JULY

**2, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

Monuments: Coming Down, Going Up?

We need to broaden our discussion of who's worthy, or not worthy, of
monumentalization. It should be obvious that the men who made war on the
United States in the cause of preserving and expanding slavery were
traitors. As yet, though, none of the Confederate monument preservers
have been compelled to argue why the Confederate form of treason
deserves such honors, while other forms of treason do not. If Jefferson
Davis, why not Benedict Arnold? If the difference is that Davis remains
a hero to a particular region, then why not, say, Julius Rosenberg, who,
whether a Soviet spy or not, had a lot of support in parts of the Bronx?

In my very own part of D.C., less than half a mile from my home,
there's a statue in Meridian Hill Park that the District would be well
advised to remove. The park has long been home to three statues that
seem to have been placed there by the principle of maximum random
selection. One is of Joan of Arc. The second is of Dante. The third is
of James Buchanan, who was not only our worst pre-Trump president but a
president who so encouraged Southern extremism that he paved the way for
Southern secession and the Civil War.

As the great American historian Kenneth Stampp documented in

**America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink**, Buchanan insisted on
conditioning Kansas's bid for statehood on its adoption of a
pro-slavery constitution. Such a constitution was explicitly and
overwhelmingly rejected by Kansas voters, but Southern Democrats rallied
around Buchanan's position while Northern Democrats largely opposed
it, which led to the party split that enabled Republican Abraham Lincoln
to defeat the two Democratic presidential candidates who opposed him in
the election of 1860. After Lincoln's election but before his
inauguration, outgoing president Buchanan stood idly by as Southerners
seized most of the U.S. military installations and equipment in Southern
states.

Why Buchanan is allowed to keep company with Joan and Dante in a D.C.
public park is a damned good question.

Meanwhile, in D.C.'s Union Station, its great and beautiful train
terminal, there's a small bust of the founder of the union of Pullman
car porters, A. Philip Randolph. A lifelong democratic socialist,
Randolph not only led the nation's first African American trade union,
but initiated the March on Washington movement that compelled Franklin
Roosevelt to order the desegregation of defense plants in 1941, Harry
Truman to order the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, and
culminated in the great March on Washington in 1963. Randolph deserves a
larger memorial in the nation's capital, as does his aide Bayard
Rustin, not to mention Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B Du
Bois, Ida B. Wells, and a host of others.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Trump's War on Asylum Seekers Struck Down by a Trump-Appointed Judge

Yet again, a conservative judge ruled that nativist zeal absent proper
legal procedure didn't make for a compelling case. BY MARCIA BROWN

Union Busting Under the New NAFTA

Mexican workers are still at the mercy of phony labor organizations and
anti-union local police. Can Mexico's progressive president Andrés
Manuel López Obrador gain control? BY ROBERT KUTTNER

This Time, It's the Democrats' Infrastructure Week

House Democrats steered an ambitious transportation and infrastructure
plan through the chamber. Structured more like a wish list, it's dead
on arrival in the Senate. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

Trump's Immigration Order: Fast Track to an Abusive Past

The president limits U.S. entry to farmworkers with no rights-a boon
to both Big Ag and nativists. BY DAVID BACON

Unsanitized: Jobs Reports Struggle to Catch Up to Today's Reality

Plus, the case count/death count divergence at the state level. This is
The COVID-19 Daily Report for July 2, 2020. BY DAVID DAYEN

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