I haven't paid any attention to the demolition of Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond, so I didn't know it had all been done by a single person, Devon Henry:
The name carries weight in Richmond these days. Over the past three years, as the former capital of the Confederacy has taken down more than a dozen monuments to the Lost Cause, Henry — who is Black — has overseen all the work.
These aren't huge jobs, but they pay well and plenty of contractors would like a shot at them. So why did Henry get every single contract?
City and state officials said they turned to Team Henry Enterprises after a long list of bigger contractors — all White-owned — said they wanted no part of taking down Confederate statues.
For a Black man to step in carried enormous risk. Henry concealed the name of his company for a time and long shunned media interviews. He has endured death threats, seen employees walk away and been told by others in the industry that his future is ruined. He started wearing a bulletproof vest on job sites and got a permit to carry a concealed firearm for protection.
....The call that changed Henry’s life came in the middle of a business meeting in early June 2020....On the line was Clark Mercer, the chief of staff for then-Gov. Ralph Northam....“I was pretty forthcoming that we hadn’t been able to find anybody to take on the job,” Mercer said in an interview. In fact, the responses from other contractors were “pretty overtly racist,” he said, including language that he found threatening.
I can't even think of anything to say about this. It's just so goddamn depressing.
It's NOT depressing Kevin. It's highly uplifting, it's about persevering to right the cosmic wrongs done in Virginia. But yes sad that Henry and his family were in danger for this. I nominate Mr. Henry as Virginian of the Year for 2022 🙂
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Not it is not depressing, unless your a person still imbibing yourself in the lost cause and I guarantee you there will be documentaries and news specials on this extraordinary man in the not so distant future.
As someone who used to be an imbiber myself, looking back isn't interesting that in many nations that had civil strife that led to blood warfare, the losers of such warfare were never honored in the fashion that Confederacy was. You certainly don't see monuments to Chaing Kai-Shek in Mainland China, or Louis XVI in France, or James II or Charles I in Great Britain, or White generals and leaders in Russia, or Thieu in Vietnam or to any of the Ibo leaders in Nigeria. Only in the U.S were those considered to be traitors after the war were honored in such a fashion.
Now why is this? Obviously there was an interest in both sides to "bind the wounds" of the nation up as quickly as possible but in so doing this interest in healing gave legitimacy to the secessionist cause whether intentional or not, as though it was mere difference in tariff policy that led to the deaths over a half-million Americans. And in doing so, it became clear that these monuments were not just memorials to the dead or to valor and honor but living testaments to support that cause still has within the country. This is simply not sustainable, which is something I came to the realization during Obama's Presidency for myself personally. Communities can do what they will but cities with black majorities like Richmond are simply not going to keep monuments to a cause that strived to perpetuate and expand slavery and no one should be surprised by this. If certain people can't handle this or are willing to turn down work and money because they're still wedded to that cause, tough then. Their loss. But there's no turning back.
You're depressed? I live in Richmond, more or less, and I see the racism every day in the comments to articles in the local newspaper. If I don't agree that, as a billionaire, Lebron James is just as evil as David Koch, I'm a racist. I'm called racist. If I don't agree that CRT is being taught in schools. I'm racist if I think the state budget for teacher salaries should be larger and Gov. Youngkin should keep his bag fat nose out of curriculum standards.
I'm not just depressed. I'm angry and disgusted with these people.
I"m not simply depressed about this, also a more than a bit scared. The wackos are threatening violence and one of these days it will go beyond vandalism to hurting real people. If you read the posts on Nextdoor in the Fairfax area, it will make your hair stand on end.
The Confederate flag entering the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was not a coincidence. It was the point of the entire insurrection. It was the intent to call that a sign of "patriot" activity. And it was entirely buttressed by all those various monuments across the nation that portray the Confederacy as honorable.
So those threatening this brave contractor are accurate in one regard: removing those monuments threatens to remove that "patriot" label from the seditionists. His is a noble cause.
