Britanny 'Bree' Newsome - the filmmaker, organizer, activist and aspiring Super-Woman who memorably, determinedly climbed the flagpole at South Carolina's capitol to remove the Confederate flag - has spoken out for the first time about her feat, which she views "both as an act of civil disobedience and as a demonstration of the power people have when we work together." Writing in the Blue Nation Review, Newsome describes what led to her action, from recent meetings with a diverse group of "regular human beings, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, Carolinians, educators, and activist - both black and white - who believe in the fundamental idea of humanity," to her longtime bonds to South Carolina, though she now lives in North Carolina. Many of her ancestors "entered this continent through the slave market in Charleston," including her fourth great grandfather "who stood on an auction block (refusing) to be sold without his wife and newborn baby; that newborn baby, my third great grandmother, enslaved for 27 years on a plantation in Rembert, S.C; her husband...an enslaved plowboy on the same plantation...and their son, my great-great grandfather, the one they called "Free Baby" because he was their first child born free, all in South Carolina."
At www.commondreams.org
