The town of Newton Falls, Ohio, has officially declared itself a Statuary Sanctuary City, offering to take the statues of historical figures that have been removed throughout the country and place them in a location of honor in the community, WFMJ reported on Sunday.
City Manager David Lynch signed a proclamation on the Fourth of July declaring a “general amnesty” specifically for the statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Patrick Henry, Francis Scott Key, Theodore Roosevelt, and Christopher Columbus.
The proclamation declares that “The great leaders of our country and Western civilization, though flawed in many ways, have risen to great achievement such as the founding of our nation, the ending of slavery, establishment and protection of our national parks, the establishment of antitrust laws to protect our citizens from overaggressive monopolization of industry, and the discovery of the New World itself.”
Lynch told Fox 8 that Newton Falls, which is located about 60 miles east of Cleveland, wants “to embrace the great leaders,“ admitting that “they had warts but they laid the foundation for what we have today.”
The proclamation comes amid debates nationwide over whether statues and monuments for Confederate leaders and other problematic historical figures should remain standing, The Hill pointed out.
The demand for the removal of such statues gained steam following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, while in Minneapolis police custody.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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