The OC Voice is a portion of the OC Report newsletter where local residents may have a platform to talk about local issues they care about.
Anna Richards is the president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.
As the global surge in racist white supremacist violence spreads, our communities must be vigilant to protect against someone being killed here.
The New York Times recently reported that “In North America, the ideologies of older white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan have mixed with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment and the fresh-faced fascism of the ‘alt right’ to give rise to a more lethal terror.”
So what makes us think it cannot happen here? Every week around the world, white supremacists carry out murderous mayhem, like the recent horrific mass shootings in New Zealand.
Recently here in Chapel Hill, armed white supremacists strolled our campus, harkening back to when hooded Ku Klux Klan knights rode horses through Chapel Hill's black neighborhoods as a form of intimidation.
As president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), I have grave concerns over the failure of UNC Police to enforce the law prohibiting firearms on educational campuses by standing by as gun-toting white supremacists strolled freely about UNC’s campus.
During several campus protests led by student anti-racists since the murderous 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., UNC Police have treated the student demonstrators as the enemy.
In fact, UNC Police went undercover to spy on students, deployed physical force, smoke bombs and pepper fog during demonstrations. Last fall, canned goods collected during a protester-led canned food drive were confiscated by campus police due to their potential use as weapons. Again, the message is clear: anti-racists with canned vegetables equal danger; white supremacists carrying guns do not.
