there was some discussion about how the saint louis arch was a symbol of white supremacy and like sure, tear the fucker down, but like it dont even make the top ten list for places in the us that should be taken down. heres my list, feel free to disagree.
-
stone mountain. its like confederate mt rushmore.
-
mt rushmore. i dont even need to explain this one.
-
the national mall. the whitehouse, congress building, washington monument, lincoln monument, jefferson monument, arguably the arlington cemetery and mt vernon, basically just all of dc and the parts of virginia that used to be a part of it. the whole city is a monument to white supremacy and i would love to see the majority black residents vote on what should be torn down
-
the ivy league universities. harvard, yale, princeton, etc. the ivy league schools in particular created a class of ultra wealthy white upper class that can only be gotten rid of by abolishing the schools that created them.
-
guantanamo bay, technically in cuba, de facto under american control. now that i think about it critically this is probably worse than mt rushmore but like im not changing the orders, I already committed.
-
the alamo. the people who died here fought for slavery, like nations are bad and all but the land stolen from mexico in 1848 has caused a lot of material harm to the latine community and the american south west should be returned to mexico.
-
hoover dam. im not saying hydro power is entirely bad, but like the whole region its sustaining shouldnt exist, las vegas shouldnt exist, even if you got rid of the livestock that makes up the majority of the farming along the colorado, growing vegan food here wouldnt be worth it. this region of the united states sustained by hoover dam is overcapacity, mexico doesnt get nearly enough water, not trying to make a malthusian argument here but maybe dont build suburbs in the desert?
-
niagra falls. total shithole, stripmalls everywhere, the place should be a national park, the canadian side is actually worse. not even opposed to the hydropower here, just think everything else about it is just awful, no wonder why so many people commit suicide here.
-
la river. YOU TURNED A RIVER INTO CONCRETE! im sure theres a lot of shit in la that deserves destruction for its societal or historical harm, but like this shit is worse than anything i can think of in la. the car culture there is too abstract to put on the list, the beverly hills are fine with me because hasan lives there, maybe skid row, but yall literally paved a river.
-
disneyworld. i had to mention florida. im glad the state is going to be submerged underwater due to climate change. there's just so many bad places here that deserve to sink. the villages, the maralago, jacksonville, the cuban expat community that left during castro. the whole state is like a nursing home having a rave on vicodin. but disneyworld, it elicits a poisonous amount of nostalgia, look at the star wars, and look at the amusement ride based off the song of the south, go see anamatronic trump that was clearly made to be hillary clinton and had to be redesigned last minute, eat the food that would be illegal to sell in any civilized country, adults that go here for fun need re-education, like something is broke in them.
well thats my list.
the ivy league universities. harvard, yale, princeton, etc. the ivy league schools in particular created a class of ultra wealthy white upper class that can only be gotten rid of by abolishing the schools that created them.
This is by definition the tail wagging the dog stemming from a naive understanding of the social reproduction of the bourgeois class, not to mention this is philistinism - blatant anti-intellectualism.
im not saying abolish college, im saying THESE colleges. everything of value should be stripped from these buildings and sent to other schools, the students and professors who are worth anything should be transferred elsewhere, and the people who are here purely on a class basis should be banned from higher education along with their kids and grand kids.
would you say the school of oxford deserves to exist, or what about the elite primary schools that every single prime minister in england has attended without fail?
there is immense inequality in college education, people who have a college education should not have an advantage to those who dont, no school should be more prestigious than another, the ivy league must be torn down brick by brick and replaced.
philistine take. Saint Petersburg State University and Moscow State University were the most prestigious and oldest schools of the Russian Imperial elite for three centuries prior to the proclamation of the USSR. Did the Bolsheviks demolish these institutions because they were "schools in particular created a class of ultra wealthy white upper class"? The answer is a roaring resolute no! The organization that ran those universities were liquidated, replaced, and transformed into proletarian institutions dedicated to educate the people.
would they let you in their school, take their classes, could you even afford it? stop defending an institution that hates you.
you cannot reform a place like harvard to be a place of learning for the working class, it would not be harvard anymore if you did.
abolition of elite schools shouldnt be this controversial of an issue. name one school that you think should be abolished, one. theres school certainly worse than the ivy leagues that need ending, like oxford or rhodes, but like the whole education system is fucked, theres no equality to it, its a rat race that furthers class division.
do you know how many kids kill themselves every year over exams, or how much drug habits are formed by educational stress, or the debt which even outside of the united states debt is a problem with colleges.
people attain degrees not to learn but to make money, college is a racket and no true education can be had until we abolish some of the worst schools that currently exist.
you cannot reform a place like harvard to be a place of learning for the working class, it would not be harvard anymore if you did.
