READERS RESPOND

March was about more than Confederate monuments

The subheadline of your article in Monday’s paper about Sunday’s “Solidarity with Charlottesville” rally in Baltimore said “City Protesters demand end of white supremacy, Confederate monuments” (Aug. 13). The caption under the accompanying photo showed someone atop the Lee-Jackson statue at Wyman Park Dell and said, “Protesters want that and three other Confederate monuments removed.”

In fact, that was only a very small piece of the march that I attended at Wyman Park Dell.

The Facebook announcement about the event said, “Stand in solidarity with anti-racists in Charlottesville and learn/join the movements against white supremacy here in Baltimore.” It didn’t say that it was about removing the city’s Confederate related statues. Nor did most of the speakers at the rally talk about that. The attendees were black and white, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, gay and straight, recent immigrants, and all kinds of other religions and philosophies, races, and ethnicities, and variations. It wasn’t about erasing the symbols of a 150 year-old war. Rather, it was about the need to come together as a community against bigots and to find ways to ensure equality for all people. That’s what the vast majority of speakers talked about; that’s what the vast majority of demonstrators were advocating. At a time when certain influential people and their followers are looking for ways to discredit the news media, it’s even more important to do everything you can to get the story right.

Jon Shorr, Baltimore

 

These are only statues, people

It’s a statue. It’s made of granite and metal, was erected usually decades ago to commemorate a person in history who the people of that time felt needed to be recognized. It stood for a moment in our history. Thousands of people walk past it, countless schoolchildren have been taught lessons in front of it, yet it doesn’t speak, it doesn’t move, it just sits. Times change, people change, and our cultural habits change, but history is written and the past does not change (“Baltimore mayor contacts contractors about removing Confederate monuments,” Aug. 14).

With everything going on in our world, from the conflicts to the weather tragedies, to all the uncertainties and threats in the world today, why do we fight each other over a statue in a park? If you look at that time in history and you don’t believe that person deserved recognition for what they did or what they stood for, then ignore the piece of granite, walk by it and don’t read its inscription. Go about your day and do something constructive with your life to help the future instead of fighting for something that happened decades ago and will never, ever change. Taking the statue down does not change history, does not change what that person did or stood for, it changes nothing. It only changes the fact that people are digging into our historical past to find something to complain about. People, get a life, do some good in this world, it’s just a statue.

Gary Lusby, Ocean View, Del.

Hate must be overcome

The rally last Saturday in Charlottesville. VA was a sad day, not only for the people who were injured but also for our country to see hate on national display (“Trump’s failure to condemn,” Aug. 13). The man driving the car into a crowd killing – murdering really – a young woman can only be described as pure evil. How could the man who drove the car have enough hate in his heart, at age 20, to kill?

On Monday morning on C-Span, I saw a clip of the news conference held in Charlottesville by the leader of the rally. People disagreeing with him shouted him down and then attacked him. It seems angry hate creates only more hate. I’m old enough to remember a response to hate used in the 1960’s. Maybe if the people diesagreeing with the wrong-headed ideas of the rally leader turned their backs as a group to him then sang “We shall overcome” in very loud voices to drown out the hate, it would have worked.

There are more good people in the world than angry hateful people. Deep in my heart, I do believe that someday we shall overcome the hate.

David C. Hill, Baltimore