Activists in Durham County, North Carolina, attempted to surrender en masse at a courthouse on Thursday morning in an act of solidarity with those charged for the act of pulling down a statue of a Confederate soldier on Monday, news reports and social media accounts say. The gesture remained symbolic when law enforcement officials declined to take anyone who hadn’t had a warrant issued for their arrest into custody: “Officials at the jail, where the magistrate’s office is located, blocked their entry into the buildings,” the Raleigh News & Observer reported. Video of the scene:
A total of seven individuals appear to have been actually arrested thus far for helping pull down the statue, which had been in place since 1924. Four have been charged with misdemeanors and released on “unsecured” bonds, meaning they didn’t have to pay to be released. A law in North Carolina prohibits municipalities from taking down public monuments without the approval of the state’s right-wing Legislature—but, as my colleague Christina Cauterucci wrote on Wednesday, North Carolina’s Democratic governor and attorney general could hypothetically decide not to actually prosecute any removals.