Do you believe the source of the source of the conservatism is in the stones? A curse on the name, perhaps? The geography having an unfavorable leyline placement?
No? Then I don't see why tearing the building down or not using it as a college would be called for.
we are talking about harvard, not hogworts. the school represents an idea bad enough we should tear down the buildings, we can and should build new schools, ones that are equitable and not elitist and dont only serve the top 1% of applicants. again, i cannot stress enough, you arent allowed in harvard, its of no material benefit to you, its not pumping out revolutionary leftist thinkers, theres no trickle down education, its a country club for nerds.
this is idealism, comrade. institutions can be replaced without tearing down buildings. if it happens during a revolution because of class anger, cool. but planning to do it because you loathe the idea of what they represent in the present is just plain idealism.
compromise: keep the buildings but use them for paintball, or raves, or a year-round furry convention
Hard disagree on the Alamo. We should keep it in memory of the time a bunch of anglos disobeyed direct orders and chose to commit mass suicide for no reason
Suburbs
Any housing development/planned neighborhood built in Florida since the 70’s
Every parking lot in Houston
That big Mormon church in LA, gives me the creeps
AT&T Stadium, just to see Jerry Jones cry
The ugly ass Verizon building in downtown manhattan
All the Wal-marts
Any and all memorials to confederate soldiers
The NSA headquarters
548 market street in San Francisco
Just gave that address a search and couldnt find anything. Whats up with it?
Pretty much all Megachurches are an insult to God, Christ and Mankind at the same time. If there are so few places of worship that multiple towns have to drive for miles to reach a single giant church, maybe there’s a better way to do it?
Goldman Sachs HQ JPMorgan Chase HQ Walmart HQ Exxon HQ Raytheon HQ Lockheed Martin HQ Google HQ Meta HQ
I hate Mt. Rushmore, but tearing it down seems like not a good solution when the main issue was that it was a sacred site stolen from Native Americans and defaced. I defer to whatever the Sioux say on the matter.
“We are now being forced to witness the lashing of our land with pomp, arrogance, and fire, hoping our sacred lands survive,” Frazier said. “This brand on our flesh needs to be removed, and I am willing to do it free of charge to the United States, by myself if I must.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/cheyenne-river-sioux-tribe-mount-rushmore-trnd/index.html
That reads to me as "remove the faces, maybe the whole recognizable shape of the heads, leave the rest of the physical location as intact as possible."
Oh, so you thought OP meant 'tear down the whole mountain?'
I don't know, but "Mt. Rushmore" is the name of the mountain, not just the faces on it.
If Stone Mountain was on that scale and not just a shitty little relief (and assuming it's not like a heritage site otherwise like Rushmore is) and people wanted to just cut off the mountain and put a little school or a community center on the plateau, I'd support it. Since it is just a shitty little relief, it would make more sense to level the relief and maybe carve a new one.
I don't know, but "Mt. Rushmore" is the name of the mountain, not just the faces on it.
I mean technically but in context I felt it was pretty clear. When has anyone ever seriously advocated for leveling a mountain because they didn't like something that was built on top of it
But yeah, point being I agree, leave it to the people whose land it is
See people say that but I never know what this actually means.
Indigenous people were running “the USA” before euros came here, they can easily do so again, no differently from places like Algeria or Vietnam.
No question about that but the population distribution and general situation is slightly different than pre-colonial contact, so the notion that we can just role back to that seems a bit silly.
I don't think the Algerian or Vietnam comparisons are very apt given those as more colonial than settler-colonial projects.
Algeria had a 10% French population and was considered legally part of France. Settler-colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy are all heads that belong to the same hydra, and ignoring any of them dooms any socialist project to failure. The indigenous comrades I listen to (@redfalconFNI is a good one) don’t advocate expelling all settlers, just the ones who refuse to follow the rules.
