Nation
Boston Votes to Remove Emancipation Memorial in Park Square
A unanimous vote on Tuesday by the Boston Art Commission means the famous Emancipation Memorial — depicting President Abraham Lincoln with a freed slave — will come down.
The statue celebrates the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln signed in 1863 and declares “that all persons held as slaves” within the Confederacy “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
A petition calling for the removal of the statue received over 12,000 signatures as of Wednesday. The move to take down the art comes in the wake of George Floyd‘s death and a push for statues deemed racist to be taken down across the nation.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh gave his full support for the removal of the statue and thanked the commission for their work.
“After engaging in a public process, it’s clear that residents and visitors to Boston have been uncomfortable with this statue, and its reductive representation of the Black man’s role in the abolitionist movement,” Walsh said in a statement.
According to CBS Boston, the commission has not set a removal yet and the group is determining how to “re-contextualize” the statue in a new public setting.
“Public art is storytelling at the street level. As such, the imagery should strike the heart and engage the mind,” said Vice-Chair of the Boston Art Commission Ekua Holmes in a statement. “What I heard today is that it hurts to look at this piece, and in the Boston landscape we should not have works that bring shame to any groups of people, not only in Boston but across the entire United States.”
The monument has stood in a park near Boston Common since 1879 and is a replica of the Washington D.C. Emancipation Memorial statue.
The inscription on the statue reads: “A race set free/ and the country at peace / Lincoln / Rests from his labors.”
Parents are furious over a popular doll brand is offering advice to girls as young as three on how to transition their gender. Though a published magazine, American Girl not only advocated for medicines available to “delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender” but supported the notion of making such decisions without parental consent.
“If you don’t have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you” the magazine, titled “A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image” writes. It offers readers to “turn to the Resources on page 95 for more information.”
The publication then details what discussions with a doctor could entail: “If you have’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.”
“If you’ve already gone through puberty, a doctor can still help” it continues. “Studies show that transgender and nonbinary kids who get help from doctors have much better mental health than those who don’t.”
Normalizing body dysmorphia, the book reads “Parts of your body might make you feel uncomfortable, and you might wan to change the way you look. That’s totally OK!”
The Daily Mail notes “earlier this year, its parent company Mattel, recently put a transgender Barbie doll on the market. Before that, American Girl, which sells more than 30 million dolls a year, shilled an Asian doll when anti-Asian hate crimes were skyrocketing across the US.”
-
Nation3 days agoFive returned rental cars used by Biden’s Secret Service burst into flames
-
education4 days agoDisney’s progressive ‘Strange World’ cartoon flops with disastrous $18M opening on a $180M budget
-
Podcast7 days agoStates Sue Sec. Mayorkas For Refusing to Enforce Immigration Law
-
Politics2 days agoStormy Daniels lawyer in Trump trial, Michael Avenatti, sentenced to prison for stealing millions from clients
