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Vandals continued the targeting of historical monuments and statues in recent days – including one of Christopher Columbus.
“This is happening everywhere,” Kevin Caira, the president of the Sons of Italy’s Commission for Social Justice, told The Baltimore Sun.
Caira spoke after an unidentified person destroyed the lettering on a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore’s Herring Run Park Monday.
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The person used a sledgehammer to smash letters that read: “Sacred to the memory of Chris. Columbus, Octob. XII, MDCCVIIIC” on the 225-year-old monument, The Sun reported. The destruction was recorded and posted on YouTube, although faces were hidden.
“Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere,” a male narrator said in the video. “Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, rape, slavery, genocide, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas.”
“Racist monuments to slave owners and murderers have always bothered me,” the narrator added, calling the monuments “hate-filled” and symbols of white supremacy.
He dismissed Columbus and George Washington as genocidal terrorists.
“Part of our evolution as humans requires tearing down monuments to destructive forces and tearing down systems that maintain them,” he said.
The statue is the oldest monument to Christopher Columbus in the United States.
Other Statues Under Attack
Other monuments defaced include:
- The Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The National Park Service reported that someone sprayed the words “F**K law” on one of its columns on Aug. 16.
- A 114-year-old Confederate memorial in Baltimore was covered with red paint on Aug. 14, The Sun reported.
- A monument to Confederate troops at Arizona’s state capitol in Phoenix was vandalized on Aug. 17, CNN reported.
- Columns were painted red at a private Confederate Memorial Park in Tampa on Aug. 13, CNN reported.
- A peace monument that depicted a Confederate soldier was defaced in Georgia.
- A bust of Lincoln was set on fire and defaced in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.
- Houston resident Andrew Cecil Schenk wanted to go even farther. He was caught trying to plant a bomb on a statue of a Confederate officer named Richard Dowling, NBC News
It looks as if no monument is safe in America.
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