Georgia State Rep. Jason Spencer (R) either warned or threatened a former colleague, LaDawn Jones (D), that she faced grave harm if she traveled to south Georgia and called for the removal of Confederate monuments. Jones, who is black and represented an Atlanta district from 2012 to 2016, responded to a Facebook post Spencer had written Monday about visiting a monument to Jefferson Davis, saying she hoped tax dollars weren't going toward memorializing the president of the Confederacy.
Things went downhill from there, with Spencer warning Jones that if she visited his part of Georgia, she "won't be met with torches but something a lot more definitive," adding that "people in south Georgia are people of action, not drama," and troublemakers from Atlanta "will go missing in the Okefenokee," a swamp. Spencer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he wasn't threatening Jones, just offering a "warning to her of how people can behave about this issue." He also insisted the newspaper run a photo he sent of himself standing next to a new statue of Martin Luther King Jr.
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