Student Activists Demand Removal of Abraham Lincoln Statue at UW-Madison
“This statue stands on sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land, and whatever stands there should not stand as a reminder of racist legacies that contributed to this campus.”
Student activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are exploiting the current trend of statue toppling, to petition for the removal of a campus statue of President Abraham Lincoln.
Hating historic statues is all the rage these days.
You may be wondering how they justify wanting to remove Lincoln.
The petition at Change.org explains:
Remove and replace “The Lincoln Statue” from Bascom Hill
Many UW-Madison students wait to take their picture on the lap of the Abe Lincoln statue atop Bascom Hill when they graduate. However, few know how this statue got to the top of the hill, and who put it there.
A little history about the Abraham Lincoln statue sitting at the top of Bascom that many seem to know and love:
One of the primary donors is Richard Lloyd Jones. This man was well-known for holding ultra-racist beliefs. He was a journalist that wrote articles inciting violence and even murder of black people. He also published the piece that instigated the Tulsa Massacre, which devastated Black Wall Street in 1821. The other primary donor was a man named Thomas Brittingham Jr, a known member of the KKK. As for Abraham Lincoln, while his history with race relations is questionable, this statue has nothing to do with the creation and continuation of education on UW-Madison’s campus and was merely a gift of political capital.
We ask that the university consider removing the statue from Bascom and direct funding towards a new installation acknowledging the past, present and future of UW-Madison. This statue stands on sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land, and whatever stands there should not stand as a reminder of racist legacies that contributed to this campus.
There is a rich history of left-wing UW-Madison students complaining about this statue and trying to remove it.
Jackson Walker explains at The College Fix:
This is not the only time in the history of the University of Wisconsin that the Lincoln statue has been caught in the crosshairs of protest.
In 2015, as Black Lives Matter protests engulfed the campus, members of a then-new campus group called “About Race UW” proposed the removal of the statue.
In 2016, the statue was draped in a black tarp during a racial protest by students.
In 2017, the student government approved a resolution to educate the campus community about Lincoln’s “oppression.”
In the past, campus leaders have rebuffed such demands. The College Fix this week reached out to the campus’ media affairs division and has yet to hear back.
The Abraham Lincoln statue has been a part of UW tradition since it was placed on Bascom Hill in 1919. Campus legend states that if graduating students climb into Lincoln’s lap and whisper their plans for life after graduation, they will come true. Students who are not graduating, but dare to sit in Lincoln’s lap, will supposedly cause him to rise from his chair and kick them off the pedestal to the bottom of the hill.
This looks like nothing more than an exercise in power. The student activists want to be able to say that they got the school to do something they wanted.
The administration should tell them to pound sand.
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
These guys make the Taliban look like amateurs.
Only from a political standpoint. Until the Antifa folks start emulating the Weathermen, the Taliban have them beaten on explosive efforts.
I demand these student rioters be removed from Earth.
They belong back in their native land, Hell.
How many Taliban have suffered learning experiences with their explosives?
I don’t remember as many deaths coming from Weather Underground (back then when it was called that) as now surround the actions of Antifa.
There was no CHAZ / CHOP 50 years ago, no police precincts were surrendered. Woodstock was held on a farmer’s field and he was OK with it. The hippies in SF didn’t break into anything.
Tell me why this isn’t much worse than 50 years ago.
50 years ago there were many alive who remembered or fought in WW1 and WW2. They were taught American History ( not Xinn or “1619”), they respected. NO, they loved their country. The flag and anthem sent shivers up their spines , not propagandized hate.
These people, both white and other hues, were mostly tolerant of valid protest but would have aggressively fought the politically contrived anarchy we see now..
In other words, this “present “ wouldn’t stand.
I salute the Americans before these weak generations and hope we can still learn from them.
Try to knock down the virtual statues I have erected to them, see what response you get!
An exercise in power, yes that’s what it is.
None of this is about Black people, or race relations, or indigenous people, or slavery or democracy. It’s all about power and they will sacrifice everything and everyone to see how much power they can exert.
They will have to have learning experiences imposed on them, lethal so that others can learn.
This will continue until the democrats realize it’s killing their party.
To be honest – I am not sure it is killing the Communist Party. What a lot of fence-straddling “moderate” voters are seeing is terrorist groups openly operating in major cities with no pushback from elected city leaders (some leaders are even cooperating with the terrorists). Some cities have armed left-wing militia threatening “racists” by pointing loaded guns at them on public streets, again with no pushback from elected leaders. People all across the nation have lost jobs and had their lives threatened by the Maoists, while the FBI is busy looking for non-existent noises in garages. Military leaders are comparing their commander in chief to Hitler, and I am convinced they are trying to build support for a military coup against Trump behind the scenes.
It is asking a lot for weak-kneed “moderates” to do the right thing, when they could lose everything if they do.
