Most People In America Celebrate The Holidays With Family, Good Food And Gift Exchanges, But At Least

Oakland Breonna Taylor Sculpture Smashed in Act of ‘Racist Aggression’ Two Weeks After Its Installation

Most people in America celebrate the holidays with family, good food and gift exchanges, but at least one miserable human being decided ‘tis the season for racism and vandalism when they chose the day after Christmas to smash to pieces a sculpture of Breonna Taylor in downtown Oakland, Calif.

The Mercury News reports that the bust created in Taylor’s image was destroyed two weeks after it was sculpted and displayed in Oakland’s Latham Square.

Who knows why some coward who doesn’t believe victims of police violence should be honored felt the need to smash a statue celebrating the life of someone whose killers will likely never be brought to justice anyway? It’s the kind of violent act that serves as a reminder that neither the ousting of Donald Trump as president nor the racial reckoning that America has been facing since this past summer means that we can expect much racial healing in the coming year.

Leo Carson, the artist who sculpted the statue, decried its destruction as an act of “racist aggression” against Taylor and Black Lives Matter.

“I’ve put in hours and hours of my work and built it by hand,” Carson said, Mercury News reports. “Before the pandemic, I was a waiter so I paid for this out of my own pocket. It wasn’t cheap and it was incredibly hurtful personally. But it was also an attack on Breonna Taylor and the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Fortunately, Carson hasn’t been deterred from creating art to honor the movement or Taylor. He told KRON 4 that he “just started a GoFundMe to cast it in bronze to repair it and to reinstall it in bronze so that this couldn’t happen again.” The GoFundMe page has already surpassed its goal of raising $5,000 for the effort.

Meanwhile, according to SFist, the Oakland Police Department has released a statement saying it’s “aware of the incident regarding the vandalism of a bust honoring Breonna Taylor,” and that an investigation is underway.

Carson said he will continue to make more art inspired by the BLM movement and that the nationwide protests have actually inspired much of the art scene in Oakland.

“This is a struggle that will continue to go on so I want my art to help encourage that process and encourage people to fight longer, fight harder and be more passionate,” Carson said, according to Mercury News. “Those protests have the power to really change things.”

“The art community that we have now, it originally sprung up around the Black Lives Matter struggle and it has since then completely transformed the city of Oakland,” he continued. “It has really connected with the movement and so I really want my art to be a part of that course to change history.”

Racists have never been able to end a civil rights movement or any fight against systemic racism in America through random acts of violence and hatred. Some angry bigot taking his rage out on an inanimate object won’t stop anyone from protesting on behalf of Taylor or any other victims of police violence. The fight against racism in America will continue for as long as it’s necessary and anyone who opposes the fight can die mad. You can destroy a statue, but you can’t destroy the movement responsible for its creation

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cquinn27

4 years ago

RB IF YOU SUPPORT HER

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cquinn27

4 years ago

What is going on with the world??

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cquinn27

3 years ago

I’m glad that people are being more accepting of trans people and all but I can’t say I’m a big fan of this new wave of stand up comedians spending their entire sets belittling trans people.

And then people will tell me to actually watch these jokes and I’m like actually why would I? I already know exactly what jokes they’re gonna make and they’re all gonna reinforce in the minds of cis people watching their bigoted feelings about people like me. Why would I want to spend my time on that?

And I’m not talking about any one specific comedian here. It’s a lot of them. And it’s been a thing for the past few years. This is an old and moldy discussion that cisgender standup comedians keep bringing back up thinking that it makes them edgy. It doesn’t. You’re not going against the grain when you state out loud the exact biases that everyone has held for the past century or more and don’t try to subvert expectations at all.

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cquinn27

4 years ago

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cquinn27

3 years ago

Important messages in Young Royals that I don’t want overlooked because two boys kiss:

- the difficulty of growing up with ADHD and aspbergers (or other diagnoses that affect you). the fact that you say too much, or too little, and come off as someone not like everyone else. the way kids/teens usually go through life just trying to convince themselves they DON’T want friends and don’t need them when all they want is to be liked and not have to change who they are. something that affects so many kids today and it is shown in such a real, good, honest way in this show

- girls supporting girls in everything. the fact that felice supports sara, that madison tells so many people off for being rude to her girls and also is one hundred percent right and supportive about how august treats felice and doesn’t want that for her girl. we need this and it’s refreshing to see it in such a nice way without any kind of drama to it just for drama’s sake

- GIRLS PLAYING SPORTS. most girls stop playing sports at the age of 14 which is a big, big problem imo. to see here that the one playing football and wanting support is rosh, and that people GIVE it to her and show how fun she’s having is absolutely also an important thing to show. it made me absolutely so happy to see this get attention and i think people overlook the importance of it

- politics when it comes to rich and poor. the way rich people are allowed to accept all kinds of money whereas if poor people get them it’s disgusting and they are awful for accepting money. that the royal family is the one family getting the most money out of all.

- you are allowed to set boundaries for yourself. you are allowed to not want to be a secret, you are allowed to not wear a dress that your mother wants you to wear. you are allowed to dump someone even if it could give you opportunities.

- girls have a sexuality and it is OKAY and i love to see that girls talk about sex and hookups and all just as much as the guys (even if a different way) because let’s get rid of the way girls are never supposed to explore their sexuality, discuss it or want to let others know (or know about others experiences)

- parents and substance abuse and how it affects your family and the difficultiy of wanting maybe a relationship but knowing it could fuck up everything. the way kids have to deal with it when they should be the ones taken cared of

- that spreading nude videos, photos of any kind is A CRIME and should be treated as a crime and is absolutely never wrong of the one taking part of the video. they didn’t do anything wrong. august was the absolute asshole that should be charged with so many things. and that people were supportive and felt sorry for them was also the best.

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cquinn27

4 years ago