Seattle can identify with Lenin.
Critics of the decision to remove several Confederate monuments in New Orleans are pointing to offensive communist monuments in places like Seattle that are protected for their intrinsic value.
A towering 18-foot-tall statue of Russian communist Vladimir Lenin has remained standing in the eccentric North Seattle neighborhood of Fremont for decades despite strong public opposition and repeated vandalism, KOMO reports.
The comparison came from opponents of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s recent decision to move forward on the City Council’s 2015 vote to remove statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.T. Beauregard, as well as a granite obelisk the mayor dubbed “symbols of white supremacy.”
According to KOMO:
While writing about the removal of the New Orleans monuments, right-wing media site NewsBusters relayed a reader’s comment comparing the four removed statues to the Lenin statue in Fremont, the irreverent, artsy North Seattle neighborhood and self-proclaimed “Center of the Universe.”
The cast bronze sculpture of Lenin, which is designed to make him appear as a revolutionary, was found in a scrapyard in Europe by a Washington English teacher who paid to transport it to the United States. The teacher, Lewis Carpenter, could not convince his hometown of Issaquah to display the statue, but Seattle sculptor Peter Bevis arranged to have it displayed in Fremont as the now deceased Carpenter’s family attempts to sell it for $250,000, according to the news site.
HT: BCF