Posted on 01/26/2014 3:53:21 PM PST by bkopto
Keeping the peace is no easy task at Eugene’s Nobel Peace Park.
The 24 plaques at the park that feature the American Nobel laureates have attracted attention from visitors and vandals alike since it opened in Alton Baker Park last spring, and the plaque representing the nation’s most recent laureate, President Obama, has been a prime target.
“It got vandalized, I’d say, five, six, seven times,” said Roger Durant, the project’s development director, of the Obama plaque. Nearly “every two or three weeks, there was a new mark that we had to try to take off and rub out,” he added.
Many of these markings — including a racial slur — were easily cleaned off, said Durant, but last month he and his team were forced to remove Obama’s plaque after finding it carved with profanity.
“It’s kind of a slap in the face of the organization,” Durant said. “It’s taking donors’ money out of what it’s meant to be used for.”
After a meeting with Mayor Kitty Piercy Thursday afternoon, Durant said the replacement plaque will be housed in a prominent and secure place — likely in the Eugene Public Library — at least until the end of Obama’s presidency.
“It’s not the way I would prefer it” said Piercy, who called the vandalism “intolerable.”
“I feel sad that we have to do this, but I think lots of times when things don’t go the way that you wish they were going, you can use them as a learning opportunity,” she added. “If we can learn something as a community from what is going on with that and still educate people and share, then I guess that’s a good thing.”
The park, a more than $225,000 project funded by donations, is the first monument in the country to honor winners of the peace prize. Each plaque and stand cost $5,000, and Durant said the high-pressure laminate plaques — where vandals have carved words and other markings — costs $800 to replace.
“But there are plenty of regular conservative folks in the city and surrounding countryside who haven’t been indoctrinated by Communist professors.”
I know there are. My dad went through gradeschool at Lorane. A different time and a different place.
“We’re all here to hopefully inspire future peace makers, just like them.”
**cough** **cough**...Trouble maker in Chief.
Funny when a person who does this is agreeing with the liberals viewpoint they call it free speech or art, but when the person disagrees with the liberals it's vandalism.
There aren't enough of us to make a difference, as the Republican Party is so FU...and no other organizing force to speak of in Oregon. The 'stunt' with the AR15 raffle caught me by surprise; someone with some cojones at Republican Party...pigs fly sometimes...
(no, it wasn't me, honest)
Interesting... :p
actually Alton Baker Park, OWS’s headquarters for Occupy Eugene. I wonder how much damage OWS caused...
I don't thin k the project was even conceived until after O got the Prize.
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