An Abraham Lincoln statue is set to return to Portland’s South Park Blocks seven years after protesters toppled it during the city’s 2020 racial justice demonstrations. But its new perch — designed to bring the monument “closer to the public” — is sparking outrage.
A group of 43 Portlanders, including Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle and businessman Jordan Schnitzer, is urging Mayor Keith Wilson to reverse the city’s plan to reinstall the monument on a newly designed, lower pedestal. In a letter sent last month, the group argued that restoring the monument should mean returning it exactly as it stood before it was torn down. To do otherwise, is an insult, they wrote.
“The act of removing Lincoln from his pedestal has a universally understood meaning; it is a demeaning gesture which permanently humiliates the person it commemorates,” the letter reads…