UNC Silent Sam protesters: 'Abolish...the Chancellor, the President, & the police'

One of the groups organizing protests against the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Silent Sam Confederate statue tweeted Friday in support of “abolish[ing] the Board, the Chancellor, the President & the Police.”

The tweet from “Take Action Chapel Hill” came after the UNC Board of Governors rejected a $5 million plan to house Silent Sam on campus and asked the Board of Trustees to draw up another plan to house the Confederate statue on campus, according to the Charlotte News & Observer.

“We will not rest until UNC is no longer controlled by a small group of authoritarian white supremacists w[ith] the power to criminalize & enact violence against us w[ith] impunity, and who actively work to harm Black people,” Take Action Chapel Hill stated. “Abolish the Board (of Governors), the Chancellor, the President & the Police.”

[RELATED: UNC faculty threaten not to teach over Confed statue]

Various UNC students, teaching assistants, and faculty liked and retweeted the statement against police.

Take Action Chapel Hill formed in August “as a support system for anti-racist activists facing charges related to protests against white supremacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” according to the group’s website.

It also set up an “Anti-Racist Activist Fund,” which gives legal help and funds to “current and future defendants in the struggle against white supremacy in Chapel Hill and surrounding areas,” spending any leftover money on “anti-racist activism.”

In addition, Take Action Chapel Hill organizes “against Silent Sam” and “against all forms of oppression in our community and around the world.” 

The group has also made negative comments about police.

“[T]he police and the state are the most violent white nationalists of all!” stated an early December tweet.

[RELATED: Student protesters tear down Confederate statue at UNC]

“UNC-Chapel Hill continues advancing the false narrative that Silent Sam protesters are outside agitators. Actual UNC students (us included) have repeatedly and publicly denounced this lie,” an October tweet states. “The real outside agitators are the police who have been invited to our campus to harm us.”

In another December tweet, the group called police and other law enforcement “absolutely the worst perpetrators of murder, violence, and hate crimes against the same marginalized groups the far right targets.”

In addition to the BOG’s decision on Silent Sam, the board approved a plan for the governance committee to review existing policies surrounding student, faculty, and staff conduct and propose changes that “set clear expectations” for conduct and “prescribe minimum sanctions” including suspension or expulsion for anyone who engages in unlawful activity, according to a Twitter post by North Carolina Policy Watch investigative reporter Joe Killian. 

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