Protesters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and dumped it into the harbor Saturday.
Video posted on Twitter showed a group using ropes to pull the statue from its pedestal in the city’s Little Italy neighborhood as others cheered. It was then rolled to the city’s Inner Harbor and pushed into the water, The Baltimore Sun reported.
The removal and vandalism of statues of controversial figures, including Confederate generals and other leaders who owned slaves or who supported slavery or racist policies, is part of the fallout of anti-racism protests across the nation in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
President Donald Trump has become particularly incensed by statue destruction. He has compared the actions to the behavior of fascists and has vowed to punish those responsibly.
A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young told the Sun that the action was part of a “reexamination taking place nationally and globally around some of these monuments and statues that may represent different things to different people.”
The Columbus statue was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984. There are two other statues of Columbus in the city.
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