Free Republic

It's raining statues all across America. Artworks that have stood in public places for generations are being defaced or deposed, destroyed or relocated, as Americans confront attitudes on race and stereotyping. Richmond, Va., has been an epicenter of the controversy. Its most prominent city symbols — a procession of sculpted Civil War leaders — just sparked protests for days. The statues stand near the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where a contemporary sculpture by Kehinde Wiley reminds that Black lives not only matter, they can create powerful, stunning works of art. Wiley, a 43-year-old African American artist, is best known...

Richmond, VA _ The City of Richmond Thursday removed the Maury Statue on Monument Avenue at Belmont, along with two cannons on Monument avenue, one just west of the Arthur Ashe Monument, and the other east of the Jefferson Davis statue. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said the statue and cannons were among eleven the city would be removing in the coming days, following Wednesday's removal of the Stonewall Jackson statue, but it would wait until after the July 4th holiday. Maury was a confederate navy officer during the Civil War and known as the "Pathfinder of the Seas", which is...

A massive statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson was removed from a park in Richmond, Virginia, Wednesday. The sculpture — depicting Jackson on horseback — was taken down by work crews just hours after Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered all Confederate statues be removed from city land. Stoney said the decree in the onetime capital of the Confederacy is “long overdue.” “Those statues stood high for over 100 years for a reason, and it was to intimidate and to show black and brown people in this city who was in charge,” the mayor said. “I think the healing can now...

On Wednesday, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered the immediate removal of all of the contentious statues in his jurisdiction after widespread protests. Work crews began removing a statue of General Stonewall Jackson that afternoon, while flatbed trucks and other equipment were also spotted at several other Confederate monuments along Richmond’s famed Monument Avenue.

Richmond police declared an unlawful assembly at the Lee Monument on Friday night and tear gas was deployed on protesters. Richmond police said the unlawful assembly was declared at 10:17 p.m. after paintballs were fired at the officers and one was struck.

An unlawful assembly was declared after police said demonstrators tried to topple the statue honoring Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart on Richmond's Monument Avenue Sunday night.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced on Tuesday that he'd requested Police Chief Will Smith's resignation, in light of how local law enforcement has handled various protests over the past several weeks. Stoney, a Democrat, said Smith complied with the request to step down and then thanked him for his past public service. "At a very minimum, I expect [the police] to be able to come to the table with the community to reform public safety. So it boils down to whether the leadership of [the Richmond Police] embraces the change," Stoney said during a press conference.

Protesters tore down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis along Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue on Wednesday night. The statue in the former capital of the Confederacy was toppled shortly before 11 p.m., news outlets reported. Richmond police were on the scene and videos on social media showed the monument being towed away as a crowd cheered. About 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, protesters in Portsmouth beheaded and then pulled down four statues that were part of a Confederate monument on Wednesday, according to media outlets. Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but...

A Richmond judge has issued a temporary injunction barring the state from taking down the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue for 10 days. The injunction, issued Monday afternoon, came after a complaint was filed earlier in the day objecting to the monument’s removal. Gov. Ralph Northam announced last week that the state would take down the 130-year-old statue, which it owns and maintains, after a week of protests against police brutality and racism. Earlier Monday, state workers inspected the monument before its planned removal. The Department of General Services said in a statement that a date for the...

Some of the changes Northam said they’ve made include expanding voting laws, making election day a holiday, decriminalizing marijuana and eliminating a holiday commemorate Confederating generals. Going forward, the Governor presented four pillars of a plan for going forward with reforms that address racial inequities:

A synagogue in Los Angeles was vandalized with graffiti reading “F— Israel” and “Free Palestine” as protests against the police killing of George Floyd swept the city. Also Saturday, the window of a synagogue in Richmond, Virginia, was smashed during protests in the city. Protests have continued for several days in dozens of cities across the United States. In Los Angeles, the graffiti was spray-painted on the walls of Congregation Beth Israel in the Fairfax district, the Jewish Journal reported. Amid particularly intense protests in the district, several Jewish businesses and restaurants were damaged and looted, Haaretz reported. …

