Who’s complacent? — not Baltimore

This city removed several Confederate monuments before dawn Wednesday in a stealth operation that highlights the growing backlash against such memorials across the country.

“I said I would move as quickly as I could, and I did,” Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, a Democrat, said in an interview. “We didn’t need those kinds of symbols.”

Bravo, and let’s hope Old Town Alexandria — wihch frankly I have never liked — does the same with its prominent Lee statue.  But, posturing aside, the real import of this story has not yet been digested.  This statue removal was done suddenly, without democratic input for the final decision to proceed, and, as far as I can tell, without much in the way of leaks.  The mayor just did it.  Physically.  Overnight.  The importance of physical space, and how we shape and present it, must have been paramount in her mind.

That is what the end of complacency looks like.  It may just be a blip, but keep the nature of this episode in mind as you track subsequent news developments in this and other areas.

Here is the WSJ article.

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