Monumental lies
In May, the death of George Floyd in police custody led to a historic public uprising across the United States. This movement also drew renewed attention to monuments to America’s racist history – monuments that some have argued were “erected to exclude.”
“For a long time, more than a century really, removing these monuments seemed impossible,” reporter Brian Palmer explains on this week’s episode with Type Investigations. “There were resolutions, protests, meetings and commissions. And little came of these.”
Until the uprising. “The movement that emerged put history on the fast track,” Palmer explained. One by one, the statues started falling.
Palmer began reporting with Seth Freed Wessler in 2018. They sought to understand why so many of America’s memorials seemed to distort the very facts they were supposedly commemorating – and who paid for this distorted history. What they found surprised them.
- In the last decade alone, American taxpayers have spent at least $40 million on Confederate monuments and groups that perpetuate racist ideology.
- One historical site in Biloxi, Mississippi, received $21 million in taxpayer funds in recent years. A tour guide told the reporters that “slavery was good and bad.”
- Taxpayers have invested in multiple sites that served as shrines for White supremacists.
Also in the episode: The story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy. In 1998, the state was set to celebrate its cuarto centenario: the 400th anniversary of the state’s colonization by the Spanish. But a dramatic act of vandalism would turn the making of a monument in Albuquerque into a fight over history the city didn’t expect.
Plus: A new photo essay from Brian Palmer about his experience photographing Confederate monuments across his home city of Richmond, Virginia. “It felt transgressive at first – a Black man, the descendant of enslaved people, shooting monuments to White supremacy and treason,” he writes. “And then, it began to feel futile.”
This episode first aired in December 2018. The following year, it won a Peabody Award.
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In/Vulnerable
Douglas Hawkins has been a funeral home director for more than 30 years. He works at the family-run Ideal Funeral Home in South Carolina.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has watched countless families struggle to move through the grieving process at a distance from the loved ones they lost. “People not being able to do that on a large scale – that's a psychological change that this country will experience for years to come,” he said.
Even though he understands the necessity of physical distancing, Hawkins sometimes wonders about the psychic costs associated with staying safe.
“People are focusing on the disease itself, but I think the worst part is the rules we're making to counteract the spread,” he said. “I am not saying what we're doing is wrong. But the question is, are those rules going to be better for us in the long haul?”
This is the latest installment in our ongoing In/Vulnerable comics series with The Nib, which investigates inequity in the pandemic. Read all the chapters here.
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What we’re reading
Caged lives – The Nib
Imprisoned in Guantanamo, wild animals reminded me I’m human.
The plan that could give us our lives back – The Atlantic
The wand that will accomplish this feat is a thin paper strip, no longer than a finger. It is a coronavirus test. (Harvard epidemiology professor Michael) Mina says that the U.S. should mass-produce these inexpensive and relatively insensitive tests – unlike other methods, they require only a saliva sample – in quantities of tens of millions a day. These tests, which can deliver a result in 15 minutes or less, should then become a ubiquitous part of daily life. Before anyone enters a school or an office, a movie theater or a Walmart, they must take one of these tests. Test negative, and you may enter the public space. Test positive, and you are sent home. In other words: Mina wants to test nearly everyone, nearly every day.
The post office is deactivating mail sorting machines ahead of the election – VICE
In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the (U.S. Postal Service) has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.
A picture of change for a world in constant motion – The New York Times
I love it most for how it captures an instant, with an exactitude that feels almost photographic. Here. Now. A country road, two trees, daytime: Hold onto your hats.
Pollution is killing black Americans. This community fought back - The New York Times Magazine
African-Americans are 75 percent more likely than others to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste. Can a grass-roots environmental-justice movement make a difference?
How social justice slideshows took over Instagram - Vox
Instagram, once an apolitical din, reflected that change. It no longer felt appropriate — even for celebrities and influencers, who tend to exist unfazed by current events — to skip over politics and resume regular programming. The escapist days of uninterrupted brunch photos and filtered selfies have been replaced by protest photos and black squares.
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