Pittsboro, NC – Here’s Chatham County Commissioner Mike Dasher’s statement on the courthouse monument, following the events of Saturday, September 28:
“Just want to clear up any confusion over the monument, the recent protests, and how this all plays out.
I’ve seen and heard that if the Commissioners leave the monument alone, then these out-of-county groups will stop coming here raising confederate flags and let us get back to normal.
Folks – the deal’s gone down and what’s done is done. There is not a discussion or negotiation left to be had, unless you’re the UDC and you want to talk thru the particulars of how/when/ where you’re moving it to.
Perhaps instead of planning rallies and finding land for flags, these people could’ve been working thru logistics and finding and preparing land for the monument.
Barring any legal challenge, there is zero chance that the Board of Commissioners revisits this issue. Zero.
So all you’re doing is hurting local people and businesses, and convincing more and more people that monuments and flags glorifying the confederacy are horribly out of place in 2019 Chatham County.
Of course, people are free to express their anger over that, provided they do it peacefully and legally.
But to what end? Whatever your cause is, you’re not furthering it. Chatham County’s moving on. You should too.”
This brings to mind an old vaudeville joke: I’ll meet you halfway. You apologize, and I’ll accept.
Commissioner Dasher: whether you like it or not, you were given a bunch of possible options to address this issue. Leaving the statue up and putting something else nearby that addressed slavery or lynching more directly were compromises that were bandied about that a remarkable number of people would have gone along with. But you decided on what you did, along with a take-it-or-leave it date for getting it all over with.
You opened this hornet’s nest and now your response is for anybody who disagrees with you to help find a way to make “your” solution work? Who died and left you boss?
Folks, this is how the Democrat party acts when, absent a four year interregnum, they run everything here since Reconstruction. They seem to regard power as some sort of entitlement. If you get in the way of that, it isn’t disagreement. It’s “hate” and “racism”.
It would take six months in a state of sensory deprivation to be out in this County as an elected official and not realize that there were more people riled up about this than the usual opposition. But when you are entitled to power, if your idea of “moving on” requires a judicious application of unbridled arrogance, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, right?
I agree with Commissioner Dasher’s prognosis: there is zero chance that the Board will revisit this issue. The land of the open mind has snapped shut and will stay that way for the duration. Yeah, yeah, there are some people upset at what we did, but we know better what’s good for all of us.
Three of these people are up for election in 2020. Do you want a government that listens to everybody, or a government that only listens to those who agree with them already?
It’s your choice, folks.