I absolutely guarantee that these two stories from the Fayetteville Observer back home in NC are related:
Organizers of a downtown Southern Pines drag show say they aren’t backing down after receiving threats of violence from far-right activists.
The Downtown Divas show planned for Saturday at Sunrise Theater is the fourth drag event hosted by Sandhills Pride in the last few years, Executive Director Lauren Mathers said, but never have the shows caused such a stir in the sleepy Moore County town.
“Most of the time, if people don’t want to see something, they don’t buy a ticket,” she said.
This time, the opposition went on a “crusade” to shut down the event by claiming drag performers are pedophiles with intentions of grooming children, Moore County political blog writer Cheryl Christy-Bowman said.
Authorities in North Carolina believe vandalism may have caused a power outage that affected thousands of customers Saturday night.
A mass power outage in several communities beginning just after 7 p.m. Saturday “is being investigated as a criminal occurrence," the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,” the sheriff's office said.
Moore County deputies and other law enforcement responded and were providing security at the affected sites, the sheriff's office said.
Utility company Duke Energy said nearly 38,000 customers were without power in Moore County, while the Randolph Electric Membership Corporation reported outages affected nearly 3,000 customers in the county's southern area, WRAL-TV reported.
Yeah, the substations were shot up "just after 7 pm Saturday" when the Downtown Divas show was beginning.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what's going on here, less than 12 hours after Donald Trump called for the suspension of the Constitution in order to declare himself Maximum Leader of America.
This wasn't "vandalism". Vandalism is tagging a hospital or library or school with "Jeff Rules" in safety orange spray paint. Knocking out power to half of a county in a coordinated effort to damage four substations at once in order to stop a drag show is a terrorist attack and a hate crime.
We need to both treat it as such, and send a warning to these assholes that the consequences of this are going to be very long stints in prison.
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