Free Republic

In San Francisco, there is an an 800-ton monument that retells California history, from the Spanish missions to American settlement. Several bronze sculptures and relief plaques depict American Indians, white miners, missionaries and settlers. A female figure symbolizing white culture stands atop a massive stone pillar. The design of the “pioneer monument” was celebrated in newspapers across the country when it was erected in 1894. Today, however, apctivists argue that the monument – particularly its depiction of a Spanish missionary and Mexican “vaquero,” or cowboy, towering over an American Indian – is demeaning to American Indians. Should the city take...

Austin’s Equity Office has recommended renaming the Texas city because of Stephen F. Austin's alleged views on slavery. But why stop at just renaming Austin when Amerigo Vespucci took and sold slaves. Austin, Texas is named after Stephen F. Austin, but America is named after Amerigo Vespucci. New York City has been on its own anti-history binge, demoting the statue of the ‘Father of Gynecology’ and tearing out plaques memorializing Robert E. Lee attached to a tree that he had once planted, but it’s got bigger problems. The city is named after King James II whose Royal African Company branded...

Major technology companies including Apple, Facebook and YouTube deleted years of content from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platforms over allegations of hate speech, a sudden clampdown that is fueling the growing debate over how big technology companies choose to censor. The move was unusual for its sweep and speed, suggesting a new assertiveness by technology companies that in the past have worked to avoid alienating conservatives, who often assert that left-leaning Silicon Valley is biased against them. The removals appeared to be prompted by more users flagging Infowars content for policy violations. ''' "...spreading provocative theories...

The West Hollywood City Council called Monday night for President Trump’s star be removed from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, according to a tweet by the city’s mayor. “West Hollywood City council unanimously passes resolution asking the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the Donald Trump star on Hollywood Walk of Fame,” cheered Mayor John Duran on Twitter. During the meeting, Mr. Duran said the resolution “is not because of his conservative politics or his conservative policies. It is for the abuse of women, minorities, immigrants, the disabled … you’ve crossed a line of decency.” He also said the constituent...

West Hollywood's City Council will vote on a resolution to permanently remove President Trump’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The resolution cites family separations, Trump's climate change denial and "his disturbing treatment of women" as reasons for removal.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce previously said it would never remove a star over backlash. The West Hollywood City Council will vote Monday night on a resolution urging the Los Angeles City Council and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to permanently remove Donald Trump’s walk of fame star. The marker, which was unveiled in 2007, has been vandalized numerous times and completely destroyed twice to date. "The City Council will consider adopting a resolution urging the Los Angeles City Council and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove President Donald J. Trump’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, due to his...

DALTON – Democrat Stacey Abrams found herself on the campaign trail this week answering for an earlier call to remove the carving of three Confederate leaders from state-owned Stone Mountain near Atlanta. A Dalton woman expressed concern during a town hall Wednesday about Abrams’ apparent focus on blasting off the “beautiful carving” from the face of Stone Mountain. The woman also inquired about Abrams’ views on the Confederate monuments that are a fixture in many downtowns across Georgia, including Dalton. Abrams called for the removal of the carving last fall in a series of tweets shortly after a protestor was...

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Richmond's famed Monument Avenue has been vandalized. Red paint was splattered on the statue's base. The letters BLM, an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, was also sprayed on the base. Virginia Capitol Police, which is responsible for policing the monuments, told news outlets the vandalism occurred late Friday or early Saturday between patrols. The vandalism occurs a week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that was organized in part as a protest to plans to remove a Lee Statue there. ETC...

Now the Anti-History movement of the left has a new target. A target as big as a city. A new report from Austin, Texas’s Equity Office about existing Confederate monuments suggested changing the city's name. The report identified several neighborhoods and 10 streets named in honor of the Confederacy or William Barton, a slave owner dubbed the "Daniel Boone of Texas," that could be changed, The Austin American-Statesman reported Friday. Austin’s namesake, Stephen F. Austin - also referred to as the "father of Texas" - opposed efforts by Mexico to abolish slavery in the Tejas province, saying freed slaves would...

