Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

Da Sun, Christopher Columbus statue near Little Italy brought down, tossed into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Police stood by.

A crowd of shouting protesters yanked down the Christopher Columbus statue near Little Italy, dragged it to the edge of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and rolled it with a splash into the water as fireworks went off around the city on the night of the Fourth of July.

Dedicated in 1984, the statue is the latest monument in the U.S. to fall this year during the national reckoning over racism and police violence that also has toppled statues of Confederate figures and enslavers around the country.
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The torn-down Columbus statue is part of a “re-examination taking place nationally and globally around some of these monuments and statues that may represent different things to different people,” said Lester Davis, a spokesman for Democratic Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, on Saturday night.

“We understand the dynamics that are playing out in Baltimore are part of a national narrative,” Davis said. “We understand the frustrations. What the city wants to do is serve as a national model, particularly with how we’ve done with protesting. We’ve seen people who have taken to the streets, we have supported them. We are going to continue to support it. That’s a full stop.”

So the Democratic Mayor of Baltimore supports the destruction of city property? Good know. If I lived in Baltimore I'd be reluctant to help pay for any more.

The Columbus statue was dragged down as people marched across the city Saturday demanding reallocation of funds from the police department to social services, a reassessment of the public education system, reparations for Black people, housing for the homeless, and the removal of all statues “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers,” according to a flyer.
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Davis said he did not know whether police officers were ordered to allow the statue to be torn down. But he made clear that protecting statues was not a priority of the city police department in the face of homicides and other violent crime.

“Our officers in Baltimore City, who are some of the finest in country, they are principally concerned with the preservation of life,” the mayor’s spokesman said. “That is sacrosanct. Everything else falls secondary to that, including statues.”

City Council President Brandon Scott issued a statement Saturday night saying he suggested former Mayor Catherine Pugh remove the Columbus statue in 2017 when she ordered the removal of several Confederate monuments in the city following a violent conflict in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I support Baltimore’s Italian-American community and Baltimore’s indigenous community. I cannot, however, support Columbus,” Scott said.

Huh?

Police maintained distance for much of the protest, which included a march through Fells Point and Harbor East as restaurant patrons dined outdoors on a busy Saturday night. The group stopped briefly outside restaurant Ouzo Bay, which has been come under criticism following a June incident in which Black mother Marcia Grant and her 9-year-old son, Dallas, were denied service at the restaurant. Protesters cheered and applauded patrons who walked out of the eatery in response to their presence.

Weaving among modern apartment buildings and upscale grocery stores, chanting “Black people used to live here,” the group made its way back to the vacant pedestal where the Columbus statue had stood just an hour earlier and applauded their work to take it down.

“This is the only way we can stop hatred,” an organizer bellowed across the crowd.

Huh?

Carved in Italian Carrara marble, the toppled statue was owned by the city and dedicated on Oct. 8, 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan.