What happens to monuments after they’re spraypainted, decapitated or tossed in lakes? After countless calls and emails over many weeks I boiled this down to 1,200ish words https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/epdj3z/controversial-confederate-statues-keep-getting-torn-down-but-where-are-they-going

Turns out city officials are not super keen to talk about this, partly because their options suck. Storing them costs money, fixing them costs LOTS of money, and people will be pissed no matter what they do.

Dallas, Texas made $1.45M selling a Robert E. Lee statue to a billionaire who put it on his golf course, but selling city property – especially monuments representing white supremacy – is legally and ethically sticky.

A couple museums have found interesting ways to display them in a new context, but there’s no way museums can house them all with some being 60 feet tall, weighing tonnes and/or being in very, very bad shape.

My favourite character in this story is an old popcorn farmer in Kentucky who wants to build a park with confederate statues in a former Nazi POW camp near his house. He says he’s written to a dozen cities offering a thousand dollars per statue (sadly, not nearly enough)

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, please send me your ideas for repurposing statues of dead racist men