the removal of the flag lack substance and action and ultimately will not fix or erase our nation’s race issues. “So often as a society we deal with the symptoms without dealing with the disease and we think we’ve done something,” Carson said in a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam

Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee has lifted a page from McAuliffe’s book, saying he supports the removal of the flag from specialty license tags. (In 2012, he signed a bill allowing the Confederate flag to go on motorcycles.)

Democratic Presidential Nominee Candidate Hillary Clinton

CNN has reported that Clinton will be giving a speech on Tuesday at Christ the King Church outside of Ferguson, Missouri, where she plans to support the removal of the Confederate flag but also stress that these actions alone are not a solution to our nation’s racial tensions.

There are others who will not be moved:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

It’s unclear what Huckabee’s thoughts on the flag are, but he is clear about his views on God. Over the weekend he said he did not believe the question of the flag was one for presidential candidates. But during a Fox News appearance on Monday, he said, “I don’t think the president of the United States needs to be picking the symbols that fly on the state Capitol grounds.” He continued “I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race. Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation—it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, a day after the South Carolina governor’s call for action, Barbour said he is “not offended at all” by the Confederate flag. This, however, isn’t surprising. In 2011 he came under criticism when he refused to condemn a proposed state license plate that honored a Confederate general and early Klu Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not all in Barbour’s family, however, are for the flag. In a sign of a hopeful and eventual changing of the guard, Barbour’s nephew Henry took to Twitter expressing the need for change.

Of course, South Carolina Gov. Haley cannot alone call for the flag’s removal. As politicians and companies across the nation weigh in on the topic, the big question is how local leaders will respond. The Post and Courier reached out to legislators across the state to see where they stand on the flag’s removal. As of 2 p.m. EST, 51 state House representatives and 21 state senators said they believed it should be removed.

Even corporations are starting to jettison the controversial symbol from inventory. “We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer,” Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said in an emailed statement to USA Today. “We have taken steps to remove all items promoting the confederate flag from our assortment—whether in our stores or on our web site.” While Sears Holdings, which runs K-Mart and Sears, does not currently sell Confederate flag merchandise in its brick-and-mortar stores, it sells this type of merchandise online through a third-party vendor, and recently announced that it plans to discontinue these sales. Ebay followed suit, saying it would ban the listings of Confederate flags or any related items with images of the flag.

But one retailer is profiting from attacks on the flag. Amazon reports its sales of Confederate flag memorabilia have increased by 2,300 percent.

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Here’s How Fast Politicians Are Now Fleeing From the Confederate Flag

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Yep, Obama Said the N-Word. Here Are the Other Candid Things He Said.

Mother Jones

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Appearing on comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast on Friday, President Obama shared his views on gun violence and racism in America—two topics that have been thrust to the forefront of a national conversation following the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina last week. The interview, which was posted online today, featured a number of candid moments for the president, including a rare moment in which he said “nigger” to underscore the reality that the country’s enduring legacy of racism is far from over.

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” Obama said. “We are not cured of it and it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination.”

On the issue of gun violence, he expressed his continued frustration with how little legislative action has been taken on gun control.

“I have done this way too often,” he said. “During the course of my presidency, it feels as if a couple times a year, I end up having to speak to the country and to speak to a particular community about a devastating loss. The grieving that the country feels is real, the sympathy, the prioritizing, the comforting of the families, all that’s important. But I think part of the point that I wanted to make was that it’s not enough just to feel bad. There are actions that could be taken to make events like this less likely. And one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic, common sense gun safety laws—that by the way, the majority of gun owners support.”

In his remarks shortly after Dylann Storm, the suspected gunman who killed nine people in the Charleston church, was captured Thursday, the president said that most other advanced countries don’t see the kind of mass killings that have become all too familiar in America. He reiterated this point to Maron on Friday, telling him gun violence is “unique to our country.”

Listen to the incredible hour-long interview here.

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Yep, Obama Said the N-Word. Here Are the Other Candid Things He Said.

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It’s Long Past Time For South Carolina to Stop Flying the Confederate Flag

Mother Jones

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As I’m sure everyone knows by now, flying the the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state house is hardly a longtime South Carolina tradition. In fact, it’s only been up since 1961. I was googling around on a different but related subject and happened to come across this account of how it happened. It’s written by Brett Bursey and based mainly on the recollections of Daniel Hollis. In 1959 President Eisenhower commissioned a national Civil War Centennial, and Hollis was named a member of South Carolina’s commission to plan the state’s observance of the 100th anniversary of the War Between the States.

