Mandating masks, opening restaurants, closing schools, and other coronavirus responses have filled the agendas at town councils around the country, but those aren’t the only extraordinary topics that are of concern in city hall. Black Lives Matter is also on the agenda.
Confederate statues are coming down, or staying up, all over the country, and streets and parks are being renamed. The town council of Lexington, Virginia, voted in July to rename Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. By late August, though, they still hadn’t decided what to rename it.
In Louisville, Georgia, the city council voted over the summer to remove the city’s central landmark — a historic marketplace from the 1700s, where local legend has it that slaves were bought and sold.
In Talbot County, Maryland, in contrast, the county council voted 3 to 2 to keep its statue of the “Talbot Boys,” county locals who fought for the Confederacy.
In hippie Vermont, Burlington’s City Council has gone full woke, voting to move toward reparations for slavery. Unanimously, the council voted on Aug. 10 to create a reparations task force, funded by $50,000 from the City Racial Justice Fund. “Along with studying reparations,” the local news website VT Digger reported, “the task force will also look into offering a formal apology on behalf of the city for its role in slavery.”
At the same time, municipalities are responding to BLM’s call for police reform. Sometimes, it’s procedural reforms: The county government in Montgomery County, Maryland, for instance, voted to limit no-knock raids and to ban chokeholds.
In other places, it’s less about reforming and more about defunding. Austin, Texas, voted to cut its police budget by one-third in August, redirecting some of that money to facilitate abortions, according to the Texas Tribune.
Forbes magazine found 12 other cities that were dramatically slashing their police budgets. Seattle’s city council drove out its first black female police chief with millions in budget cuts. New York City cut a billion dollars. San Francisco and Oakland, California, slashed their police departments, as did Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
From protests in the streets to unanimous votes in town halls, BLM has gone mainstream.
