In a hilariously trolling demand letter sent to the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Friday, Durham attorney and INDY columnist T. Greg Doucette threatened to sue the SCV unless the group turns over the $2.5 million it will receive from a controversial settlement with the UNC System to a scholarship fund for African American students.
Doucette first uncovered UNC’s shady arrangement with the SCV, which included the university settling a lawsuit over the disposition of the Confederate monument Silent Sam that hadn’t yet been filed. He also published an internal SCV document that indicated that the SCV knew it did not have the legal standing to file such a lawsuit, but UNC settled anyway.
To send the demand letter, Doucette employed the Las Vegas-based Randazza Law Firm, led by Marc Randazza, a First Amendment firm best known for representing Alex Jones of the conspiracy site Infowars and Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazis site Daily Stormer.
That, he noted in a Twitter DM on Friday night, is “going to trigger infighting” among the SCV’s neo-Confederates.
Doucette’s complaint centers on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act notice the SCV filed with Dropbox on December 2 after Doucette posted a letter from SCV leader Kevin Stone to his members boasting after how he suckered UNC into giving him $2.5 million. (Doucette says he received the letter from an SCV member.) The letter, Doucette argues, falls under fair use, as the law allows copyrighted documents to be published—especially in non-commercial ways—to serve the public interest, which is what Doucette did by posting the Dropbox link on his Twitter account.
“Although the DMCA notice confirmed the authenticity of the letter,” Doucette’s legal team wrote to SCV attorney C. Boyd Sturgis, “it was not without consequence to Mr. Doucette. Dropbox disabled public sharing on his account as a result of your client’s fraudulent notice. In short, due to your efforts to try and employ a policy of secrecy and dishonesty, my client has not only been offended, but damaged. … The misleading notice was issued in bad faith, because it failed to consider Mr. Doucette’s fair use rights. … Your client clearly made such a material misrepresentation, and my client will not allow it to go unpunished.”
The demand letter continues: “Mr. Doucette is prepared to file suit for [damages and attorneys’ fees], as well as for a declaration of non-infringement and any other causes of action he may have, which are still being evaluated. Mr. Doucette is considering a lawsuit not out of bitterness or vindictive feelings but because it seems that the NCSCV has tried to wrest from him his dearest rights. This will not stand, man.”
And, Randazza and fellow attorney Jay Marshall Wolman add, the SCV should not doubt Doucette’s willingness to take it to court.
“Unlike your client’s other most recent litigation, this suit will be real,” they write. “Important principles are at stake, and Mr. Doucette is a man of principle.”
But there is a way out, they conclude. “Should your client wish to avoid litigation, Mr. Doucette proposes the following: the $2.5 million your client did or will receive from UNC will be, instead, diverted to a scholarship fund for African American students at UNC, or other similar use, subject to our client’s approval.”
And, of course, Doucette wants the SCV to drop the DMCA claim: “Your cause is lost. This information will not only go back up, but my client will make sure that it’s seen by as many people as possible. In short, if you believe that my client infringed on your client’s copyright, you may want to prepare to sue my client, because he’s going to do it again, and again, and again.”
Here is the letter the SCV didn’t want you to see.
SCV Internal Victory Statement by m1523751 on Scribd
Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman at jbillman@indyweek.com.
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Lincoln led Republicans controlled both houses of the 37th Congress. One of their select committees was the “Committee on Emancipation and Colonization.” The following resolution from that committee explains exactly what motivated Northern “anti-slavery.” Anti-slavery meant nothing more than “anti-black;” and to rid the country of an “inferior race” to prevent amalgamation. It was this kind of immoral racism that led to Southern secession in the first place. Is it any wonder that the MISSISSIPPI Declaration of Secession laments that the North “seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.” If this is why the South was “pro-slavery,” in order to protect their black neighbors from Northern racism, what else are we not being told about the cause of secession and war?
37th Congess.
No. 148. REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION,In the House of Resentatives, July 16, 1862:
“It is useless, now, to enter upon any philosophical inquiry whether nature has or has not made the negro inferior to the Caucasian. The belief is indelibly fixed upon the public mind that such inequality does exist. There are irreconcilable differences between the two races which separate them,
as with a wall of fire. The home for the African must not be within the limits of the present territory of the Union. The Anglo- American looks upon every acre of our present domain as intended for him, and not for the negro. A home, therefore, must be sought for the African beyond our own limits and in those warmer regions to which his constitution is better adapted than to our own climate,and which doubtless the Almighty intended the colored races should inhabit and cultivate.
Much of the objection to emancipation arises from the opposition of a large portion of our people to the intermixture of the races, and from the association of white and black labor. The committee would do nothing to favor such a policy; apart from the antipathy which nature has ordained, the presence of a race among us who cannot, and ought not to be admitted to our social and political privileges, will be a perpetual source of injury and inquietude to both. This is a question of color, and is unaffected by the relation of master and slave.
The introduction of the negro, whether bond or free, into the same field of labor with the white man, is the opprobrium of the latter… We wish to disabuse our laboring countrymen, and the whole Caucasian race who may seek a home here, of this error… The committee conclude that the highest interests of the white race, whether Anglo-Saxon, Celt, or Scandinavian, require that the whole country should be held and occupied by those races.”
General Lee exclaimed:”The best men in the South have long desired to do away with the institution of slavery, and are quite willing to see it abolished. UNLESS SOME HUMANE COURSE, BASED ON WISDOM AND CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES IS ADOPTED, you do them great injustice in setting them free.”
CSA Governor Henry W Allen Jan 1865
“To the English philanthropist who professes to feel so much for the slave, I would say, come and see the sad and cruel workings the scheme.–Come and see the negro in the hands of his Yankee liberators. See the utter degradation–the ragged want–the squalid poverty. These false, pretended friends treat him with criminal neglect. William H. Wilder, He says the negroes have died like sheep with the rot. In the Parish of Iberville, out of six hundred and ten slaves, three hundred and ten have perished. Tiger Island, at Berwicks Bay, is one solid grave yard. At New Orleans, Thibodaux, Donaldsonville, Plaquemine, Baton Rouge, Port Hudson, Morganza, Vidalia, Young’s Point and Goodrich’s Landing, the acres of the silent dead will ever be the monuments of Yankee cruelty to these unhappy wretches. Under published orders from General Banks, The men on plantations were to be paid from six to eight dollars per month, In these orders the poor creatures after being promised this miserable pittance, were bound by every catch and saving clause that a lawyer could invent. For every disobedience their wages were docked. For every absence from labor they were again docked. In the hands of the grasping Yankee overseer, the oppressed slave has been forced to toil free of cost to his new master. I saw a half-starved slave who had escaped from one of the Yankee plantations, he said “that he had worked hard for the Yankees for six long months–that they had ‘dockered’ him all the time, and had never paid him one cent!” The negro has only changed masters, and very much for the worse! And now, without present reward or hope for the future, he is dying in misery and want. Look at this picture ye negro worshippers, and weep, if you have tears to shed over the poor down-trodden murdered children of Africa.”