Baltimore isn't constrained by the state laws about removing monuments.

Post #419,788 by Another Scott 8/17/17 9:11:36 AM 8/17/17 9:11:36 AM Reply	Baltimore isn't constrained by the state laws about removing monuments. It really is different in places where the laws were changed in the 1950s (or 1920s) to explicitly make it nearly impossible to remove the trappings of white supremacy. "Well, then change the law!!1" Yes, but when the other party controls the legislature via gerrymandering and voter suppression, and the courts through reactionary appointees, and the laws are so difficult to change, then there is nothing wrong with the people making their views known through protests and agitation. Protests are part of the process of getting the laws changed. Sometimes it's appropriate for people to take things into their own hands (like Bree Newsome did). Sometimes it isn't. I don't have a problem with Confederate memorials being (peacefully) removed by public action if the powers-that-be refuse to do so in a timely manner. Especially after Mother Emanuel AME Church and Charlottesville. They are overt symbols of oppression and need to go. (I recognize that there can and often are problems with going around the law. But there are times when that is necessary. Was removal of the Berlin Wall by the people a bad thing?) My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #419,793 by mmoffitt 8/17/17 11:21:01 AM 8/17/17 11:21:01 AM Reply	Re: ... the other party controls the legislature via gerrymandering and voter suppression. I submit the more important factor is the fact that "the other party" consistently got more votes and that is the real problem. It is the people. The statues have been up for 100 years or so and in that time a majority wanted them left up. That's a people problem. In many ways, we are the evil of the world that is properly represented by Trump and the Republican Party. While it is more comfortable to blame "gerrymandering" and "voter suppression" and various other "dirty tricks", the fact remains that it is We, the People of the United States who are in large measure what's wrong with the country. A handful of years before he died, I was driving my father to the VA in Asheville. It's a lovely part of the country and he loved it. But less so as he aged. He was looking out the window at his beloved mountains and after a while he said, "This is such lovely country." I replied, "Yes, it is." Then he said, "It's too bad the people fuck it up so horribly." That's as true today as it was when he said it. bcnu, Mikem It's mourning in America again.
Post #419,795 by Ashton 8/17/17 4:15:32 PM 8/17/17 4:15:32 PM Reply	(One arrives at such a conclusion fairly: only after it marinates-well. I wot.) Naturally I can’t recall some point-in-time when I came to that realization, though my early-on experiences with My [Bircher] Gramma© likely made the Noticing come earlier than … in most (actual Observers of ..their/our!-fish-bowl?) Believe it requires many years of marinating in the stew of daily trash-talk from This specimen, inane vapors from That candidate, just plain Nastiness from THAT one Before a One concludes (just as simply-said as your Father’s summary) … that, No I am Not just some misanthrope lookin’ fer feckless confirmation to add to other biases: I Am Amidst a largely hypocritical, oft massively Iggerant of-all-aspects of history/local or Worldwide etc. Tribe(s) of Know-nothings who Like It just that way (cf. all the bitchin SIgs to that effect.) I also had an Aunt (on Father’s side) a Teacher of tads, who had the Common Sense to read-up on ’Socialism/Communism’ in the ’30s, and deem that ~ just maybe in that —> Direction lies a saner future than THIS {she had not the words Clusterfuck-denouement-of Vulture Capitalismo then, or even later, but..} ‘Auntie Flo always was My Fav Auntie.. Carrion.. (Sometimes it right-next-to you) in the next voting booth.. ...

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