Thursday’s release of footage from the killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Mexican American boy, in Little Village last month, which showed the child was unarmed with his hands up at the moment a white police officer shot him, has further intensified the calls for a racial reckoning that grew in May 2020 with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
When the CMP website launched, there were limited—or no—explanations for singling out some monuments over others. The text mentioned vague concerns about images that may promote white supremacy; disrespect Indigenous people; overlook the contributions of women, people of color, and labor; and, cryptically “[create] tension between people who see value in these artworks and those who do not.”
I’d add that, despite being a Jewish English immigrant himself, Gompers endorsed the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration by eastern European Jews, Italians, and other groups deemed undesirable, eventually contributing to countless Holocaust deaths.
Inspired by Pete’s Sherlock Holmes act, I filed my own FOIA with DCASE, trying to determine if any of the descriptions on the website were edited in the wake of the backlash.
There was also an explanation of why other arguably problematic statues were omitted from the list. “The committee understands that these artworks are not a comprehensive inventory of all of the monuments and other public symbols that need attention, but [this] is the start to a long overdue and necessary conversation.”
