These Statues glorify a mythologized interpretation of settler colonialism and foreign imperialism without actually teaching the history.  Remorse and repentance from this legacy is the DESTINY of white Oregonians.  Therefore we want City Leaders and the Regional Arts and Culture Commision to MANIFEST this by removing them to somewhere remote and inconsequential in Forest Park, like the "park of fallen monuments" in Moscow.  It'll be a hit for adventure tourists. 

We demand that City Leaders open a democratic process for the people to decide what is worthy of civic honor, rather than allowing wealthy donors to decide for us.  This process should privilege the voices of indigenous peoples of the Willamette valley whose stories have been ignored or silenced.  The American Historical The American Historical Association (AHA) said in an August 2017 statement on the confederate monuments controversy said that to "remove monuments is neither to 'change' history nor 'erase' it.  What changes with such removals is what American communities decide is worthy of civic honor"  move monuments is neither to 'change' history nor 'erase' it.  What changes with such removals is what American communities decide is worthy of civic honor.' 

The AHA stated that most monuments were erected "without anything resembling a democratic process," and recommended that it was "time to reconsider these decisions."

We strongly recommend that the peoples' assembly forget statuary altogether, and that megalithic stelae be erected in their place, instead of statues of different heroes.  These should feature monumental inscriptions which recount an unbiased history of the DEEDS of those people we choose to remember,​ and of their notable WORDS and sayings.  An example of the latter style of memorial inscription is found on the building of the former Washington high school, and on the front of the county jail / (in)justice center.  These inscriptions honor the legacy of George Washington far better than the statue outside the friendship Masonic building on Sandy boulevard.  They also reveal his basic hypocrisy to any observer aware of his slave ownership.  Accompanying the memorial incriptions should be sequences of profile carvings in relief, that storyboard a history, to make these facts and other facts clear.  

UPDATE 2021

City leaders and the RACC have adopted a new policy roughly in line with this analysis.  This is 60% of victory.

PIONEER IMAGE  “PROMISED LAND” –  removed July 25th, 2020!

The outdoor bronze sculpture. The Promised Land by David Manuel, located in Chapman Square, Plaza Blocks in Portland, Oregon.  1993.  The statue was a donation to the city by the Oregon Trail Coordinating Council, and has never been endorsed by Portland's own Arts Commission. 

The problems the produced this statuary in the first place still exist in collective consciousness:

- ignores indigenous history altogether, and fails to teach pioneer history
- glorifies the colonial doctrine of manifest destiny without critique or even description.
- appeals to the pseudo-biblical doctrine of Christian supercession of the Sinai covenant, in support of a Christian doctrine that they have replaced the Jews as chosen people, justifying dominionism over the American continent as their "promised land".  (Whereas the book of Genesis promises the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, and to the sons of Jacob who keep the Sinai covenant, which Christianity explicitly rejects.)  White anglo-Americans should learn that they (we) are not the chosen people and that neither Massachusetts Bay nor Willamette Valley is their (our) promised land.  This cultural misappropriation from and failed pretense at replacement of the Jews should not be used to justify seizure of land from and replacement of the indigenous peoples of Oregon via white anglo-american protestant christian dominionist colonialism. By the way, for what its worth, “Thou shalt make no engraved statue in the likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth below …etc.”  - Exodus 20

REPLACE with a megalithic stele that recounts an unbiased history of the Oregon pioneers and the indigenous peoples they displaced.

GUAM INFANTRYMAN / Spanish–American War Soldier's Monument Lownsdale Square, Plaza Blocks.  1906 -  still standing .. 

Please read and sign:  https://www.change.org/p/stop-valorizing-gun-violence

Also known as the Spanish–American War Memorial or simply Soldiers Monument, is an outdoor sculpture and war memorial monument honoring the 2nd Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the Spanish–American War, created by American artist Douglas Tilden and located in Lownsdale Square, in the Plaza Blocks of downtown. 

The Problems:   

•  Celebrates American imperialism as over Spanish imperialism, without offering a critique of either.
•  Fails to teach history
•  Idolatrous representation of a brandished gun explicitly valorizes and encourages the violence of war.
•  Cultic worship of War Dead (The statue is dedicated to the dead of the second volunteer Oregon Infantry)
•  Implicit white supremacy, especially given the context of Oregon's black exclusion laws, during which period the statue was erected. 