Closed my. NextDoor account soon after joining due to frequency of racist & xenophobic remarks, found another local news site that turned out to be "moderated" by sole owner, a woman who also allowed such bigotry but didn't answer a question about it. or let other views post. What's left is Patch, in which I have little interest.
And after years of trips to Richmond on Advocacy Day, viewing hearings & General Assembly sessions with other policy advocates & friends, the attitudes of old-line residents being quite clear everywhere, it is a relief to no longer deal with attitudes to Black fellow policy advocates & friends. The vandalism on mosques, synagogues. & churches in Fairfax is bad enough - southern hospitality farther into this state is unnerving.
Gave up on editing to remove reputation after encountering THREE "Not Acceptable" responses to a similar post - no bad language or other objectionable material - then the aggravation of orange text, having to exit text box to see black characters for further slowing, misses.
But the commercial trolls seem not to be deemed "Not Acceptabl" by the WordPress software?
r/Nova on reddit is less terrible then Nextdoor. I'm not ready to give up on Nextdoor but I'm careful with who I joust with on there and what I say. A neighbor a couple of streets over is getting real life harassment over what she has said at school board meetings. A big push by conservatives is to sow FUD and terror over the public schools and to sow fear over "crime" to attempt to get Nextdoor readers to turn against the school board and the Commonwealth's Attorney who are all up for reelection this year.
Racist construction workers? Wow, this is very surprising. We should Pepsi challenge Virginia's construction workers with NYC's or Boston's to see which has more racists. Might be a very enlightening addition to the evergreen "look at all of those racists in the South" stories.
Your point is clear and true, but, I'd like to point out that racism is everywhere.
Their point should be that slavery of anyone is wrong. Any symbols of that era should be relegated to the trash. There were some Confederate soldiers who were good people but, for whatever their reason, they joined up with a disgusting and wrong headed group.
Just as Germans joining up with Hitler were wrong, so were those "fighting" for the Confederacy.
No argument that the statues should be gone.
Even contractors in Virginia who are not racist themselves must be aware that there are a lot of racists around them. It doesn't take a lot of thought to figure out that "taking that contract could get me killed". If a contractor has enough non-controversial work to keep him busy, I can fully understand why he would turn down those statue removal contracts, not because of his own racism but because of fear of other people's racism.
I hope Mr. Henry's charging a very substantial risk premium. If nobody else is willing to bid on the jobs, he should be able to pretty much name his price.
I'm afraid that this is reality in this day and age. No thanks to t-Rump and the Megidiots.
Racist christo-facists are well aware of their diminishing influence in this country. They know they will have difficulty winning national elections going forward. For decades their strategy has been to suppress the minority and liberal vote. If that doesn't work they will take power by force. Jan 6th was the most obvious event in a long term violent insurgency with the goal of nothing less than a christo-facist autocracy.
Dated a girl from the South. She took those statues very seriously. Never registered to her why not everyone might share the same warm fuzzies about them.
I imagine black employees would refuse to take down statues of the violent misogynistic criminal George Floyd.
They very well might. But consider, how many deaths was George Floyd responsible for?
Bitter, angry white guy makes a great apples and oranges comparison to make it clear that he has grievances about those black folks.
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It's just so goddamn depressing.
The unbelievably powerful hold of historic grievance down through the generations is depressing. True! We're talking about a war that ended 157 years ago. It almost seems as if it's in the DNA.
The only way to counter it is to dilute the political power of the Cracker assholes via the migration of large numbers of non-White Supremacists. The descendants of the Confederates and Klansmen will still probably be nursing their ressentiment and anger 100 years from now. But hopefully it'll be an impotent form of rage, devoid of any ability to muck things up for the rest of us.
And Virginia, as recent elections have shown, is well on its way to achieving such an outcome. So, that's something right there to mitigate the depression.
Erm, make that 158 years!
I've been driving 2 hours through Virginia on I-66 several times a week for the last month or so. I've been playing baseball on Fairfax County high school fields for a decade. In the last few years, many of the schools have been renamed (J.E.B. Stuart to Justice High School, Robert E. Lee to John Lewis High School, I assume for the 1865 Virginia governor, and so forth).
