Baltimore removes all Confederate statues overnight - Polidicks

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGMahq0HSs0[/media] [url]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0[/url] [QUOTE]BALTIMORE — The mayor said Wednesday that she was acting in the “best interest of my city” when she ordered the removal overnight of statues dedicated to Confederate heroes, just days after violence broke out over efforts to take down a similar monument in neighboring Virginia. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh said that given the current political climate, it was important to move “quickly and quietly” as a matter of public safety. “The mayor has the right to protect her city,” Ms Pugh said later in an interview. “For me, the statues represented pain, and not only did I want to protect my city from any more of that pain, I also wanted to protect my city from any of the violence that was occurring around the nation. We don’t need that in Baltimore.” Beginning shortly after midnight on Wednesday, a crew, which included a large crane and a contingent of police officers, began making rounds of the city’s parks and public squares, removing the monuments from their pedestals and carting them away.[/QUOTE]

Most of these statues are over 100 years old, the oldest was cast in 1887 (although it had nothing to do with the Confederacy and was memorializing a terrible person). Hope they go to a museum and not the scrapper. The pedestals are already being vandalized.

if they get scrapped i hope they do something cool with it like melt them all down and recycle it into collectable copper coins celebrating the underground railroad or something. would b symbolic as fuck

[QUOTE=Wii60;52580652]if they get scrapped i hope they do something cool with it like melt them all down and recycle it into collectable copper coins celebrating the underground railroad or something. would b symbolic as fuck[/QUOTE] Many post-Soviet countries have statue graveyards where all the old Soviet statues are taken, where they're preserved for remembrance but not necessarily glorified. Maybe we should do the same somewhere with many of these old statues? I think only the apolitical memorials to soldiers should be left standing in a place of honor. That'd be an elegant solution.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52580643]Most of these statues are over 100 years old, the oldest was cast in 1887 (although it had nothing to do with the Confederacy and was memorializing a terrible person). Hope they go to a museum and not the scrapper. The pedestals are already being vandalized.[/QUOTE] I feel like "It belongs to a museum" is a meme now. Like, they got a shit ton of them in museums, they probably don't need more.

[QUOTE=Itsjustguy;52580661]I feel like "It belongs to a museum" is a meme now. Like, they got a shit ton of them in museums, they probably don't need more.[/QUOTE] I dunno, melting down/destroying antiques to make political statements doesn't sit well with me, no matter what they're representing.

Ironic that confederate statues are being removed because of the aggressive white pride marches & protests against exactly that happening. But if that's what it takes to send a loud and clear "fuck you and everything you stand for" to those exact people, then remove them and put them in the "historical moments and persons of shame" exhibits in museums.

Scan it and put the model up on a museum website. Fuck it, we should do that for all statues anyway.

[url]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html[/url] [quote]BALTIMORE — The mayor said Wednesday that she was acting in the “best interest of my city” when she ordered the removal overnight of statues dedicated to Confederate heroes, just days after violence broke out over efforts to take down a similar monument in neighboring Virginia. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh said that given the current political climate, it was important to move “quickly and quietly” as a matter of public safety. “The mayor has the right to protect her city,” Ms Pugh said later in an interview. “For me, the statues represented pain, and not only did I want to protect my city from any more of that pain, I also wanted to protect my city from any of the violence that was occurring around the nation. We don’t need that in Baltimore.” Beginning shortly after midnight on Wednesday, a crew, which included a large crane and a contingent of police officers, began making rounds of the city’s parks and public squares, removing the monuments from their pedestals and carting them away. Small crowds gathered at each of the monuments and the mood was “celebratory,” said Baynard Woods, the editor at large of The Baltimore City Paper, who documented the removals on Twitter. At the news conference, Ms. Pugh said she had spoken with the president of the City Council on Monday, the same day the council voted unanimously to remove the four monuments. “I thought that there’s enough grandstanding, enough speeches being made,” she said. “Get it done.”[/quote]

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52580663]I dunno, melting down/destroying antiques to make political statements doesn't sit well with me, no matter what they're representing.[/QUOTE] So you think the former Soviet Bloc countries that had a statue of Stalin, Lenin in every small town should have kept them all, too? I am strongly leaning towards it being cool to have some in museums. You can put them all into some secular wood-park at the outskirts of towns that have nothing else memorable to show off, stack them literally shoulder to shoulder if you feel like it, but if there's no room for them, just smelt em'.