RETAIN THE PEDESTAL AND RECORD ON IT THE HISTORY of the Spanish American War and subsequent history of Guam, Puerto Rico, the liberation movement and 1946 independence of the Phillippines. 

RECOMMENDATIONS ON PORTLAND PUBLIC ART AND STATUARY outside the plaza. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN South Park Blocks.  1908 - REMOVED Indigenous Peoples Day (Columbus Day, Oct 11th) 2020

 Bronze cast by George Fite Waters

The Problem:  Fails to adequately teach history.  Like all statuary, it valorizes corporal presence and implied physical power while ignoring the moral, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of the person we are honoring. 

Consider replacing it with sayings, speeches and accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln, such as his Gettysburg address and Emancipation Proclaimation, and a list of the victories the Union Army won over the confederate generals whose statues in the south are belatedly being removed.  

TEDDY ROOSEVELT, ROUGH RIDER South Park Blocks. 1922 - REMOVED Indigenous Peoples Day (Columbus Day, Oct 11th) 2020

From this statue I learned that T.R. was unusual large, greenish, liked to carry a sword, sit on a horse, and was covered in bird shit.  Is there anything else about him that I should know?  

THOMAS JEFFERSON  High School, Killingsworth st. / Kerby St.  5/1916.  removed June 14th, 2020

Jefferson was also a vociferous abolitionist who lacked the courage of his convictions;  he owned and profited from slaves his whole life.  For the replacement inscription, consider including the following denunciation of slavery and the slave trade from his original rough draft to the Declaration of Independence, which was removed from the definitive version by the Continental Congress in order to appease the southern slave states:

"Let the facts be submitted to a candid world: .... he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

Why attempt to reproduce the man's physical form while totally neglecting to teach his political philosophy?  The monument becomes an aid to forgetting.  Listen everyone: next 4th of July, remember to read the original rough draft.

GEORGE WASHINGTON 57th Ave. / Sandy Blvd.  1927 - June 18th, 2020

If we're going arbitrarily honor someone, why not George Washington Carver?  Here are some quotes:  "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."  "Where there is no vision, there is no hope."  "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune it."
"Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate will eventually destroy the hater."

If you wish to honor George Washington the revolutionary general and first president, consider this quote "The administration of Justice is the firmest pillar of good government," written on the facade of the county jail / (in)justice center.  If only our leaders would hear this.  Washington didn't even take his own words to heart.

HARVEY SCOTT  1933 - 10/20/2020

This man fought Indian wars, opposed women's suffrage and public high school, and edited the Oregonian newspapers.  If he said or did something worth remembering, write it on a plaque.  It shouldn't to be celebrated with a statue, but we should not neglect to transmit both the honorable and dishonorable aspects of our state's history.

JOAN OF ARC

CHIEF MULTONOMAH, COMING OF THE WHITE MAN

YORK

BATHING BEAUTY OF PSU

Women should be naked, voluptuous, and bath in fountains so that the rest of us can ogle.  This is normative, this is what women should do, and this is what we expect of them????

REBECCA AT THE WELL Park Blocks

The mark that distinguised Rebecca at the fountain, in the eyes of the elderly servant Eleazar, was not her physical beauty, but that she demonstrated kindness to the animals by offering to water his camels.  This textual context is totally missing from a very Greek statue that should properly be called the "Aquarian nymphs" or something like that.  The descendants of Shemanski and the so called "temple" of Beit Israel should be ashamed of themselves.  Go read your own Law before you claim to be a "nation of priests".  Rather than being a "light to the nations", you're legitimizing and helping perpetuate our gentile pridefulness and delusions.  

THOMPSON ELK SCULPTURE  Main st./3rd Ave.  1900 - 1/7/2020

SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Decolonization is Not a Metaphor" by Eve Tuck and D.Yang

Prophetic Worlds:  Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau by Christopher Miller

Anti-Judaism: the Western Tradition by David Nirenberg