Amid pandemic’s hate, Seattle Parks considers options for offensive monument in Volunteer Park
(Image: CHS)
Another lesson from last year’s protest against Black Lives Matter: History needs to be questioned, and even stone monuments are mutable.
The City of Seattle and the group dedicated to protecting the park says a memorial to the war that gave Capitol Hill’s Volunteer park His name is unacceptably offensive and needs to be changed. Seattle Parks says the monument should be changed – or removed.
The memorial plaque has been criticized again amid concerns about ongoing anti-Asian violence and hatred due to the COVID-19 crisis and xenophobic rhetoric regarding the pandemic and its causes.
“The Marker’s words grotesquely falsify a gruesome past, for the Spanish-American War was the moment the United States decided to become an empire dealing with ‘little brown brothers’.” Christoph Giebel, Professor of Southeast Asian History at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies In the University of Washington, wrote in a comment posted this month by the Northwest Asian Weekly.
The hotel is close to the Seattle Asian Art Museum Along the roundabout around the famous water tower, the park monument was added to the park about 50 years after the name of the public space was changed in honor of the soldiers of the Spanish-American War. Advocated by J. Willis Sayre, a war veteran and writer who also helped advance the original name change of 1901 city ParkThe short inscription on the plaque with about 30 words manages to pack a lot:
Renamed in 1901
In tribute to the
VOLUNTARY SERVICES BY
SPANISH-AMERICAN
WAR VETERANS
Who released that?
Oppressed people from
CUBA, PUERTO RICO AND
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
APRIL 1898 – JULY 1902
It also inexplicably contains a passage from Rudyard Kiplings 1897 Recession poem written to honor the British Empire Queen Victoria Diamond anniversary:
Lord, God of hosts, be still with us. So that we don’t forget – so that we don’t forget!
Seattle Parks says it is aware of the criticism.
“We have heard of communities that are offended by this badge, and we take these concerns seriously,” said a park spokesman. “We don’t have a formal process to request a name change or removal of a parking function that is objectionable. However, we will consider these requests whether they were sent to us through the media, community meetings, emails, or phone calls. “
Last year, another controversial memorial in the Volunteer Park area came to an entirely different end after vandals toppled a tribute to Confederate veterans Cemetery with a lake view after years of complaints. This memorial stood on the private property of the cemetery and eventually ended after years of inactivity by charitable management to address concerns about a Stone Mountain granite memorial carved from the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia in the middle of Seattle.
(Image: CHS)
Jennifer Ott, a member of the Volunteer Park Trust A community group working to protect and improve the green spaces said the volunteer park’s nameplates bothered them for years and the trust began organizing a plan after a community member called on the monument last year had turned to the group. The pandemic has slowed the trust’s efforts, but Ott said one option being considered is to “add rather than remove” the badge to “provide an opportunity to share the social / cultural history of the park and the park system understand”.
Currently, the Volunteer Park Trust is hoping to form a coalition of groups to better represent the city’s communities and work with Seattle Parks to change the monument and solve the problems.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Parks spokesman said the department was “still considering options,” including removing the badge or “adding a notice next to it, etc.” But officials “currently have no recommended course of action.”
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