The removal of statues

[Jimmy Higgins]

Pyramids built with slave labor. Just like the white house. Knock em both down.

Shouldn't you be marching somewhere with a Tiki Torch, and maybe a lei.

 

[dismal]

Who really gives a fuck about statues

The Taliban?

 

[LordKiran]

Because money, they wanted to move it to a less visible spot because they know visitors and tourists wouldn't approve. And really why would they? "Oh, you guys had this confederate statue built next to what used to be a courthouse. That's pretty douchey."

If you ask me, Buildings of law should have enforced a zone of iconoclasm. The institution of law should stand alone, universal and timeless and not subject to the petty symbols of the day.

There's loads of art free of symbolism. Abstract art? I think all public buildings should be decorated the fuck out of them. It's art for the people.

Swedish courthouses tend to be decorated with busts of famous lawyers judges. Pretty. But we've got a thousand years of history to draw upon.

I think a building without art is a tragedy.

I disagree. A lack of governmentally endorsed expression at a courthouse is important because it emphasizes the impartiality and blind indifference of our justice system.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

All this way through the thread and nobody yet has shat on those asshole Iraqis who pulled down Saddam's statues after he was thrown out?

Revisionist dickheads.

 

[LordKiran]

All this way through the thread and nobody yet has shat on those asshole Iraqis who pulled down Saddam's statues after he was thrown out?

Revisionist dickheads.

its almost like statues arent just romantic notions of expressions but also symbols of power and/or oppression by the people who put them up.

 

[whichphilosophy]

It's up to local states if they move these but why are they a panic issue about 150 years afterwards?

 

[LordKiran]

It's up to local states if they move these but why are they a panic issue about 150 years afterwards?

They aren't. The relocation of statues was seemingly a non issue until nazi and confederates threw a fit.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

...150 years afterwards...

Actually, the statues came mostly later, most being up as reactions to deaths of confederate veterans between 1890 and 1920 and then as reaction to ending Jim Crow, another 25% came up as reaction much later to civil rights era and desegregation. That last movement of more statues (the 25% or so of them) also corresponded to a huge upsurge of Confederate flags.

 

[Elixir]

Who really gives a fuck about statues

The Taliban?

Yeah - them ... and The Donald, who wants to remove the Statue of Liberty because it offends his Taliban values.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yeah - them ... and The Donald, who wants to remove the Statue of Liberty because it offends his Taliban values.

I thought it was because he couldn't grab the pussy through the copper clothing...?

 

[blastula]

Stonewall Jackson’s grandsons: “The monuments must go.”

An open letter from the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.
By Jack Christian and Warren Christian

Dear Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and members of the Monument Avenue Commission,

We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.

In making this request, we wish to express our respect and admiration for Mayor Stoney’s leadership while also strongly disagreeing with his claim that “removal of symbols does [nothing] for telling the actual truth [nor] changes the state and culture of racism in this country today.” In our view, the removal of the Jackson statue and others will necessarily further difficult conversations about racial justice. It will begin to tell the truth of us all coming to our senses.

Last weekend, Charlottesville showed us unequivocally that Confederate statues offer pre-existing iconography for racists. The people who descended on Charlottesville last weekend were there to make a naked show of force for white supremacy. To them, the Robert E. Lee statue is a clear symbol of their hateful ideology. The Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are, too—especially Jackson, who faces north, supposedly as if to continue the fight.

We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us.

Through our upbringing and education, we have learned much about Stonewall Jackson. We have learned about his reluctance to fight and his teaching of Sunday School to enslaved peoples in Lexington, Virginia, a potentially criminal activity at the time. We have learned how thoughtful and loving he was toward his family. But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy.

While we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.

In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall’s sister—our great-great-grandaunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.



Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.

There is also historical evidence that the statues on Monument Avenue were rejected by black Richmonders at the time of their construction. In the 1870s, John Mitchell, a black city councilman, called the monuments a tribute to “blood and treason” and voiced strong opposition to the use of public funds for building them. Speaking about the Lee Memorial, he vowed that there would come a time when African Americans would “be there to take it down.”

Ongoing racial disparities in incarceration, educational attainment, police brutality, hiring practices, access to health care, and, perhaps most starkly, wealth, make it clear that these monuments do not stand somehow outside of history. Racism and white supremacy, which undoubtedly continue today, are neither natural nor inevitable. Rather, they were created in order to justify the unjustifiable, in particular slavery.



One thing that bonds our extended family, besides our common ancestor, is that many have worked, often as clergy and as educators, for justice in their communities. While we do not purport to speak for all of Stonewall’s kin, our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought. We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.