Here’s his recollection:

Hollis remembers the day the Confederate flag was hoisted over the State House to commemorate the war. The centennial kicked off on April 11, 1961, with a re-creation of the firing on Fort Sumter. The flag went up for the opening celebrations.

“The flag is being flown this week at the request of Aiken Rep. John A. May,” reported The State on April 12. May didn’t introduce his resolution until the next legislative session. By the time the resolution passed on March 16, 1962, the flag had been flying for nearly a year. (This explains why the flag is often erroneously reported to have gone up in 1962).

“May told us he was going to introduce a resolution to fly the flag for a year from the capitol. I was against the flag going up,” Hollis said, “but I kept quiet and went along. I didn’t want to get into it with the UDC United Daughters of the Confederacy girls.” The resolution that passed didn’t include a time for the flag to come down and, therefore, “it just stayed up,” Hollis said. “Nobody raised a question.”

….The day the flag went up, headlines in the local newspapers were full of unrest. Besides the centennial controversy, the news that week included:

Sen. Marrion Gressette, the head of the State Segregation Committee, created in 1951 to recommend measures to maintain segregation, was supporting a resolution condemning former North Carolina Gov. Frank Graham, who had spoken at Winthrop College defending the civil rights movement and calling for integration.
Thurmond was fighting in Congress to keep federal funding for segregated schools. Political sentiment against school integration was so strong that state politicians vowed to stop all funding to public schools rather than integrate.
The Freedom Ride with integrated bus loads of civil rights workers was on the road, and there were reports of violence along the route.
The major story of the week was Kennedy’s executive order to end segregation in work places that do business with the government. The forced integration of South Carolina’s mills outraged politicians and editorial writers.

Hoisting the Confederate flag over the State House didn’t generate any controversy at the time. Perhaps those most offended by it were too busy fighting real-life battles to expend any energy on symbolic ones.

So the flag went up partly to commemorate the Civil War and partly as a fairly safe way to protest against the civil rights movement. In either case, it’s hardly a legacy issue that strikes at the honor of the Palmetto State. It was originally intended to stay up for only a year, and South Carolinians would do well to remember that. The year is long since up. Take it down.

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It’s Long Past Time For South Carolina to Stop Flying the Confederate Flag

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Families of Charleston Shooting Victims: "We Forgive You"

Mother Jones

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As Dylann Roof, the gunman accused of killing nine people inside a church in Charleston, South Carolina, appeared in court on Friday to formally hear the charges against him, representatives of the victims’ families came forward to deliver a powerful message of forgiveness.

“You took something very precious away from me,” a family representative for Ethel Lance, the 70-year-old grandmother who died in Wednesday’s massacre, told Roof on behalf of Lance’s loved ones. “I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but I forgive you.”

Some of the victims’ family members also invited Roof, who attended his bond hearing through a video conference, to join them in bible service to repent and to “change your ways no matter what happened to you.”

Felicia Sanders, who survived the shooting by pretending to be dead, also spoke about losing her son in the attack. “Tywanza was my hero….May God have mercy on you.” Another family member, Bethane Middleton-Brown, whose sister was killed on Wednesday, told Roof, “For me, I’m a work in progress and I acknowledge that I’m very angry. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive. I pray God on your soul.”

On Thursday, Chris Singleton, the son of victim Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, responded to the tragedy by expressing gratitude for those who reached out to him since his mother’s murder.

“Love is always stronger than hate, so if we just love the way my mom would, then the hate won’t be anywhere close to where love is,” Singleton said. “We’ve come together as a community to try to get past these things. A tragedy has happened, but life is going to go on and things are going to get better.”

“This church is such a family,” he continued. “‘ve been going there since sixth grade when I moved here. Feels like they’re all older than me, but it’s like I’m everybody’s grandson.”

Roof, who appeared emotioneless during the hearing, was charged with nine counts of murder. His bond is set at $1 million.