That's quite a bit smaller than the 98% non-indigenous population of the US. Obviously I'm not saying we should ignore settler-colonialism, but I don't buy any as workable of these supposed solutions that involve anti-democratic transfer of total sovereignty somehow to a small, currently marginalized component of the population. There's no conceivable road there and if it somehow were magiced into existence it'd last all of 2-weeks before settler (once again, the overwhelming majority of the population, + immigrants) backlash unraveled the whole thing.
So when someone says land back, I don't know what they mean because they can't mean that and be taken seriously.
Settler-colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy are all heads that belong to the same hydra
Somewhat tangential but this seems like gnostic nonsense. These are often capable of existing independent of one another and there is no shadowing actor acting behind the scenes to manifest these things as part of some agenda.
https://www.shareable.net/podcasts/the-response-decolonial-marxism-with-sungmanitu-bluebird/
anti-democratic transfer of total sovereignty somehow to a small, currently marginalized component of the population.
Okay, I've listen to the podcast and it doesn't really address my comments until the end where Sungmanitu states land back is
communal ownership of everyone in the best interests of everyone [52:21]
I just don't understand how this communal ownership can be construed as land back or indigenous sovereignty, as nearly every community will be majority non-indigenous, and if they have they ownership, it seems like they'll be able to exercise it as they see fit. It seems you can have communal ownership or indigenous sovereignty but not both.
Yeah I'm not a Marxist, something like this anarchist indigenous response to unqualified 'land back' I find way more meaningful and workable.
It means land back. What that means is up to the people the land is given back to.
See that doesn't help me because I don't know what "give" is supposed to mean. Under the current paradigm, ownership of real property is tied to the states monopoly on violence and it's ability to enforce the rights of landholders. If the state gives all the land back there's no longer any state to give all the land back and enforce those property rights.
It's kinda like that Douglas Adams joke about God disappearing in a puff of logic.
It depends. I'm not indigenous or descended from indigenous North or Central Americans. So it's honestly not up to me to tell you what land back means. You'll have to ask them. I have, and I largely agree with what I hear when I do. But I'm not here to represent indigenous interests, that's the last thing anyone needs, another white colonizer telling people what's good for indigenous folks. They want land back, it's the right thing to do, I support it. What that support means and how they would like to see it manifest is up to them. I'm here to do it alongside them, and am when asked and presented with opportunities to do so, but I'm not here to explain it to you. Sorry.
I guess to me that sounds more like just considering oneself a ally to indigenous folks as opposed to actually supporting a specific program.
I don't think there is one specific program though. There are many different groups in the US who deserve their land back. It means something different to all of them. And within members of that group. So there's not really one solid answer. If there's some land back movement in your area go find out how you can help there. That's basically all I got for you
Good news on number 9, they are wilding the LA River. Projects like these can't be done instantly though, and it's worth noting that the LA River is mostly artificial in the first place anyway. It used to be barely a trickle or entirely dry for the majority of the year and they concreted what was basically a storm drain of mostly human water runoff.
silicon valley is definitely a place, but it mostly needs reform rather than abolition. the tech giants should be gutted but i would consider the region an overall good thing for humanity, its basically gay mecca.
I mean you could say similar for Wall Street: "get rid of the thing that is absolutely horrifying and planet ruining and the territory is kind of nice actually."
wallstreet is unanimously bad though, like you could thanos snap that entire block of nyc out if existence and the world would be better for it.
with san fransico theres not really a notable place to do that too, tech company offices are rather transient, they arent landmarks, with exception to maybe the apple campus big tech hasnt created any physical institutions.
like yeah get rid of the tech companies but they arent exactly a place under the definition im using, like they move offices all the time
My vote is to have workers completely control it and then actually build stuff that will help humanity.
Every elaborate highway system in Texas. Every interchange could have been a neighborhood. Yes I love driving 15 miles along a 9 lane highway with 60 foot pylons just to get groceries.
The entire city of Phoenix. Its existence is an affront to any loving God that could be real. There's plenty of land on earth and they built a city in one of the hottest, driest deserts and then put grass all over it.
My uncle's house. Nothing's evil about it, it's just kinda old and shoddy. It's probably a health and fire hazard. I'd prefer if he had a nicer place.
