A video posted to YouTube shows a protester taking a sledgehammer to Baltimore’s 225-year-old Christopher Columbus statue the week after the city removed Confederate statues under the cover of night.
The Baltimore Brew reported on the attack, saying it left the monument “severely vandalized.”
The video shows an individual approach the monument while wearing a hoodie. The individual holds up a sign which says, “The Future is Racial and Economic Justice.” The individual then tapes the sign to the monument, grabs a sledgehammer, and beats a hole in the monument while a faceless onlooker holds a sign that says, “Racism Tear it Down.”
A narrator speaks throughout the video. His opening words are:
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. That Columbian wave of destruction continues on the backs of Indigenous, African-American and brown people.
Racist monuments to slave owners and murderers have always bothered me. Baltimore’s poverty is concentrated in African-American households, and these statues are just an extra slap in the face. They were built in the 20th century in response to a movement for African Americans’ human dignity. What kind of a culture goes to such lengths to build such hate-filled monuments? What kind of a culture clings to those monuments in 2017?
Baltimore’s monument to Columbus is reportedly the oldest in the nation.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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