Director’s Report...Jim Hanks, Jr.

Yankee culture focuses on quick results. There is a downside to this because hasty construction is often not the best. In fact it is usually full of flaws. Quality, on the other hand, takes patience. The execution may be quick, but the preparation must be methodical.

Festina lenteis a pretty good description of the South Carolina League’s method: we make haste slowly. Although impatient for independence, we are committed to the long term. You might say that we know that we still have things to learn on the way to reaching our goal. Year by year we improve. We attract individuals with ability and discipline. We train them and we grow through their high quality involvement. These talented individuals make possible more complex projects. Almost every month we have at least one project and we are starting to double up.

In January we turned out to counter demonstrate the NAACP. We have a tradition of meeting their hate with our reverence. While they rail against our symbol we simply stand proudly in its support. Last year we were not allowed to carry flags on poles, so we held our flags up in our hands, but that wasn’t the best we could do. Last year, too, our protest met with a near total media blackout. But by doing the same events again and again, we learn how to adapt to obstacles, to overcome them and get better results.

So this year we did something completely different. We all wore shirts and jackets festooned with big bold battle flags. By wearing our flags we met these challenges with an effective, novel response. And we were rewarded: not only did we have more fun and did the store sell more shirts and jackets, but most important, the media was all over us for pictures and interviews. I gave seven interviews that afternoon, and we were on all the news channels and in the papers all over the union.

In that moment, we changed our public persona from that of dogged rear guard resistance to one of spirited, fun loving, up beat celebration. The news media and the public they serve has begun to expect and anticipate our rituals. With them, we are making culture. There are those who accept the culture as it is given and there are others who tear a culture down. The South Carolina League is a third kind of organisation, one actively creating culture.

In that vein we accomplished something of a first in February, when, on a single day, we had four different activities going on simultaneously. Our two stores were operating, of course, and we also had a tent set up at the “Battle for Columbia”. In addition, we also tried and hanged Lincoln and Sherman on the Statehouse steps. It takes dedicated individuals to accomplish so much. It also takes planning, coordination and experience.

A few days ago I was approached with a request to help in a presidential campaign. They are going to hold a strategy meeting and the gentleman was discussing the tasks they would assign. Then he caught himself up, saying, “But I forgot, I’m talking to the League of the South, you’ll could teach us how to run this thing.”

We do know how to do some things well, and are always learning and growing. What an exciting time to be a South Carolina nationalist!