[QUOTE=millan;52580686]So you think the former Soviet Bloc countries that had a statue of Stalin, Lenin in every small town should have kept them all, too? I am strongly leaning towards it being cool to have some in museums, stack them literally shoulder to shoulder if you feel like it, but if there's no room for them, just smelt em'.[/QUOTE] Check out my second post in here, man. I think a statue graveyard would be a really interesting solution to the problem.

Damn. Talk about efficient.

[QUOTE=millan;52580686]So you think the former Soviet Bloc countries that had a statue of Stalin, Lenin in every small town should have kept them all, too? I am strongly leaning towards it being cool to have some in museums. You can put them all into some secular wood-park at the outskirts of towns that have nothing else memorable to show off, stack them literally shoulder to shoulder if you feel like it, but if there's no room for them, just smelt em'.[/QUOTE] There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] Public monuments in the middle of population centres have a very specific and distinctly positively leaning meaning. It's a celebration. I am all for the graveyard idea, but they should be taken, literally as well as figuratively, off the pedestal.

The Unite the Right rally backfired hard. I imagine operations like these are going to become more common, and cities who were considering removing such statues already are accelerating their plans.

It's a shame that the statues dedicated simply to soldiers are being taken down as well. Hell, it's a shame that the one dedicated to Lee is being taken down. The man in my mind is one of the few things that allowed the Civil War to end on a somewhat pleasant note. He could of lead the Confederates in a guerilla and bushwhacking campaign for many years, but instead he took the honorable route and admitted defeat and spared the people of America the horrors of a prolonged guerilla conflict.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] Statues not existing isn't going to make people forget the abhorrent shit we've done in our past. We have books, we have oral histories, we have pictures and videos (obviously as time went on) of the bad shit we've done as a species. Statues that glamorise and celebrate those involved in these events aren't what remind us of how bad shit can get. What does make us forget is people trying to revise history by painting those who did that bad deeds in a good light (such as building statues in their honour!), by trying to eradicate such topics from education, or by trying to foster a society that embraces those ideals and actions. There's one side of the US political system that has a vested interest in at least 2 of those three, and they kinda have all the cards right now.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] you cant really forget those mistakes if you have a reasonable education system teaching people things. its why a lot of people go 'why dont these minorities just stop being lazy and get jobs and improve their lives?' they haven't learned basic history and don't understand it. You don't need statues for that, people aren't going to be walking down a street, see a confederate statue, and be reminded that they shouldn't own slaves. This is especially with the internet around, where you can learn all about history at the press of a button.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] There are countless museums dedicated to the civil war, historical battlegrounds, reenactments, books, and so on. It is a part of our standard school curriculum. Nobody is "forgetting" about it. That said, these statues are not now, nor were ever intended to be, a harsh reminder of America's ugly past. They were a glorification of that past. Removing them from public spaces is [I]not[/I] tantamount to "forgetting" our past, but rather in eliminating the public glorification of it. Failing to remove them from public institutions would be akin to modern day Germany having Nazi flags still flying high in parks and government buildings. I have no problem with preserving them in a museum or exhibit, but these fixtures do not belong in the world at large anymore.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] Imagine being a Jewish person in Germany and you have to walk past statues commemorating Hitler on your way to work. You asked they be removed but you're told "No! You must remember!" You're allowed to take a statue down when it no longer symbolizes something people wanna put up with seeing in their town. People don't want the view from their window to be of it. People dont wanna have to eat their lunches by it. And the people in this previous statue incident were [I]so[/I] willing to have it purged from their eyesight that they were willing to [B]commit crimes[/B] in order to not have to see it. Edit: Shit! Van-man I am so sorry. There's like 8 of us that just quote replied at once. I shoulda refreshed before jumping on you, my bad.

