A 8,900-pound statue of Stonewall Jackson from Charlottesville, which stood at the heart of recent rallies by the Ku Klux Klan and others, was taken off its pedestal and given to artist Kara Walker.

She cut it into pieces and made a new work: "Unmanned Drone"

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In 2021, a violently contested statue of Robert E. Lee was finally taken down from its pedestal in Charlottesville.

In 2023, it was melted down into bronze ingots.

Its remnants are now are on display in Los Angeles, in a new exhibit called MONUMENTS: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Kahlil Robert Irving's meticulous bronze replica of the streets of Ferguson. A beclowned statute of a Confederal naval commander, Matthew Fontaine Maury: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A toppled statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, which once stood in Richmond, Virginia, and a full-sized Dodge Charger painted like the car from The Dukes of Hazzard.

From the new MONUMENTS exhibit in LA:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

MONUMENTS, an exhibit featuring decommissioned Confederate monuments paired with work by contemporary Black artists, opens in Los Angeles next week.

This is Karon Davis' Descendants (2025), showing her son, Moses, holding a squirming replica Confederate general

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

More images of Kara Walker's reconstruction of one of the most charged Confederate monuments from Charlottesville: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

With all this reporting, and 3 journalists on the story, you'd think the @nytimes.com could have interviewed at least one or two other undocumented professionals who could offer context on Roberts' trajectory and choices.

Or what his high-profile arrest meant for other undocumented people in Iowa.

It's 2025. Dreamers have been in the headlines for a decade. The median DACA recipient is a millennial in their 30s.

75% of Dreamers were pursuing a bachelor's degree or more, per one survey.

Who's shocked that someone undocumented became a school leader?

www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/u...

And then there's the characterization that a superintendent being undocumented "was counter to the image many have of undocumented immigrants. This was not someone living under the radar, toiling in a low-wage job."

Is this racist stereotype really the common belief of "many" @nytimes.com readers?

Being undocumented is not a "shocking secret."

And was Ian Roberts' bio "too good to be true?" According to this story's own reporting, he had a track record of actually delivering academic improving in struggling school systems'--including in Des Moines.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u...

Another activist who survived the Columbine shooting as a teenager has died too young. On Anne Marie Hochhalter: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/u...

What a Christmas present

What is the worst AI advertisement of 2024?

I'll go first:

Finally picked up my copy of @swordsjew.bsky.social’s new book