Seems like vegetation isn’t likely to do the job on its own anytime soon, otherwise the surrounding rockface would have been covered up centuries ago.
Maybe somebody could smear a bunch of chia seeds over the thing or something.
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Sir, you had -and showed- more balls alone than that entire bunch of heavily armed assholes taken altogether.
I may have missed something of the dialogue (I’m a lot less trained in spoken English compared to written one), but although that cop probably leans to the far right as many others, it seems to me he has been very professional in helping de-escalate the situation.
Be careful however. Those idiots need enemies; their entire way of thinking is based on using force whenever possible to conquer respect through fear rather than winning it through admiration. They’re potential criminals waiting for a chance to become murderers, so never expect any attempt to de-escalate an argument by any of them. You were extremely lucky to find a cop that wanted to do his job.
Hmm. Is the immediate area already infested with kudzu? That would cover it fast. Or perhaps some Carolina Jessamine. Might be a good gorilla garden project.
ETA: That thing is huge! I should have looked up a picture.
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Maybe some climbing ivy at the base, and a shit-ton of Pothos plants draping down from the top.
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Need a bigger projector and this crew.
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To me it sounded like the cop was shifting the blame on to him for daring to wear that t-shirt, visiting a public place he had every right to be at and getting himself surrounded by potentially violent white supremacists. It wasn’t overt but subtle and insidious with his constant use of that word ‘de-escalate’ and insinuating he was there plotting with friends (no doubt some antifa bogeymen).
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Last Place trophy. TIFTFY
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Don’t forget when he slipped up and dropped the term “Patriots” in there. That one really got my Spidey-senses tingling, if not for all the excess gear they were wearing.
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Holy crap - never even heard of this relief sculpture before.
i suppose it could be turned into a teachable moment, but being in the here and now I think the more useful signal would be to scrape it - you have have a teachable moment over the wound left on the rock.
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me neither, and it’s funny that. it’s the largest confederate tribute in the us apparently, and from that ap article above
The predominantly Black demonstrators on July 4 spoke out against the huge sculpture depicting Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Carved into a granite mountain, the bas-relief sculpture is the largest Confederate monument ever crafted. The 100 to 200 protesters, many of whom carried large rifles, were peaceful.
so people from the area protested in july, but it didn’t make front page then. the activities of the white supremacists though got plenty today.
in a way, it’s good it got so much exposure: everyone’s like what are these traitorous white people up to this time?
at the same time, hundreds of mainly Black people seeking to get torn down wasn’t broadcast at all.
seems like something is off in that equation for sure
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I heard the cop talking about his friends but missed the reference to “plotting”; that changes something. Also heard that term “patriots”, but for some reason didn’t see anything negative ATM. You two might be right; also the cop knew there were phone cameras in action around and possibly didn’t want to act stupid in front of them.
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The practical problem with the phrase “All Lives Matter” is that it has been co-opted by a bunch of vile morons that are completely certain that “all lives” doesn’t include black, red, asian, women, young or poor lives, nor indeed anyone that doesn’t fervently support Thrump.
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No, it wasn’t “co-opted” by them… it was created by them. It was always deployed as a counter to BLM, because they believe that they are saying white lives don’t matter, which isn’t the case. They are actively trying to undermine BLM because they don’t want to give up their privileges of whiteness.
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At first I hoped all those white supremacists get coronavirus, but I then realized they’re exactly the sort of dipshits that’d pass it on to way more people.
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OK, in the context of this issue I guess that is a fair way to look at it.
But it’s just three words, just like Black Lives Matter. We collectively (as in English speaking ) have this weird attachment to TLAs and that severely restricts the quality of discourse. Combine it with the far too common attitude of “if you don’t suport what I support it must mean you support my enemy” and you get the insane situation where saying the remarkably obvious ‘black lives matter’ gets turned into “oh yeah, so white lives don’t? Imma kill you!”.
If, for example we preferred four letter acronyms and had ‘Black Lives Mattter, too’ [1] it would be less easy to take that line. Of course, there are plenty of people that would still object to that, because the world seems to be full of obnoxious gits.
But this is really beside the point because it’s the fact that far too many people really do think that nobody not within their tight little in group counts as human that is a root cause. It’s a key root of racism, nationalism, classism, ageism, sexism, the whole stinking lot of them. “You are Other and must therefore be inferior”. Bah.
[1] Edit to point out my favoured FLA - Black Lives Also Matter, or BLAM!
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Another idea about what to do with it.The top seems to be flat. Perhaps a row of drop shitters (a plank to sit on with a hole in it) over the edge. Would quickly cover the mural. Might have a problem with the length of the queues, though.
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I seriously think the cops are there In a working capacity as icing on the cake; volunteering for duty to get some extra pay at a racist rally they would’ve attended anyway.
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You can’t divorce the meaning of slogans from the context in which they are used.
Nobody before or after the BLM movement was using “All Lives Matter” to mean “we must fight for the universal dignity and safety of all people and reject social inequities that prevent certain citizens from enjoying the same protections as everyone else.”
It was only ever adopted as a retort against “Black Lives Matter,” a movement formed to address a specific inequity.
Imagine how stupid someone would look if they saw these women marching in the street a century or so ago and angrily shouted “VOTES FOR EVERYONE!” at them. That’s what “All Lives Matter” is.
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I thought we went through this with “Defund the Police?”
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Please don’t pull my words out of context. It’s not a polite way to discus the context of words.
BLM is important. If we collectively preferred less content-restricting phrases and acronyms, it’s just possible we might have less trouble convincing some people about that. It might help with getting that meaning across more effectively; which might even mean that fewer people would get hurt.
That’s it. My comment was a wish that we could be less bad with both choice of words and how they get interpreted. For a species that depends on communication we seem to be very bad at it. People’s lives are damaged as a result. I don’t like that. I doubt you do either.
