The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. August 22, 2017 Baltimore Activists Take Sledgehammer to Christopher Columbus Statue -------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, in Baltimore, activists took a sledgehammer to a 44-foot-tall monument to Christopher Columbus, destroying part of the statue and then attaching a sign to its base reading "The future is racial and economic justice." This is one Baltimore resident, explaining why the statue was targeted, in a video posted online. Baltimore Resident: "Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial initial invasion of European capitalism into the western hemisphere. Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas. That Columbian wave of destruction continues on the backs of Indigenous, African-American and brown people. Racist monuments to slave owners and murderers have always bothered me." .