But then driving through Winchester this evening to get food on my way home, I encounter street names like Jubal Early. And honestly, it's just kind of in the air in rural Virginia (and in West Virginia, where I've been driving to). It's nowhere near the same, but I can "pass" there without fear of getting hassled because I'm a white boy in an old pickup truck. Always felt like locals gave me funny looks when I drove through in my Accord, like they could just tell that they suspected I was a big city lib'rul passing through - or worse, invading their home with my plans for a family vacation spot. And given the wide variety of social cues we humans broadcast on the regular, I don't doubt that they can tell.
I get the same "enemy territory" feeling when I go back to Iowa, but it's a bit different because it's an undercurrent rather than in your face.
When I visited the Shenandoah Valley a few years ago, it seemed that everything - streets, buildings, everything - was named for Stonewall Jackson. Stonewall Jackson Road. The Stonewall Jackson Highway. Stonewall Jackson High School. The Stonewall Jackson Hotel and the attached Stonewall Jackson Conference Center. On and on.
Even before I lived in VA and just drove through it, it was always notable that once you got southwest of, say, Manassas, it seemed like basically everything was named after some Confederate or other. We nicknamed it "Stonewall Jackson country" because it was so noticeable.
John R. Lewis HS is named for the civil rights icon who recently passed away. The county is also offering to create new diplomas with the current HS name for any alumni who request it.
Well TIL. Just didn't figure it was named after him given that he was born in Alabama and then represented Georgia.
I have been driving through the south for nearly 20 years. I can say that the number of traitor flags that I see has dropped considerably over that time.
This passage from a great article by Austin Bramwell written in 2006 makes my point and those calling themselves "conservatives" need to heed it. Needless to say it took a Black President to really change my perspective and I owe that Obama specifically.
Still others eulogize local attachments and ancestral loyalties. They invoke a litany of examples: family, church, kin, community, school, the “little platoons” in which Burke found the basis of political association. Celebrating such “infra-political” institutions may well have made sense in the 1950s, the high tide of American nationalism and federal government prestige. At most other times, however, ancestral attachments are dangerously subversive. The U.S. could not have survived had it not ruthlessly extirpated the ancestral loyalties of both natives and newcomers; Great Britain suffered endless civil wars before the great constitutional oak that Burke praised took root; the West itself succeeded precisely because it cut short the reach of the extended family or clan. Ancestral loyalties are the curse of uncivilized peoples.
The article mentioned quoted one state official for the proposition that white-owned businesses declined the statue removal contract. I for one would like to see the point corroborated including referencing those companies. As it stands, the article falls in the anectodal category so it is not solid reporting.
Oh brother. If that bothers you so much do a FOIA request and obtain the acquisition paperwork related to the state contract with the construction company. You are basically calling the Northam administration official a liar and Mr. Henry a liar.
Politicians are known to exaggerate and they are many ways a story like this could be spun. There is absolutely nothing wrong in wanting a story to be corroborated. Was there a request for bids? I do note the individual who got the contract had donated to the Northam campaign. Coincidence? Maybe, but nothing in what I posted questioned Mr. Henry or his actions, your overt insinuation is just false.
Oh for Pete's sake. Henry had to reach all the way to Connecticut to find a crane. Why?
Polls show a majority of people do not want confederate statues taken down. I’m glad to see see some people taking a stand and not contributing to their removal.
Quinnipiac had a poll last year with 52% for the removal of confederate statues and 44% against. What’s your source?
Google it. I just did before I commented and the first three or four polls showed a slim majority opposing tearing them down.
Didn’t realize a couple of the polls I glanced at were just in specific states (NC and VA). Those showed majorities opposing reading them down. Looks like most national polls show opinion Dailey evenly split, some with majorities opposing and some with majorities for tearing them down.
What I don’t agree with is labeling anyone that is against tearing them down racist. You can honor your state and those that fought for it without being racist. No one is saying they support slavery and think it shouldn’t have been abolished.
Are they literally demolishing statues, or just removing then and sticking them in storage? When I've heard of statues being removed it it usually the latter not the former.