Protesters have tried this Monday to tear down a statue of former United States President Andrew Jackson in the vicinity of the White House and the current president, Donald Trump, has threatened them with “ten years in prison.”
In addition, several hundred protesters have attempted to occupy Lafayette Park, which is opposite the White House, to create what they have called a “Black House Autonomous Zone,” similar to the “Capital Hill Autonomous Zone” in Seattle. Thus, the protesters have painted ‘BHAZ’, the acronym for ‘Black House Autonomous Zone’, in the Church of San Juan, reports CNN.
In this context, Trump, through his Twitter account, has described the actions of the protesters in Washington as “shameful vandalism”.
“Numerous people arrested in Washington for the shameful vandalism in Lafayette Park, the magnificent statue of Andrew Jackson and the external disfigurement of the Church of San Juan,” the president said, before pointing out that these actions could lead to “ten years of prison under the Preservation of Monuments to Veterans Act. ” “Watch out!” Trump has urged.
Many people across the United States are questioning the legacies of the country’s founders and other historical figures in the context of protests by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement to criticize systematic racism, massively revived after the death of African-American citizen George Floyd to hands of the Police in Minneapolis in late May.
Thus, American cities have removed statues and monuments honoring Confederate figures, while San Francisco has also removed its statue of Christopher Columbus after a call to throw it into the sea. Albuquerque has done the same with a statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate.
However, some of them are being demolished and vandalized, such as that of George Washington in Portland or that of Confederate General Albert Pike also in the American capital.
