On Wednesday, Dylann Roof killed nine victims inside a historic African-American church. Roof, who was described by a friend as having expressed support for racial segregation, clearly targeted the victims of his terror attack because they were African-American, as one survivor reported.
“You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of the church’s slain pastor, said the gunman told his victims, according to CNN affiliate WIS. She cited survivors of the shooting.
The day after Dylann Roof’s racially-motivated act of terror, the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia, SC lowered its flags to half mast, with the exception of the Confederate flag, which continued to fly at full mast.
Wednesday night, a white man walked into a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shot nine parishioners. Today, a Confederate flag is flying on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia — as it does every day. While the flags on top of the statehouse itself are flying at half-mast, the Confederate flag (displayed at a Civil War memorial) is flying at full mast.
The fact that South Carolina continued to fly at full mast a flag that stands for racism, slavery, intimidation, and treason seems to send a strong message about what that state stands for.
This was a terrible tragedy. Terrible. I don’t know if it was Terrorism. If Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous tragedy was workplace violence wouldn’t this be churchplace violence?
Chatum, a killer tornado is a “tragedy.”
You either don’t know who Hasan is, or your don’t know what terrorism is, or both.
Hasan was in the U.S. Army. He “worked” at Ft. Hood, a U.S. military base.
Terrorism is about attacking civilians. Hasan didn’t do that. Roof did.