Posted on 04/01/2018 9:05:49 AM PDT by Simon Green
Over the decades, this quiet coastal hamlet has earned a reputation as one of the most liberal places in the nation. Arcata was the first U.S. city to ban the sale of genetically modified foods, the first to elect a majority Green Party city council and one of the first to tacitly allow marijuana farming before pot was legal.
Now it's on the verge of another first.
No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds. But Arcata is poised to do just that. The target is an 8½-foot bronze likeness of William McKinley, who was president at the turn of the last century and stands accused of directing the slaughter of Native peoples in the U.S. and abroad.
"Put a rope around its neck and pull it down," Chris Peters shouted at a recent rally held at the statue, which has adorned the central square for more than a century.
Peters, who heads the Arcata-based Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People, called McKinley a proponent of "settler colonialism" that "savaged, raped and killed."
A presidential statue would be the most significant casualty in an emerging movement to remove monuments honoring people who helped lead what Native groups describe as a centuries-long war against their very existence.
The push follows the rapid fall of Confederate memorials across the South in a victory for activists who view them as celebrating slavery. In the nearly eight months since white supremacists marched in central Virginia to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, cities across the country have yanked dozens of Confederate monuments. Black politicians and activists have been among the strongest supporters of the removals.
This time, it's tribal activists taking charge, and it's the West and California in particular leading the way.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
(That may sound like a joke, but it isn't. They no longer show 30 year old reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" because the Duke's Dodge Charger has a Confederate flag on the roof.)
It is not a rewriting of history or ignoring history that is at issue.
Those that question the fitness of a statue or public recognition of anyone are in fact recognizing history more clearly, in their opinion.
And that debate can be a healthy conversation for and against.
There is only one issue that properly vets any statue or public image:
Was that person, at any time in their lives, a traitor to the US?
If the answer is yes, patriots have a noble cause and are right to ask for its removal.
But....I thought they lived in peaceful harmony, at one with nature and each other.
I'm so confused.....
And it won’t stop there, either. There remain so many grievance communities to be outraged.
“all you haters of the Confedercy”
That’s me!
Two of my ancestors fought to preserve the Union and abolish slavery.
The Confederacy did fight for states rights......to own people. Without the issue of slavery, there would have been no Confederacy.
Patriots that believe in freedom for all people, should all hate the Confederacy.
Indians killed my great-great-great grandparents and set their house on fire with the children inside. Thankfully, the children escaped. I demand all Native American monuments and statues to be torn down and 2% of all casino profits in compensation.
“Two of my ancestors fought to preserve the Union and abolish slavery.”
Sure they did y’all. Nice antifa allies you got there.
These statue removals are local matters...if there is a statue or monument in your hometown that you care about then take steps to protect it, otherwise its really not your business what folks in other places decide to do.
The North was just as hypocritical about African Americaqns as the South! Draft riots and antiblack sentiment was rife in the North. More African-Americans died under union reconstruction than on Southern plantations! There is plenty of hypocracy to go around. Many of the yeoman Southern fighters could care less about slavery and were fighting for individual rights against yankee encroachment and for their property and land.
If they want images of Indians removed, fine, but dont touch American statues. We won, it is our nation, respect it and our heritage.
“So we better wipe images of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Squanto et al. off the landscape as well.”
Massachusetts voted to erect a statue of their most famous Naïve American...”Crazy Whores”.
“This time, it’s tribal activists taking charge”
Nope.
It’s Soros, creating, bankrolling and promoting his stooges.
Then take down the Native American statues for offending the Clovis.
Not me.
The Progressive Left has been teaching political agenda driven fake history in our Universities for the last several decades because it is their belief that he who controls past history controls the future.
Now that they have re written history with lies and propaganda and taught it to a misinformed generation, they are trying to change the world’s historical record to conform to their fake historical narrative in order to control the present and shape the future.
Blow up Mt Rushmore. That will be next. And I bet as ludicrous as the sounds, more than a handful of the members of Congress would consider is “understandable” and “worthy of consideration”.
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