Vandalism of a Christopher Columbus statue in Baltimore was captured on video and posted to YouTube that showed a group responsible for the damage.
The video appeared on a YouTube channel called Popular Resistance. It is narrated by someone who was at the Herring Run Park while another person strikes the base of the statue with a sledgehammer.
"Part of our evolution as humans requires tearing down monuments to destructive forces and tearing down systems that maintain them. Part of our evolution is to develop new and ancient systems of democratic economics that centers in the needs of poor indigenous African-American and brown people," the narrator said.
The National Columbus memorial, located at Washington’s Union Station, is the site of an annual Columbus Day celebration. Two members of the National Christopher Columbus Association were dismayed at the vandalism in Baltimore.
"It's no reason for vandalism," John Capozzi, a member of National Christopher Columbus Association. "I just think that it's wrong, and I think that if people want to remove a statue, they should go through the proper channels to do that and then act accordingly."
"I think that his achievements eclipse the bad things that we have come to understand in retrospect came with those achievements," Dino Drudi, another member of the National Christopher Columbus Association.
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Baltimore police are asking for help in identifying the people seen and heard in the YouTube video. Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said the crime apparently occurred early Monday.
According to the Maryland Historical Society website, the monument's cornerstone was laid in 1792 at the north Baltimore country home of one of the first French consuls in the colonies. It was moved to its current location in 1964.
Last week, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered four Confederate statues removed.
