Black Lives Matter proposes City designate 101 Ash Street a White Supremacist monument

Statement from San Diego’s chapter of Black Lives Matter concerning 101 Ash Street: “White people are forever arguing that we should leave Confederate statues and other racist monuments in place so that we can remember our history, even its less honorable aspects. Here, at last, is an instance where we can find common ground and wholeheartedly agree. This great big boondoggle of a building should absolutely stay on the city’s books, even as it sits empty and useless. For starters, thanks to the poisonous asbestos installed in it by white-owned corporations that were more concerned with profits than worker health, the place is systemically toxic, just like the white supremacism that has its roots in our nation’s money-minded slave history and continues to poison its citizens today. Those toxins would be expensive and difficult to extract and cleanse, just like it’s going to take a lot of money, time, and effort to change the fundamentally racist mindset in America. Meanwhile, because the city is paying rent on something it can’t use, the building an unjust burden on the taxpayer, just like all the white-run corporations that constantly evade paying their fair share in taxes, even as they receive sweetheart government subsidies and watch their profits soar . Further, it’s butt-ugly, like the ugly rhetoric employed by those who struggle to deny this country’s Future of Color even as they appropriate PoC culture in a sad attempt to enrich their own. And finally, it’s a monument to Republican incompetence. When Democrats spend big, poor people live better. When Republicans spend big, one rich building owner get richer. It’s perfect. Hell, we’ll even pay for the plaque.”