The People's Republic of San Francisco is ready to finish the job the Floyd Mischief Mob started in 2020.
This once great and beautiful city will use $3 million of the foundation's funds to decide which of the city's remaining statues should be removed because they do not represent the city's “values,” including those left in place by the Floyd Hoax rioters.
Obvious targets would be those who promote “racism,” “white supremacy,” and other imagined problems of the past.
As the project moves forward, Mayor London Breed's city has deteriorated and turned into a crime-ridden cesspool.
Power and privilege
The beginning of the end for many bronze statues began in 2018 when the city removed an “early bronze statue” because it depicted a Native American at the feet of a Spanish missionary, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But “the effort gained momentum during the 2020 racial justice movements following the killing of George Floyd. That year, crowds across the country toppled statues honoring Confederate leaders from the Civil War, which critics said was a tribute to the country's racist past,” the paper continued.
The project will be funded with $3 million from the left-leaning Mellon Foundation.
The Chronicle continued:
The project, called “Shaping a Legacy,” was discussed at last week's Arts Commission meeting, with senior project manager Angela Carrier explaining that a holistic look at San Francisco's monuments and memorials “concentrates things that speak to power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism.”
“These monuments no longer represent the values this city is supposed to represent,” she added.
The monuments and memorials are listed in an inventory last updated in June 2023. They range from Lotta's Fountain, installed on Market Street in 1875, to a bust of George Moscone in City Hall, to more than a dozen statues of explorers and war heroes in Golden Gate Park. The latest addition is a nine-foot bronze statue of Maya Angelou that will be installed in the Main Library in September, which is also subject to review. The entire Civic Art Collection consists of 4,000 objects valued at more than $100 million.
The project's mission statement states that its goal is to confront past inequalities in order to combat present-day inequalities.
A slim SFist article about the project reports that it will “audit 98 statues in the city to determine whether any are racist or sexist and should be removed.”
The city announced a $3 million grant last year, part of Mayor Mellon's $250 million donation, to “renew the nation's monumental landscape through public projects that more fully and accurately represent the diversity and complexity of the American story,” according to a San Francisco Arts Commission news release.
Other targets include Asheville, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; and Denver, Colorado.
“Pulse check”
In San Francisco, the funding will go towards “Pulse Check: Accountability and Revitalization for the Future of San Francisco Monuments,” an initiative that includes a racial equity audit of publicly available works in the Civic Art Collection, community engagement, and community-led artist activation in public spaces.
The aim is to remove from the public sphere anything that left-wing public officials consider “racist”, the statement said.
“The support of this grant will allow us to continue our important work to ensure our city's monuments and memorials reflect our values and showcase the art and stories of all the people and moments that make our city special,” Breed said.
When Floyd Hoax rioters destroyed the statue “in protest of our history of racism and colonialism,” the Arts Commission sprang into action to create the Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee (MMAC) to “rethink” public art.
The release goes into further detail about the “Pulse Check” project, writing in typically left-wing style:
The project engages communities that have historically been excluded from discussions about the valuation of artworks and the process of commissioning new work; and it fosters the creation of contemporary, dynamic, healing art in the San Francisco landscape with integrity. A team of multidisciplinary artist leaders and local facilitators conducted broad community dialogue to inform two project elements: (1) a racial equity audit of commemorative works publicly available in San Francisco's civic art collections, and (2) active community engagement and multidisciplinary opportunities for artistic activation in public spaces.
The newspaper did not provide a list of buildings that saboteurs might target, but they could include statues of Abraham Lincoln and monuments to Admiral George Dewey and author Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Beginning
Once again, the event that gave left-leaning cities carte blanche was the death of drug addict and habitual offender George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020. Floyd died of a drug overdose while in police custody. Yet the left-leaning mainstream media lied and said that officer Derek Chauvin “murdered” Floyd. The Chronicle repeated that lie in an article about the statue destruction project.
Among the statues destroyed were those of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner, Catholic missionary Junipero Serra and Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
The MMAC “recommended a fairness audit, with a final report due in 2023, which is currently underway,” the Chronicle continued.
“The audit will determine which monuments are currently considered offensive and, if so, what should replace them,” said former arts commissioner Dorka Keene, who chaired the visual arts committee when the Columbus and Pioneer statues were partially removed in 2020. “The broader question is, 'How long should the monuments stand?'”
Crime wave, vacant buildings
But while Breed and her “progressive” followers worry about “racist” statues, the city is decaying.
In March, Newsweek magazine published a list of businesses that should be closed in California due to crime, specifically “the everyday theft, vandalism, robbery and vehicle break-ins that pose a threat to employees and customers.”
Macy's closed its Signature Store in Union Square in February due to shoplifting. In May 2023, luxury retailers Nordstrom and Whole Foods closed their San Francisco stores “due to crime and poor economic conditions in the downtown area.” Target followed suit in September.
The crime rate was 67 per 1,000 residents.
Newsweek continued:
While crime in San Francisco is down in 2023, according to city data, the state of neglect in downtown, where the number of vacant office spaces is at an all-time high, is exacerbating already-existing conditions of homelessness, drug use and often crime.
Last year, overall crime was down 7 percent compared to 2022 and 13 percent compared to 2019. Property crime was down 34 percent, motor vehicle theft was down 11 percent and robbery was down 16 percent. Violent crime was down 23 percent.
Late last year, the San Francisco Standard reported that 35.9 percent of the city's office space, or “more than 31.5 million square feet,” was vacant.
The website also said that between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, 2023, approximately 20 cars were stolen per day.
Car theft is a serious issue in the city, and X Feed is highlighting the problem.
Last July, ABC News reported that “San Francisco's retail hub is turning into a ghost town,” and the report noted that Old Navy had also closed its San Francisco store.
It's unclear how removing more statues would address the city's problems of blight and rising crime.
H/T: Breitbart