For A Statue

When the City finally tears these monuments out of the ground - and now, because of 8-12, they will have no choice - they will melt them down right there on site, re-use the bronze to build new statues, to pay tribute to people like Heather Heyer who tried to fight off an invasion with open arms.

Because that's honestly what it felt like: An Invasion.  I really didn't care about our statues before 8-12.  I could see both sides - both the need for social progress and also the need to maintain an honest assessment of our past.  But I'm unclear on how one's right to march down the street with AR-15's, body armor, and gas masks in an act of intimidation is protected by the Bill of Rights as a means of peaceful protest.  Apparently, the legal line between open carry and brandishing has now settled right at the act of pulling the trigger.  These are strange times.  Somewhere, MLK must have rolled over in his grave, turned on the news, given it the middle finger, and then rolled back over and went to sleep.

I just don't think you can invade our town, kill the locals, and expect us to protect your statues anymore.

Like it or not, where once stood a monument in remembrance of The Lost Cause, the complexity and meaning of which we struggle to understand, we will have, instead, an equally-sized statue of Heather's Chihuahua, Violet, smiling in that way that Chihuahuas do.

Because Karma might be slow, but eventually it works.

A statue of Berke Bates and that birthday cake he never got a chance to enjoy.

A statue of Jay Cullen ripping it down Tilman West.  We could put that one over in Stokesville.  There are no words to adequately thank you for your service and sacrifice, Jay.  You were literally protecting my town in our darkest hour, and you paid for that with your life.

Revisionist History notwithstanding, I'm just sad at this point, and I'm sick of it.  Where before I think you could have split rooms in Charlottesville on the subject of Confederate Statues, I think 8-12 stacks the deck almost completely against them.

What exactly was the point, then?  



"What is this statue trying to tell him? 
Think of me when you put on a wig?  
Think of my wooden teeth and remember to floss?
Think of me before catching pneumonia?
Think of me when you lose to the North?
Think of me when you cross your next river?
Think of the memory of me outlasting my lifetime while you're going to die unmissed, unremembered, and unloved you stupid schmuck."

-Marianne Wiggins, Almost Heaven