A 225-year-old monument commemorating Christopher Columbus was vandalized early Monday amid the nationwide debate on removing Confederate statues and monuments.
A video posted on Monday shows the monument being smashed. It shows two unidentified people taping a sign reading “The future is racial and economic justice” on the monument. One of them then hits the monument with what appears to be sledgehammer while the other stands next to the monument holding a sign that reads “Racism: Tear it down.”
“Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere. Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas,” the video’s narrator, who identifies himself as “Ty,” says.
“That Columbian wave of destruction continues on the backs of Indigenous, African-American and brown people,” the narrator says in the video.
The Baltimore Brew originally reported the incident.
{mosads}This comes amid a heated debate across the country over removing Confederate monuments in the wake of the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va. The violence in Charlottesville was in part spurred by a demonstration protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
President Trump weighed in on the debate last week and defended the statues, saying they were a part of history.
“They were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said during a press conference last Tuesday.
“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
The city of Baltimore removed all four of its Confederate statues last week.