A statue of explorer Christopher Columbus near San Francisco’s Coit Tower was taken down Thursday after repeated incidents of vandalism.
Workers for the Arts Commission took down the statue from Telegraph Hill, according to KGO.
In October, vandals covered the monument in red paint and spray painted the statue’s base with the phrase: “Destroy all monuments of genocide and kill all colonizers.”
The statue’s removal comes after California Democrat lawmakers ordered a statue of Christopher Columbus with Queen Isabella in the State Capitol rotunda in Sacramento to be taken down.
“Christopher Columbus is a deeply polarizing historical figure given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations,” reads a statement that signed by Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins (D), Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D), and Assembly Rules Committee Chairman Ken Cooley (D). “The continued presence of this statue in California’s Capitol, where it has been since 1883, is completely out of place today.”
The decision comes as left-wing activist groups, including Black Lives Matter, and Democrat lawmakers have called for historical statues to be taken down in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, a statue of Christopher Columbus was removed from a St. Louis, Missouri, park — Tower Grove Park — after commissioners who manage it voted in favor of the move.
The day prior, after a bust of Christopher Columbus was taken down in Detroit, Michigan, and placed in storage. On Friday, officials in Wilmington, Delaware — the town in which former Vice President Joe Biden resides — removed statues of both Columbus and Caesar Rodney.
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