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] That was true before the internet and digital storage of media. The lessons that those statues embody are never going away now because the lessons are available to anyone, anywhere. I don't need those statues to know that the Confederates were a load of shit, for example. Never seen a single one of those statues, in fact. However, what you could argue is that those statues now act to glorify what they stood for in the eyes of those would seek to commit similar actions. So clearly they've already failed as a deterrent in the "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" rhetoric.

Taking things away in the middle of the night is a [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Colts_relocation_to_Indianapolis]Baltimore tradition[/url] :v:

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52580808]There are countless museums dedicated to the civil war, historical battlegrounds, reenactments, books, and so on. It is a part of our standard school curriculum. Nobody is "forgetting" about it. That said, these statues are not now, nor were ever intended to be, a harsh reminder of America's ugly past. They were a glorification of that past. Removing them from public spaces is [I]not[/I] tantamount to "forgetting" our past, but rather in eliminating the public glorification of it. Failing to remove them from public institutions would be akin to modern day Germany having Nazi flags still flying high in parks and government buildings. I have no problem with preserving them in a museum or exhibit, but these fixtures do not belong in the world at large anymore.[/QUOTE] Exactly, you can practically trip over Civil War museums in the south, I've visited many and none of them were some sort of pro-confederacy shrine if anyone is crazy and thinks that's a possibility also. These statues serve NO purpose, especially the ones glorifying the Confederacy or romanticizing it like the one recently torn down by protesters.

Good.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52580808]There are countless museums dedicated to the civil war, historical battlegrounds, reenactments, books, and so on. It is a part of our standard school curriculum. Nobody is "forgetting" about it. That said, these statues are not now, nor were ever intended to be, a harsh reminder of America's ugly past. They were a glorification of that past. Removing them from public spaces is [I]not[/I] tantamount to "forgetting" our past, but rather in eliminating the public glorification of it. Failing to remove them from public institutions would be akin to modern day Germany having Nazi flags still flying high in parks and government buildings. I have no problem with preserving them in a museum or exhibit, but these fixtures do not belong in the world at large anymore.[/QUOTE] Also Maryland never left the union, it's odd that these were even established in the first place.

I feel like Charlottesville probably had a Streisand effect on Confederate monuments, in that people now want to get rid of them to avoid any rallying points for neo-nazis. Just yesterday a plaque dedicated to confederate soldiers was removed here in LA

[QUOTE=Van-man;52580701]There's wide margin between destroying them, and deciding not to have them in public as monuments. If they're destroyed, then they're forgotten, and there's few things worse than repeating mistakes because you forgot the first time.[/QUOTE] Late to the party but kind of important to note this from the article: [quote]The mayor said she did not know where the statues were moved or where they will end up. She suggested plaques be installed that describe “what was there and why it was removed.”[/quote]

i'm about as on board as you can be as far as removing the statues goes but sculptures are as much primary sources for art historians as documents are for traditional historians. if you have to destroy something for closure i just feel that the underlying problem is unsolved.

what's so important about keeping statues celebrating people who fought for the right to own slaves 150 years ago anyway

Seems like a modern day Iconoclasm to me. [editline]16th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Headhumpy;52581080]what's so important about keeping statues celebrating people who fought for the right to own slaves 150 years ago anyway[/QUOTE] Assuming that everyone who fought for the Confederates fought for the right to own slaves is a gross over generalization and is utterly ignorant. The American Civil war is arguably one of the most complex issues in United States History. I don't support the ideas of the Confederacy or the people who came after them, but I will at least acknowledge that slavery wasn't the single thing that caused it. Maybe we do need these statues because people clearly are misrepresenting a complex topic as something black-and-white (No pun intended).