I last wrote on here over a year ago about meetings i attended with the Monuments Committee over what to do about our confederate statues. With the election of a new mayor and almost half a brand new city council something would sonner or later be done with at least the Taney and the Lee/Jackson monuments.
That it took a mob of white neo-Nazis invading Charlottesville to finally rip open the truth that has always been there behind the puerile nostalgia of the “Lost Cause” is one of the many ironies of the event. Another irony is that by invading one historic town and killing and wounding people to “protect” one confederate statue, the result is that all over the country they are coming down in droves. Nice work, bigots!
Instead of two, all four of Baltimore’s are now in a place where they cannot hurt us.
Second district Councilman Brandon Scott introduced a resolution to remove them on Monday. Yesterday Mayor Catharine Pugh announced that she was looking into moving companies capable of removing them. Also that same day a growing group of activists surrounded each statue in question. Artist Pablo Machado erected this statue in front of the Lee/Jackson piece. She is is a fertile goddess shaking her fist at tresonous men, carrying one child on her back and expecting another. She is Mother Nike, preparing to fight on behalf of the future.
The moving companies must have responded like lightning, becauseall four were removed last night. Whatever qualms anyone in my town has about Mayor Pugh, when the writing on the wall burns bright as neon, she takes swift action. Once the entire council said go for it, they were removed immediatly. The neighborhood surrounding Wyman Park is a mostly black neighborhood. Nostalgia has no claim when it comes to protecting living residents from hate mobs like the ones in Charlottesville.
Now Mother Nike raises her arm in victory!
I do not know what will happen to the monuments. Whether anyone contacted the Chancellorsville Historic Battlefield about taking the Lee/Jackson statue, I don’t know. Do they even want it now that the toxicity of these images is clearly seen?
If there is a young black lady who is now about 15 still lives across the street, whose testimony I remember, I hope she came out and enjoyed a breath of fresh free air at last.