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 ...
Whitewashing history never works out well.
Statues of Columbus and Andrew Jackson are next. And then Texas Revolution figures. Then really any Founding Father that owned slaves.
If you stood with the left on their Confederate monument hysteria in 2015 and 2017, you have no room to complain. This was always the next step.
Coming to a Cigar Store near you.
So Mt. McKinley will be renamed soon once again, if for no other obvious reason?
/s
Being 1/4 Ani Yun Wiya (Cherokee) I think this is really ridiculous and stupid...
It’s HISTORY!!!!! You can’t change it so stop trying to remove it...
We need to remove any human created works so muslims wont be over burdened
I recall seeing people here at FR who were in favor of removing the Confederate flag, and statues. Completely rewriting American history has always been the goal of the left, they just considered Confederate flags and statues the low hanging fruit, figuring that most northerners either wouldn’t care, or would support their efforts.
Denali isn’t just a river in Egypt my FRiend.
Is this even true? I feel like the media made a meme post-Charleston and Charlottesville and acted like a few statues in the bluest cities in the South (New Orleans, St. Louis, etc.) being relocated was indication of some widespread movement, while the ones in towns and rural communities never got touched. There are over 700 of them still throughout the South.
The author says "dozens" but a lot of it was completely inconsequential crap like that plaque in Madison, WI, or a private property rock in California whose owner asked it to be removed temporarily to avoid vandalism. Feel like the author is being really disingenuous here.
What anti-history nitwits! I find these morons offensive.
“The push follows the rapid fall of Confederate memorials across the South...”
Take note all you haters of the Confedercy who is on you side.
Already has been. Now Mount Denali.
The American Taliban hard at work toppling statues and erasing monuments.
I suspect it's kids who came home from Humboldt State with a worthless degree and a bad attitude, rather than outraged tribal elders. :)
This is off topic but it shows their ignorance just the same. I wonder if they even know what genetically unmodified really looks like. People have been changing the genetics of food since it was domesticated.
Like they say: "Denali ain't just a mountain in Alaska!"
“Statues of Columbus and Andrew Jackson are next. And then Texas Revolution figures. Then really any Founding Father that owned slaves.”
Yet all the hypocrites continue to walk around with pictures of dead slave owners in their wallets.
Indians killed the hell out of other Indians long before we got here.
So we better wipe images of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Squanto et al. off the landscape as well.
I tried to explain that to someone who wanted fresh, all-natural, organic apples that basically were free of any human contact or cultivation whatsoever.
“Okay. Here’s your crabapple.”
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