The following link is to a story is about a giant corporation, UPS, which doesn't want to locate major facility in town with Confederate monument.
In earlier blog postings I talked about how as Confederate monuments went away the pressure on the few towns still having them would increase. One of the factors would be that businesses would not want to locate there.
This was my first blog on the process.
This was a follow up blog.
However, it seems that I really missed some aspects of the economic forces that drive the elimination of Confederate monumnets at a much faster pace.
The thing I missed is that corporations aren't going to be concerned sometime in the future that a town is one of the remainging towns with a Confederate monument, but instead they are concerned right now, even if most rural towns might currently be keeping them or a large fraction of towns are keeping them.
Perhaps they can understand that though it is common now, in two or three years towns keeping Confederate monuments might be uncommon and they don't want to be caught having invested in such a town with a Confederate monument.
Ironically this concern by corporations will drive a change in which few towns will have Confederate mouments.
The fact that a major corporation like UPS doesn't want a Confederate monument in a town they are considering locating a facility in will be noted by every town's chamber of commerce and every economic development board. The competition to be the location site for facilities from major corporatitions is fierce.
Yes, the local interests groups probably don't want to get into this fight and wish it would go away, but they also realize that it is an issue that will have to be faced sooner or later, so they might as well do it sooner. They don't want to be facing it when a major corporation is considering them and protests and potential violence scares away the corporation, and they certainly don't want to be finally addressing it after they have lost out on one or more major corporations locating a facility in their area.
They also have to consider that the other towns competing with them to get facilities located in their town will be considering removing a statue also, and what the consequences of these competing towns getting their statues removed before they get their statue removed.
Having the business interests initiating the proccess behind the scenes has the advantage of the removal being done faster and with less public controversy than having it started by a series of protests met by counter-protestors with guns.
The counter-protestors with guns are a surprise unexpected factor to get rid of Confederate monuments. If you wanted Confederate monuments to have a negative association, the counter protestors are about the best you could imagine. There is the old cliche', "With friends like these, you don't need enemies."
Also, the counter protestors with their guns are not really wanted by any town. Some towns might decide they want to get rid of the monument so these guys don't show up in their town anymore and be in the media being shown carrying around large firearms in the town square.
This pressure to remove the monuments is added to the pressure that anti-monument protests apply to a city. If the protests continue, after awhile the city is known primarily for its clinging to a Confederate monument. That is what people will think of when they think of that town.
The protests are likely the thing that got corporations like UPS not wanting to move to a town with a Confederate monument. They don't want to be stuck in a town and try to recruit talent to move to a town known for loving the Confederacy.
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