RICHMOND, Va. -- Rioters blocked a fire truck from responding to a burning home early Sunday morning in Richmond, according to Richmond Police Chief Will Smith. “Protesters intentionally set a fire to an occupied building on Broad Street. This is not the only occupied building that has been set fire to over the last two days. But they prohibited us from getting on scene,” Smith said. “We had to force our way to make a clear path for the fire department. Protestors intercepted that fire apparatus several blocks away with vehicles and blocked that fire department’s access to the structure...

Multiple businesses in Richmond were set on fire, damaged and looted during overnight protests that turned violent. The damage was still being assessed Sunday morning, but businesses that experienced broken windows and looting include the CVS on Broad and Arthur Ashe and the ABC store on Broad, where people were spotted stealing bottles of alcohol.

Groups known as ReOpen Virginia, End The Lockdown VA and Virginians Against Excessive Quarantine said they have thousands of people who are gating at Virginia's Capitol Square at 11:30 a.m. There are more than 17,000 members of the REOPEN VIRGINIA group on Facebook. "It’s time to end this lock down, it’s gone on far enough & we are tired of the misinformation & fear mongering...Time to take our power back!!" the group "End The Lockdown" wrote. There were similar protests held in North Carolina and Michigan on Tuesday. In North Carolina, the Raleigh Police Department ordered crowds to disperse since...

Amazon fired a worker who organized a walkout at a New York warehouse to demand greater protection against the new coronavirus, saying the employee himself flouted distancing rules and put others at risk. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the city’s Commission of Human Right to investigate whether the dismissal was retaliatory. New York Attorney General Letitia James called on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate and said her office is also considering legal options. […] Amazon said the worker, Christian Smalls, received several warnings for violating social distancing guidelines. Amazon said Smalls showed up at the...

Michael Bloomberg's Super Bowl ad, which presents the Democratic presidential contender as a brave advocate of public safety who is not afraid to take on "the gun lobby," claims "2,900 children die from gun violence every year" in the United States, which is not true. That number includes young adults as well as minors, and it includes suicides as well as homicides. Bloomberg's campaign cited Everytown for Gun Safety, a Bloomberg-backed group, as the source of the number used in the ad. "Annually," the organization said in June 2019 fact sheet, "nearly 2,900 children and teens (ages 0 to 19)...

Talia Lavin ✔ @chick_in_kiev I wrote about Monday’s rally in Richmond, and how thousands of armed men holding a city at gunpoint is hardly a “peaceful” event: https://www.gq.com/story/pro-gun-rally-threat … That Pro-Gun Rally in Virginia Wasn’t Exactly “Peaceful” The threat of violence in Richmond—and arrest of neo-Nazis—sent other groups into hiding. gq.com

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC/WAVY) — A rally scheduled to last just an hour led thousands of gun-rights supporters to the Virginia State Capitol, prompted state and federal authorities to increase security measures on Capitol grounds and drove groups planning to counter the pro-gun rally to change their Lobby Day plans. Despite concerns of potential threats, there was only one arrest and no reports of extremist violence or any security issues, a spokesperson for Capitol Police said. Last week, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said law enforcement officials found “credible, serious threats” linked to the rally when he declared a state of emergency temporarily banning weapons...

We asked black gun owners at the Richmond gun rally what they thought of being labeled "white nationalist" by the media. Here's what they had to say. ...

Despite the Governor’s best efforts to incite and ruin the VCDL rally for Lobby Day in Richmond, the crowds were calm, patriotic, and respectful with no incidents reported. All of the left’s media outlets screamed like Chicken Little over this rally and nothing happened. They were all wrong. It is estimated that the crowd was 50,000+. At one point the crowd was estimated to be twice that amount.