By now, most of you know that the Republican Party headquarters in Orange County, North Carolina–home to Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina–was firebombed early Sunday morning. Donald Trump infamously blamed the attack on “animals” acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton. He apparently missed that Hillary had already unequivocally condemned this cowardly and criminal act. Further proving the lie to Trump’s bombast, a group of Democrats organized a GoFundMe campaign to help the Orange County GOP rebuild.
Well, it turns out that the Orange County Democratic Party was targeted as well. When staffers arrived for work on Sunday morning at party headquarters in Carrboro, Chapel Hill’s twin city, they found the words “Death to Capitalism” scrawled on the front wall.
The physical damage wasn’t nearly as widespread as was the case at the county GOP headquarters in neighboring Hillsborough. However, party chairman Matt Hughes told the Triangle’s NPR member station, WUNC–based up the road in Chapel Hill–that while it may have been “just paint,” it still has a lot of his staffers on edge.
He went further in an interview with Raw Story, saying that the attack still had “a chilling effect” on many of his colleagues. Hughes himself has been known to work well into the wee hours during campaign season, and believes that both attacks would make even the hardiest party worker “wonder about your safety.” He added that a number of party workers “see this as a threat, not even a veiled threat.” Indeed, party officials are concerned enough that they asked law enforcement for additional resources to protect campaign workers.
So the headquarters of both major parties in Chapel Hill were attacked on the same night. That raised the obvious question–could these attacks have been related? While Hughes thinks it’s “a heck of a coincidence,” he doesn’t think there’s any connection.
Regardless of who did this and why, these incidents were a direct attack on our democracy. Whoever did this needs to be tracked down and have the library thrown at them.
(featured image courtesy Hughes’ Facebook)
