A recent story on Charlie Creighton (“Creighton a cheerleader for Edenton”) contains a potentially injurious misstatement of facts concerning recent protest activities at Edenton’s Confederate monument.
The offending paragraphs are these:
“I know Edenton Town Manager Corey Gooden very well, and I tell him, ‘Corey, what in the world? How did you let this happen?’ He said they tried hard not to let it happen but couldn’t do anything.
“He said both sides refused to stop the protests during the recent Easels on the Green event despite 800 guests coming to participate,” Creighton continued. “All those people come to town, and they see that bunch of mess downtown. Those kinds of things are pitiful.”
There is enough misinformation floating around concerning these demonstrations without stories in the local papers adding to the supply.
I can’t speak to what might have happened between the town and our counter-protesters, but I would like to inform your readers that Edenton Town Manager Gooden did not reach out to the Move the Monument Coalition to ask us to stand down the weekend of the Easels on the Green event. A protest permit was routinely submitted and was routinely granted, with no discussion whatsoever. “Refused to stop ...” sounds like we were asked to not demonstrate that particular weekend, and that we refused that request. That absolutely did not happen.
Perhaps Mr. Gooden assumed that our answer would be “no,” so he didn’t bother to ask. We have made it clear to town leaders that although we might be willing to stand down on a few rare occasions per year, as we have done in the past, we will not do so for every downtown event because we’d be canceling our protest every other weekend. Would we have called off our demonstration that weekend if asked to do so? We’ll never know.
The usual process is that we submit permit requests for each weekend, and the permits are either granted or denied. There is no discussion or negotiation between us and the town manager. I will add that we believe — and this is confirmed by our attorneys — that we have the right to protest even without a permit. But we submit permit applications anyway as a courtesy to the town. A very small number have been denied, but we have so far not demonstrated without an approved permit.
If by “that bunch of mess” Mr. Creighton means, in whole or in part, the blizzard of signs surrounding the monument during our protests, we agree that signs are getting out of hand there and are becoming unsightly. However, most of the signs you see as you drive up South Broad Street to the waterfront are placed on Confederate Plaza itself and most of those belong to the Confederates. (This past Saturday the Confederates had 103 items — signs, flags, wreaths — on Confederate Plaza; we had none.)
Town leaders have been given opportunities to do something about this sign clutter but have so far declined. I pointed out to Corey Gooden (a repeat of a suggestion we made last August, actually) in an email on April 10, copied to Town Council members, that we recognized that the multitude of signs on the plaza was unsightly and that our side would agree to keep the plaza clean and free of signs and other items if the opposition would do the same. We received no response.
There is absolutely no reason Confederate Plaza has to be carpet-bombed with signs every Saturday morning. If the town wants to figure out a way to keep that area clean, with signs placed alongside the permitted sidewalks only, we have long been ready to cooperate with such a request.
We don’t need a new law or ordinance for this. Just a simple understanding between the two sides, negotiated by the town manager: Stay off the plaza; keep your protest business on the sidewalk you’re permitted for.
What’s so difficult about that?
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