As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context. We are in need of a new context—one in which the statues have been taken down.

Respectfully,
William Jackson Christian
Warren Edmund Christian
Great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

 

[ZiprHead]

Crowds of residents line up to turn themselves in after activists remove Confederate statue

Although reports stated that there were over 100 people at the detention facility, most were there to simply turn themselves in “symbolically“, in support of three activists directly connected to the toppling. According to The Herald Sun, two of the activists were identified as 37-year-old Elena Everett and 24-year-old Aaron Caldwell. The third person’s name was not immediately available.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You need to make up your mind.
You think one should see a statue and look up the history. Looking up the history of that statue reveals white nationalist propaganda, counter-civil rights symbology.

No, I don't. It's art. Art can be many things.... obviously. I've just listed all the things it can be. They're not exclusive.

The idea that a work of art can only have one interpretation is idiotic.

Where did i say there's only one interpretation? That's actually the problem. One interpretation is the history of the statue, one is the current lie that it was to honor history or culture.

Thanks for demonstrating that you think that art only can have one interpretation. The statue is of a guy on a horse. The rest is overlayed symbolism. Symbolism that can be re-arranged however we want. However you want.

The only thing that is objective is that it's a beautiful work of classical art. I think we should have more of that.

And if somebody is offended by it.. I'm sorry, but they're just looking for something to be offended by.

Okay. I'm offended by the alt-right, who would cheerfully exile my family at the very least, and condemn me as a race traitor. But i'm not just looking to be offended by the statue their forebearers put up for their agenda. A better term would be 'noticed.'

Hmm.. I'll backtrack. The problem isn't being offended. The problem is being offended and demanding all other people re-arrange their lives to avoid me being offended. It's perfectly fine being offended by stuff. As is not caring about other people's offence.

It's historically significant.

No, it is not.

It has every reason to stay, even if you don't agree with the values of the people who put it there.

I have to disagree. It has no reason to stay ON PUBLIC GROUND if it does not reflect the values of the city/state/country. Move it to a shrine somewhere else, where they can love it and beat off to the thoughts it inspires in their hearts. It doesn't belong where it is.

The statue is brimming with historical significance. Civil war, it can happen again if Washington DC doesn't pay attention again, slavery, the man himself, beards were trendy once before, look how civil war generals were dressed once, KKK, Jim Crowe laws, thirteenth amendment, civil rights, BLM, Racism is bad, ironically whites and blacks have the same skin colour when made in brass, it's interesting that all the generals on both sides had gone to West Point and were friends or at least had a personal relationship, the confederate politicians thought that everything would be over if blacks were made free, they were wrong, war is a colossal waste of time and lives, isn't it cool that in USA they let the losers of wars erect statues glorifying their generals who lost, the racists lost, our ancestors were wrong,

And so on. That statue oozes history. Which is why it deserves to stay in a prominent spot. Good art doesn't stroke your ego and only give you a warm fuzzy feeling. Good art touches your soul. This certainly does that, on many levels. Public land should be used to show off and educate about history and the country. Art is most often the best most cost effective option for this.

I really don't think that applies to this particular argument. A memorial at any given battlefield, for the Revolution, the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the Cola Wars, is raised for an entirely different reason than the statues raised as propaganda in the 50's.

Statues are raised, at least in my culture, as a mark of honor.
We don't need to honor horrible things.
We really don't need to use city land to honor horrible things.

Hmm... that's how you produce an idiot population. Is that really what you want for USA? Again... no... it's not necessarily a mark of honor. You've just decided that. You're projecting that onto the statues and demanding we all see the same thing. It's just art. WWI memorials of fallen soldiers aren't only there to honor the dead. They're also monuments of human idiocy. All those lives were thrown away for literally nothing. I'm not saying we should all just get along, kumbaya and love. But war is still the ultimate human failure. There's no greater way to fuck up. That's true as much for the winners as for the losers. All war memorials are reminders that we're probably not as smart as we think and our leaders probably don't know wtf they're doing. The Lee statue is just another in that category.

Monuments commemorating war heroes, is to me, mostly surrealist art. And again, I'm not against war. I think it sometimes is necessary. It's still ultimately a failure.



Just look at that... it's gorgeous.

 

[DrZoidberg]

All this way through the thread and nobody yet has shat on those asshole Iraqis who pulled down Saddam's statues after he was thrown out?

Revisionist dickheads.

Yeah, but you could barely turn your head in Baghdad without bumping into a Saddam statue. It's one thing being reminded of history. It's another when history is constantly shouting in your ear and poking you in the face. Also, Saddam didn't represent any kind of significant movement. He was just himself and his cronies. His statues now mostly just represent that dictatorships is bad. Yeah... not profound.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Stonewall Jackson’s grandsons: “The monuments must go.”