“Student Activists Demand Removal….” should be “Angry Children Demand Removal….”
They should be accommodated, prompt expulsion is in order.
Couldn’t they just swallow goldfish?
Fun fact: During the 1968/1969 student strike demanding a black studies department, the leader of one demonstration announced, as an effigy representing the university burned on the lap of the Lincoln statue, “a racist institution burns in the lap of a racist.”
Years later I thought about that while watching “I’m gonna get you Sucka” and chuckled when the militant leader Kalinga’s children told him about their school report as to
why Lincoln was assassinated.
That’s cheating. We’re not supposed to remember what happened 50 years ago.
As they scream on late night TV, “But, wait, there’s more”
“This statue stands on sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land, and whatever stands there should not stand as a reminder of racist legacies that contributed to this campus”
Q. But doesn’t the entire campus, bricks, mortar, and all those french-fry making machines, sit on the, ahem, “sacred” Ho-Chunk land?
A. Yes, but we plan on honoring all past Ho-Chunkers by turning it into an Indian-owned casino.
Removing Lincoln’s statue has zero to do with who donated money for it being made. That is a cover.
The left are cultivating hate toward Lincoln through condemning numerous statues of him for political reasons. Boston, even in DC, Lincoln statues are targeted for destruction and removal. The left had tried to claim him and his emancipation proclamation, but it doesn’t work. BLM pushing this shows it is to alter history and make Lincoln some kind of enemy to blacks.
This is the Arab Spring movement happening here in the US. Similar tactics, BLM is Islamic and has the same backing as the Muslim Brotherhood. This was never about Floyd. He is the useful trigger used by the propagandists and the left politicians to signal when the riots begin. BLM and Antifa are uneasy partners with different ultimate goals in mind, but their common one is overthrowing the government… the fundamental changing of this country as the Manchurian President talked about.
Oldgoats have good eyes and good instincts.
It would be fine to remove the statue of Lincoln right after they remove the University of Wisconsin. Priorities, don’t you know.
I don’t mind statues. It’s that animatronic grotesquerie the Democrats are running for president that creeps me out.
The statues are more life-like than Uncle Sniffy, that’s why they want them gone.
There’s todays internets winner.
Okay. Somebody has to point out that most students at UofW have never spoken to a black person IN THEIR LIFE! At 2% Black, it is about as pearly white as white can be. Have you seen their basketball team? Nuff said. These are radicals being radical for the sake of being radical. It has nothing to do with justice or blacks or BLM or anything.
Who did the Ho Chunkers steal it from?
Statue origin stories are salve for our impotence.
Proof of the above will come in the form of a strongly worded tweet from Sir Ted Cruz of the Holy Texas Cowpie.
Extremely liberal, actually radical school
They will bend the knee, I have no doubt
They just keep coming back for more and more
Well, I see a degree from this University isn’t worth the powder it takes to blow it up–what idiots think that Abraham Lincoln is an example of racist legacies?
I’d like to see Polk replace Lincoln. Lincoln called Polk “a bewildered, confused and confounded man.” It would serve Lincoln right.
If it is so bad, just drop out and attend a different college, they would be happy to attract new students.
“This statue stands on sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land, and whatever stands there should not stand as a reminder of racist legacies that contributed to this campus.”
Good idea1
Abandon Madison.
Turn the Capitol Building into a casino and move Wisconin’s Capitol to Wausau.
Turn the Univeristy of Wisconsin – Madison over to the tribe and let the casino fund it. Tribe wins.
Taxpayers win.
Wisconsin wins.
You beat me to it, Chiefton. You got it EXACTLY right. Or at the very least the University itself should be dismantled.
If a land-grant University isn’t the very symbol of white oppression and violence against indigenous people, what is?
I think those protestors should refuse to attend classes, quit the university altogether and demand that all UW diplomas awarded in the past are invalid, must be returned and that all past UW graduates should be forced to pay 50% of their earnings to the Ho Chunk nation.
That’s the least that should be required to atone for stealing and desecrating Ho Chunk land
How can you possibly desecrate land previously used by Ho Chunkers?
And here I used to think bowling with midgets was a little crass…
Who Gives a Fk what Students want! They should all be expelled.. Better yet deported to a country other than America! Maybe they’d feel better in say Venezuela or South Africa!
I give a fk.
They will not always remain dumb, ignorant. naive students.
These are the people who will rule the country . . . and determine what acceptable behavior and thoughts . . . you and I are permitted to have.
These people will be our leaders. They will make the rules and write the laws you, your family and your friends will live by.
You would do well to not make the same mistake we’ve made for the past 4 decades.
So what mistake do you have in mind and what’s your solution? Maybe this current national outburst is the beginning of their education, as they start to miss what is being torn down and ruined in some areas.
Is it possible that some will see their parents weren’t such morons after all?
