SOLIDARITY WITH DWAYNE DIXON

Dwayne Dixon faces trial over defending his community from the KKK.

In Durham, North Carolina on a hot August evening in 2017, a Confederate monument was toppled by community members in an act of collective courage. Days later, the KKK threatened to mobilize in retaliation against the city. The sheriff's department warned community leaders, closed the county buildings, had armed deputies escorted fearful government workers to their cars, and parked squad cars blocking the street in front of the forlorn pedestal for the collapsed and humiliated Confederate monument to white supremacy. All this unfolded only six days after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville by a white supremacist.

After receiving numerous texts over the course of an hour about the planned KKK mobilization, Dwayne Dixon went downtown to aid and support the resistance, materially and ethically prepared to defend the city against the threat of racist violence. For the last several months, Dwayne had been organizing within his Redneck Revolt branch and his community to build stronger defense networks. The concept of community defense means recognizing that our liberation and safety is bound up with one another’s, and that we have a collective responsibility to take action and personal risk to defend each other when we have the capacity to do so. With those principles in mind, Dwayne headed downtown with his rifle, profoundly aware of the risks he and others were taking by simply being in public space and mobilizing for their own communal defense. So many brave people, many of whom had never participated in direct action before, were catalyzed into collective defense. They stood to block off the street with their bodies, ensuring the safety of the growing numbers of folks who took to the streets that day in opposition to the Klan. With thousands of Durham residents mobilized to resist them, the KKK failed to show up, and the day was chalked up as a victory on multiple fronts.

Dwayne’s actions on August 18th built directly from the examples previously set by the local queer, Black, trans, immigrant, Latinx, Asian-American comrades who are now facing trial for the alleged destruction of a Confederate statue that celebrated generations of trauma inflicted upon them and their ancestors.

Please show support and help defend the Durham Freedom Fighters here: doitlikeDurham.org and durhamsolidaritycenter.org/bondfund. Their trials are coming u