Baltimore Removes Confederate Statues in Overnight Operation

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

Statues dedicated to Confederate heroes were swiftly removed across Baltimore in the small hours of Wednesday morning, just days after violence broke out over the removal of a similar monument in neighboring Virginia.

Beginning soon after midnight on Wednesday, a crew, which included a large crane and a contingent of police officers, began making rounds of the citys parks and public squares, tearing the monuments from their pedestals and carting them out of town.

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. The police are being cheerful and encouraging people to take photos and selfies, Mr. Woods said in an interview.

The statues were taken down by order of Mayor Catherine Pugh, after the City Council voted on Monday for their removal. The city had been studying the issue since 2015, when a mass shooting by a white supremacist at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., prompted a renewed debate across the South over removing Confederate monuments and battle flags from public spaces.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html

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They have tried to wipe out Obama's legacy of trying to help the average American and "we" are going to try to wipe out their legacy of abject HATE.

Edit to add some tweets embedded in the article from the OP -

Link to tweet

TEXT
Baynard Woods
✔
@baynardwoods

White supremacy
4:01 AM - Aug 16, 2017

Link to tweet

TEXT
Alec MacGillis
✔
@AlecMacGillis

And there they go. Lee and Jackson sailing through air onto flatbed truck in Baltimore at 3:40 AM. An amazing sight.
3:39 AM - Aug 16, 2017

("Lee and Jackson sailing through air onto flatbed truck..." )

[joshdawg]

1. Kicked!

[RussBLib]

2. Beautiful

Hopefully this will continue across the nation

[riderinthestorm]

3. Perfect! Now that's leadership nt

[bluestarone]

11. yep

absolutely agree

[thesquanderer]

4. "Studying" since 2015, voted on on Monday.

I am curious to know whether this vote was scheduled for Monday's meeting prior to this weekend's event, or (as I suspect) this weekend's events prompted them to finally vote on it this Monday.

The solution of relocating the statues to an area where confederate soldiers are buried is quite good, I think. I prefer not to destroy art or things of historical of significance, even if they are largely seen as offensive/distasteful. But finding an appropriate place to put such things can be a challenge. I think this was a good answer.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. I agree

The "Confederacy" did exist and that history includes a war that still represents the greatest loss of American lives.

But given the nation's motto that is oft extolled - "E Pluribus Unum" (Out of Many, One), the period of the southern "Confederacy" was the antithesis of that goal, and should not be "glorified". However it is part of our history and can still be remembered, in context, as being part and parcel of the fits and starts and bumps and bruises of our "grand experiment", that is still in-process.

[SharonClark]

6. Good for them. They are (finally) a model of leadership for the rest of the country.

[dalton99a]

7. Precisely.

[Moostache]

8. Good on Baltimore for once...K&R (n/t)

[Aristus]

9. Oh man...

there's going to be some hillbilly butt-hurt over this...

[ProgressiveValue]

10. Very smart way of doing it!

[Maven]

12. Iron-cast traitors. Good riddance, finally. nt

[SweetieD]

13. Sad that we have to do this under the cover of darkness. There should be a consensus that they need

to go. They should have went down decades ago or never have been put up.