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Families of Charleston Shooting Victims: "We Forgive You"

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Fox News Host Sees No Racial Factor in South Carolina Killing

Mother Jones

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld is not racist. How not racist is Greg Gutfeld? Very not racist! You’re a racist. (You’re a racist.) But Gutfield doesn’t even see race. What’s race? A race? Are we running a race? The word “race” for Greg Gutfeld only has one definition: a competition of speed.

White cop guns down unarmed black man in cold blood: a thing that happens unbelievably often in the United States. Almost always the cop gets to walk away scot-free. But this time the cop is actually charged with murder! Not because South Carolina is so evolved (haha), but because a video emerges that puts on display the undeniable reality of the cop’s crime.

The Fox News chyron even calls it straight: “Video shows white police officer shooting black man in back.” But apparently the Fox News chyron is less evolved than Fox News host Greg Gutfeld. Because Greg Gutfeld saw something else:

“I didn’t see a black man killed by a white cop. I saw a man shoot another man in the back.”

If Greg Gutfeld were at Wounded Knee, he’d say he didn’t see white soldiers massacring Native-Americans.

If he were at Stonewall, he’d say he didn’t see straight cops beating gay men.

And if he were in Pleasantville, he’d say he never saw color.

(via TPM)

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Fox News Host Sees No Racial Factor in South Carolina Killing

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Charts: How Minority Voters Get Blocked at the Ballot Box

Mother Jones

Read more: Why do precincts with more minority voters often have longer lines and fewer voting machines?

The recent wave of Republican-backed photo ID laws and restrictions on early and same-day voting have made it harder for people to head to the polls. But that’s not the only obstacle to casting a ballot in many precincts. On Election Day two years ago, some voters waited as long as five hours at their polling places. Long lines can depress voter turnout since many voters undoubtedly give up and leave without voting. According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, in 2012 minority voters, on average, waited longer to vote than white voters did. Nationwide, black voters waited about twice as long as whites.

The waits were especially long in areas with a high proportion of minority voters, according to a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice. In Florida, Maryland, and South Carolina, which experienced some of the longest voting delays in 2012, precincts with greater populations of black and Latino voters tended to have significantly fewer voting machines and poll workers than whiter precincts. While unexpected voter turnout may have contributed to bottlenecks at polling places, the report’s authors conclude that local officials’ neglect and failure to prepare played a key, yet overlooked, role.

Take Florida, which experienced the longest voting delays in the country in 2012. In the 10 Florida precincts with the longest delays (which the Brennan Center measured using poll closing times) almost 70 percent of voters were Latino or black. (Most were in Miami-Dade County, home to some of the nation’s largest Latino communities.) Statewide, Latino and black voters make up about 30 percent of the population.

Additionally, the 10 Florida precincts with the worst delays also faced serious shortages of voting machines and poll workers. Florida, which has no requirements for the amount of voting resources allotted to each precinct, had an exceptionally high ratio of voters to machines and voters to poll workers compared with other states.

Similarly, in South Carolina, the 10 precincts that saw the longest wait times in 2012 were all in Richland County, where African Americans make up nearly half of the population. Out of the more than 30,000 registered voters in those precincts, 63 percent were African American, more than double the statewide rate.

Those precincts also had significantly fewer voting machines and poll workers, with almost double the number of registered voters per machine or poll worker than the statewide average. By law, the state requires of no more than one voting machine for every 250 voters, a limit which was introduced as part of the Voting Rights Act.

The authors of the Brennan Center report note that Maryland does not provide data on poll workers or demographic data on its registered voters. But there are still notable racial gaps in the available data. All of the 10 precincts which had the highest number of registered voters per machine in 2012 were located in affluent, predominantly African American Prince George’s County. The researchers found that P.G. County had the highest number of precincts which violated the state’s standard for machine allocation, with an average of 230 registered voters per machine.

As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer points out, the findings in Prince George’s County indicate that the uneven distribution of voting resources on Election Day is not necessarily about poor versus rich precincts, but rather an indication of a racial gap in how easy it is for Americans to exercise their right to vote.

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Charts: How Minority Voters Get Blocked at the Ballot Box

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Marines with Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF), Headquarters & Headquarters Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, conduct monthly fuel burn training aboard Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, May 16, 2014. ARFF conducts monthly fuel burns to ensure all Marines are competent in their occupational specialty and able to be called upon at a moments notice. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Aneshea S. Yee/Released)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 21, 2014

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