A group pushing to change the name of iconic marketplace Faneuil Hall is now calling for a national “black-led boycott” of the tourist site after being “avoided and rebuffed” by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, according to its founder. Kevin Peterson said the New Democracy Coalition has been reaching out to the mayor for more than a year and a half about a name change through letters, press conferences and office visits.

SHREVEPORT -- More than a year after four monuments to the Confederate era were removed from the New Orleans landscape, a federal judge has cleared the way for removal of another Louisiana Confederate memorial. Wednesday's ruling in the northwest Louisiana city of Shreveport says the Caddo Parish Commission has the authority to remove a monument outside the parish courthouse. U.S. District Judge Robert James dismissed a lawsuit by a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) - Residents of a Georgia city are pushing to change the name of a residential street to Barack Obama Boulevard. **SNIP** Rose says the name should be changed because Valdosta city leaders named Forrest Street in April 1883 for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

The commander of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming has agreed to replace a Bible on a POW/MIA table with a generic “book of faith,” according to documents released by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The MRFF is a militant organization that has fought against Nativity scenes, Bible studies and any outward expressions of the Christian faith on U.S. military installations. The head of the foundation, Mikey Weinstein, wrote in the HuffPost that he is dedicated to fighting “virulent religious oppression” carried out by “incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their...

Here’s a list of all the pages I know of which have been deleted or unpublished indefinitely: Collectively Conscious (915K followers) – Deleted on June 13th, 2018. Natural Cures Not Medicine (2.3M followers) – Deleted on June 11th, 2018. I Want to Be 100% Organic (700K followers) – Deleted on June 13th, 2018. Viral Alternative News (500K followers) – Deleted on June 13th, 2018. Organic Health (230K followers) – Deleted on June 13th, 2018. Natural Cures From Food (120K followers) – Deleted on June 13th, 2018. Heart Centered Rebalancing (3.9M followers) – Deleted a few years ago. Awareness Act (1.1M...

The removal of offensive monuments took a unique turn in Seattle. Mayor Ed Murray asked a cemetery to remove a Confederate monument erected in 1926 but also requested the removal of a large statue of Vladimir Lenin. From the Seattle Times: The monument, erected in 1926 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Lenin statue are both on private property. Still, Murray said, he believes they should be removed. “Not only do these kinds of symbols represent historic injustices, their existence causes pain among those who themselves or whose family members have been impacted by these atrocities,” Murray...

Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day in recent months, a major shift to lessen the flow of disinformation on the platform, according to data obtained by The Washington Post. The rate of account suspensions, which Twitter confirmed to The Post, has more than doubled since October, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, according to the data. The...

Just weeks before last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va., Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced a new commission to recommend "how to best tell the real story" of the Confederate-era and other statues on Monument Avenue, a tree-lined street known as one of the city's tourist destinations. Then the white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, some 70 miles away. They rallied around a statue of Robert E. Lee that had been slated for removal during an August weekend that turned violent. The next week, Stoney added to the Richmond group's charge: The commission would examine the possible removal or...

President Trump called the National Security Agency's recently announced mass-deletion of call records "a disgrace" Tuesday, and appeared to link the purge with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible campaign collusion with Russia. The NSA said last week that it began deleting call records on May 23 from a three-year period beginning in 2015 after "technical irregularities" resulted in "the production to NSA of some [call records] that NSA was not authorized to receive." Trump suggested there was more to the story.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the Richmond School Board voted 6-1 Monday to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School.

A Richmond, Virginia, elementary school will switch its name from that of a Confederate general to that of the nation's first black President. On Monday, the Richmond school board voted to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary as Barack Obama Elementary School. Members of the school's community submitted ideas for a new name and students at the Richmond school, which is 95% African-American, voted among seven choices. The top three finalists were: Barack Obama, Northside and Wishtree. Last year, a school board in Mississippi dropped the name Jefferson Davis, for the president of the Confederacy, in favor of naming an elementary school...