An open letter from the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.
By Jack Christian and Warren Christian

Dear Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and members of the Monument Avenue Commission,

We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.

In making this request, we wish to express our respect and admiration for Mayor Stoney’s leadership while also strongly disagreeing with his claim that “removal of symbols does [nothing] for telling the actual truth [nor] changes the state and culture of racism in this country today.” In our view, the removal of the Jackson statue and others will necessarily further difficult conversations about racial justice. It will begin to tell the truth of us all coming to our senses.

Last weekend, Charlottesville showed us unequivocally that Confederate statues offer pre-existing iconography for racists. The people who descended on Charlottesville last weekend were there to make a naked show of force for white supremacy. To them, the Robert E. Lee statue is a clear symbol of their hateful ideology. The Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are, too—especially Jackson, who faces north, supposedly as if to continue the fight.

We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us.

Through our upbringing and education, we have learned much about Stonewall Jackson. We have learned about his reluctance to fight and his teaching of Sunday School to enslaved peoples in Lexington, Virginia, a potentially criminal activity at the time. We have learned how thoughtful and loving he was toward his family. But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy.

While we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.

In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall’s sister—our great-great-grandaunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.



Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.

There is also historical evidence that the statues on Monument Avenue were rejected by black Richmonders at the time of their construction. In the 1870s, John Mitchell, a black city councilman, called the monuments a tribute to “blood and treason” and voiced strong opposition to the use of public funds for building them. Speaking about the Lee Memorial, he vowed that there would come a time when African Americans would “be there to take it down.”

Ongoing racial disparities in incarceration, educational attainment, police brutality, hiring practices, access to health care, and, perhaps most starkly, wealth, make it clear that these monuments do not stand somehow outside of history. Racism and white supremacy, which undoubtedly continue today, are neither natural nor inevitable. Rather, they were created in order to justify the unjustifiable, in particular slavery.



One thing that bonds our extended family, besides our common ancestor, is that many have worked, often as clergy and as educators, for justice in their communities. While we do not purport to speak for all of Stonewall’s kin, our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought. We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.

As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context. We are in need of a new context—one in which the statues have been taken down.

Respectfully,
William Jackson Christian
Warren Edmund Christian
Great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

I fucking hate this and the importance we give to decedents of famous people. Stonewall Jackson was a historically significant person. His children and grandchildren are not. They're just random regular people. We shouldn't give their words any more weight than anybody else's.

Who cares what these people think?

I was once given a painting painted by a son of Picasso. It was a shit painting. Also, while painted by a Picasso, not painted by the Picasso who counts. I mostly felt bad that they'd paid good money for that shit.

 

[whichphilosophy]

There may be some good cases presented to move some of the statues from certain places, but there any reason why these have suddenly become an issue? Maybe someone can answer this.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There may be some good cases presented to move some of the statues from certain places, but there any reason why these have suddenly become an issue? Maybe someone can answer this.

I think, genuinely, the reason is because we're less racist now. At least less racist against blacks. Whether Americans have just moved their racism from blacks to Arabs/Muslims I don't know.

It's about power. People who are empowered like to exercise that power. Because of less racism blacks in USA are and feel more empowered. Back in the day racists used to feel and be empowered. Removing the statues then becomes a symbol of that broken power.

The problem is of course that it means the exact opposite. People who are and feel empowered don't feel threatened. They have no need to remove statues they find offensive. So it's evidence of that racism against blacks is real, but just less than it used to be.

The statues first went up because racists felt threatened. For good reason. Black power/emancipation was coming and they could feel it. They didn't want it. So they put up statues. If they'd felt secure in their position they wouldn't have bothered putting up these kinds of statues.

We're at a turning point in history. That's always when statues go up or come down.

 

[DrZoidberg]

ha ha

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40965029

Donald Trump is also against removing the statues. He made funny quote

"You can't change history, but you can learn from it"

ha ha. He hasn't learned shit from history. That's been his biggest weakness as a president.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Thanks for demonstrating that you think that art only can have one interpretation.

What IS going on in your head....?

 

[angelo]

Who is to say the Dems won't erect statutes to Obama.

Obama actually won. Not quite as 'tragic' a hero, and a statue of Obama would not necessarily be commissioned for the purpose of offending FFvC.

Trump would lose his shit over an Obama statue, but he'd put his foot through the TV if they erected one for Hillary.

He wouldn't be the only one! Zoroaster forbid that should ever happen!