Thousands of anti-racist dockworkers have shut down a port in Oakland as workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union went on strike at 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States to protest against racist police violence and exploitation. pic.twitter.com/pljIAyGy8S
— redfish (@redfishstream) June 19, 2020
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If they treated people with even half of the respect they treat this inanimate object, there would be no protests now.
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Riding my bike through Golden Gate Park yesterday I noticed that the monument to Miguel de Cervantes, 17th century Spanish author of Don Quixote, had been targeted with spray paint including the text “BASTARD.” I later learned that three other statues in the park were toppled by protesters yesterday: Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant.
I get why protesters would target Junipero Serra (who brutally subjugated the native peoples of California) and Francis Scott Key (slave-owning white supremacist author of the Star Spangled Banner). I can also understand why a lot of people wouldn’t be fans of Ulysses S. Grant, because even though he was on the right side of the Civil War he also oversaw a bloody, genocidal period of western expansion in America’s history and was briefly the legal owner of an enslaved man (albeit one he emancipated before the war).
But what’s up with Miguel de Cervantes? As far as I know his most significant contribution to history is writing what is often considered the first modern novel. Is he also responsible for some evil shit I just never heard about?
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Confederate statue commits suicide
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Poetic justice.
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No idea, but the Wikipedists are already on it (punctuation and spelling true to original):
In June 2020, hords of ignorant demonstrators in California vandalized the monument he had in San Francisco, since they believed that Miguel de Cervantes was a fascist, a movement that started three centuries after his death [63] [64] [65]
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That made me chortle.
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It’s since been edited:
In June 2020, a Cervantes sculpture in San Francisco was vandalized. The vandalism came amid nationwide demonstrations to remove Confederate statues others perceived as symbols of hate and colonial violence in the highly publicized killing of George Floyd. The timing led to widespread accusations against Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters by right-wing media outlets, though many commentators have noted that the vandalism consisted of two instances of a well-known White supremacist symbol, along with the word ``Bastard and none of the symbols commonly deployed by Antifa or Black Lives Matter protesters.
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Today the governor’s ordered that all confederate statues on capitol grounds be removed. He tried to do this back when he was elected, but the general assembly previously passed a law which made it almost impossible to get these statues taken down.
Depending on your definition and whether they’re removed, that leaves somewhere between 1 and 3 memorials to confederates left in the city (there are 2 memorials to NC politicians who also fought for the south, plus one generic memorial to the dead in the historic cemetery.)
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Maybe those were Trump supporters? I mean, Grant is one of the few presidents who can give Donnie a run for his money when it comes to corruption.
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I see some Wikipeople can’t stand the idea of being out-ignoranced.
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i’ve been wondering, if they can’t remove them by law – why can’t they just cover them up, or erect walls to block them from sight.
something like plywood walls would be nice, cause you could get some good murals going.
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From what I remember, Grant seemed to kind of ineptly stumble into corruption. On the other hand Trump basically YOLOs right into it, welcoming it with open arms.
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Harding was probably the best example of Presidential corruption prior to Trump, though he was at least good enough at corruption to keep most of it secret until after his death. Most Presidents who die in office get a big boost in post-mortem popularity even if they were divisive figures in life, but Warren had the opposite experience.
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A mural showing Woody Guthrie’s guitar with “This Machine Kills Fascists” will be in plain view for the rally (plus talk about Guthrie’s songs about Fred Trump):
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They’re all corrupt
People who go on and on about the alleged awfulness of Ulysses Grant have … other issues with him
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But the corruption in his administration likely contributed to the unpopularity of reconstruction in the north and a shift by white voters to support ending it… But he also took the KKK seriously and tried to use the occupation to fight against it.
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These people aren’t subtle.
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