The “we” were people like me who assumed 40-50 years ago that postmodernism and cultural relativism were passing fads. I never anticipated how ingrained those concepts would become, nor how they would broaden and consume our culture as the students of then became the teachers, politicians and media employees of now.
So I’m seeing the error of my naiveté and I’m horrified at how ignorant and lemming-like many adults are. And, superimposed on ignorance and lemming-like qualities is hubris. If that isn’t complicated enough, there are some astute and evil people who take advantage of the naifs for personal gain.
It’s a very difficult problem. Such people are not interested in hearing “the other side.” When I’ve tried to engage some of those folks, some being very well credentialed, I deal first with leftist slogans and then with dismissive anger. And sometimes name calling.
I don’t know what the answer is. How do you reintroduce the virtues, values and logic of the constitution to the educational system when it is accepted as indisputable fact that the country was founded on oppression and slavery, and if one differs, one is a racist or (in the case of global warming) a science denier.
I guess this comes from teaching kids what to think, not how to think.
The best outcome for places like this is to be burned to the ground by the students.
They serve no useful purpose and on balance they cause more harm than good.
“Reminders of racist legacies”
The person who wrote this has a bright future in propaganda. Notice how neatly it sidesteps Lincoln’s role in ending slavery, condemning him just for having been involved.
Really, if not for the sheer ugly dishonesty of it, the brilliance of this wording would be almost admirable. Instead, it’s disgusting.
There is a reason PR people are held in such low esteem.
What if the donations from racists to erect a statue of Abraham Lincoln was an act of penance?
When will these idiots be told that they should spend their tuition money elsewhere. Its June, so they have a couple of months to find someplace that is more suitable to them.
Tell the spoiled brat, entitled, limp wristed woke morons to go POUND SAND.
Antifa moron is clueless about history. Tulsa riots were in 1921, he was only about 100 years off.
No doubt these protesters want to remove all images of Lincoln. Since that would include those $5 bills in their pockets, they can just forward all those Lincoln images to me, and I will be happy to dispose of them.
Funnyh, reminds me of searmans, where minister talks about evil of money, and then solicits money.
How much of Dane County sits on expropriated sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land and must be returned as part of reparations (or the current value be split among living Ho Chunks (in addition to their tax free Casino wampum and the profits from the sales of Winnebagos)?
Then they should leave that college. In fact, they should leave the Americas as Indians were everywhere in the Americas before the white man. I suggest China, I hear it’s a Communist Utopia.
If the statue is on stolen land, then so is the entire university. Raze it and let the students find another university to vent their spleens at.
Another few points for Trump’s reelection.
Does anyone ever ask these activists under what authority do they get to say what is done with the land? Who chartered them to speak for it?
The move against Lincoln is not some long tradition of UW-Madison history. It seems to have started 5 years ago, as the current race war was getting revved up.
It would be a shame to lose Honest Abe.
tell them to take a road trip
– 1.5 hours away
– to RIPON, Wisconsin
– the birthplace of the GOP
Rather than remove the statues, remove the snowflake students!
When protestors cross the line which includes acts of sedition and/or disrupting the lives of other innocent people, blocking their movement, violent acts, or stopping them from accomplishing their jobs or purpose, blocking their speech, and/or unnecessarily interfering with the activities of their environment, or smear tactics, then they are violating their Constitutional rights, 1st amendment rights, breaking existing laws, and need to be brought to justice. Protesting has its limits and place. These protests are not spontaneous and are organized activities by outside domestic terrorist groups. Many are paid by George Soros, BLM, Antifa, and related extreme liberal groups ( Obama). Those who incite and/or fund riots/looting/arson (George Soros) need to be arrested for being an accomplice and/or sedition. They need to account and pay for the damage they create including costs created by obfuscation. Rioters and looters/arsonists should be placed on notice that they can/will be shot! Likewise any rioter/looter/arsonist arrested who lives outside of the immediate area does not have a “dog in the fight” and deserves an additional citation for being a paid rioter/looter and face felony charges. It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting. Those rioters/arsonists arrested need to have a criminal/outstanding warrant background check, students need to be expelled, and all face loss of any government subsistence. Unmasking and disarming protestors of weapons should be enforced and Mayors, governors, government officials allowing out of control riots or preventing the police from doing their jobs should be arrested and held accountable.
I hate the probable fact that the real issue is we have a segment of our society that feels destroying other people’s lives when they face adversity is justified.
These are the inevitable consequences when a nation forgets who and what it is and when some of its citizens reject the values that built and sustained it. But tearing things down, including history, does not help others rise. No life is improved, no family stabilized.
“Out of many, one” is our national motto. We seem to be practicing it today about as much as the unofficial one, “In God we trust.”
“When every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and Street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the State is always right.” -George Orwell ‘1984’
We were warned
“This statue stands on sacred and stolen Ho Chunk land”
“You’re right. We’ll be razing your dorms at the same time. Pack what you can in the next 24 hours.”