Residents of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood awoke Monday to find the Abraham Lincoln statue in the area vandalized, according to reports.
The Standing Lincoln statue, located on North Stockton Drive near the Chicago History Museum, was defaced with red paint overnight in what appeared to be a protest Monday, CBS News reported. Columbus Day is formally recognized as a federal holiday in the U.S. The federal government has also recognized that date as Indigenous Peoples Day.
A video of the vandalized statue aired by the outlet showed graffiti spray-painted on the statue’s base that read “Lincoln Was An Executioner.” (RELATED: ‘Our Hearts Sank’: Authorities Discover Vandalism At Gettysburg Battlefield)
Three other messages spray-painted on or near the statue were “Land Back,” “May all empires fall from Turtle Island to Palestine” and “Remember the Dakota 38,” Chicago Sun-Times photojournalist Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere posted on X.
LaRiviere also posted a picture of a partially torn-off poster on the wall of the monument bearing what appeared to be “[…] in struggle from Turtle Island to Palestine, all colonial empires fall. with love, from Zhigaagoong.”
The Lincoln Monument behind the Chicago History Museum was defaced earlier. Written around the monument is the following…
“Lincoln was an executioner”, “Land Back”, “May all empires fall from Turtle Island to Palestine”, “Remember the Dakota 38” pic.twitter.com/oBIBAEtqhm
— Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere (@TylerLaRiviere) October 14, 2024
Some Native Americans refer to the North American continent as Turtle Island, according to the Cambridge Dictionary.
The statue of Lincoln is known as the Standing Lincoln and was erected in 1887, the Chicago Monuments Project said.
The labeling of Lincoln as an executioner is an apparent reference to the hanging of 38 native Dakota men on Lincoln‘s orders after the six-week U.S.-Dakota War, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
The CBS News video showed police tape around the vandalized statue and police taking photographs of it.
The Lincoln statue was also vandalized Oct. 10, 2022, CBS News separately reported.
An anonymous group calling themselves “resistors of colonial violence” claimed responsibility for that act of vandalism, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. They dubbed the 16th U.S. president “a colonizer” and spray-painted graffiti reading “Dethrone the Colonizers,” “Land Back!” and “Avenge the Dakota 38” onto the statue’s base.
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was vandalized late December 2023 with graffiti reading “Free Gaza” in red paint sprayed on it. Near the monument were two other messages, “Free Gaza” and “Land Back.”
The 2023 and 2024 acts of vandalism took place against the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
