logo
Alison Cuddy and Lisa Yun Lee: Stonewall and other monuments must not be used as a weapon

Alison Cuddy and Lisa Yun Lee: Stonewall and other monuments must not be used as a weapon

Chicago Tribune11-03-2025
When the National Park Service recently removed all references to transgender and queer people from the Stonewall National Monument website, one of our country's most important ways to honor and preserve the past was effectively turned into a weapon, one designed to further the Trump administration's attack on so-called 'gender ideology' as well as on public history.
Monuments have been challenged and even removed in recent years, some with acts of civil disobedience, including violence. As a nation, we've debated the way they can shape, distort or deny our collective understanding of the past or help us find common ground over time and across our differences. We've begun to reckon with the reality that one person's hero is another's worst enemy, or that a moment of national pride can also be one of deep shame.
That conversation has been particularly rich in Chicago. In 2020, the city convened a committee to both review and make recommendations about the city's existing monuments and markers. As two people deeply involved in the city's efforts to realize new monuments and markers, we believe several lessons from that process offer a path forward now, one we urgently need to follow.
First, we need more, not fewer, monuments. In Chicago that work is underway. Memorials to Mahalia Jackson, Mother Jones, and Latina histories in Pilsen, commemorations of the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 and honoring the survivors of police torture, and a series that foregrounds Native American stories, are all in the works. By turns they offer opportunities to celebrate the past, acknowledge its erasures and confront the hard truths of racial history. Rather than removing troubling monuments, the city plans to engage with some of them, including adding to an existing statue of George Washington in Washington Park.
Second, we also need to talk with one another more, not less, about monuments. Revisiting the city's memorials encouraged a wide-ranging civic dialogue about how best to recognize our histories. Community organizations, youth groups, historical societies and artists all made suggestions for new markers or shared ideas about how to tell these stories. All of it was an engagement with public history as not just an opportunity to celebrate but also to confront and even heal our shared past. We need platforms, spaces and opportunities for us to share and understand why monuments and memorials matter to us and to be able to challenge and confront one another in civil ways.
The national conversation around monuments has also led President Donald Trump to call for more memorials, through an idea he proposed during his first term in office and has recently revived. The ' National Garden of American Heroes ' would have over 250 statues recognizing significant Americans, from Whitney Houston to Harriet Tubman and Antonin Scalia. While there is nothing wrong with adding more monuments, what is missing in his plan is any kind of invitation to the public to discuss the merits, contributions and impact of these historical figures.
On the contrary, his policy around monuments and memorials seeks to stifle debate, threatening to punish people 'to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law' for any actions that result in the damage or desecration of monuments. How ironic, then, that by erasing the role of trans and queer people in the historic events the Stonewall memorial honors and removing the T and Q from LGBTQ, the administration is in effect violating its own policy, desecrating the history this monument seeks to remember.
With this move, Trump offers up history as a zero-sum game, where one person or community's win is seen as a threat or loss to another group's identity. Monuments and memorials can and should do more than simply be a definitive representation of one person's truth over another. But contests around the limits of public history, historical truth and national identity emerge through collective democratic processes, not via an executive order or individual fiat.
Monuments matter not only because they speak to our past but because they allow us to discuss the most pressing issues facing us today. There are many examples of what this looks like in Chicago. The recently announced plan to create the COVID-19 Memorial Monument of Honor, Remembrance & Resilience, a 25-foot stainless-steel sculpture on a site in the Illinois Medical District, offers a place where we could come together to remember what we went through and to discuss public health policy, how to prepare for the next pandemic and care for the most vulnerable people in our society.
This vision of monuments as active and evolving community spaces is at the heart of a city-led project, announced in 2023, to create markers across Chicago neighborhoods, ones that would honor the way all communities have contributed to the city's history, from the work of everyday individuals to historic sites and collective events like festivals.
Monuments can help us to reactivate a vibrant public sphere that nurtures discussion and debate, one free from loyalty oaths, the threat of censorship, and retribution. Chicago offers a case study in how to make that happen, but it will take all of us to participate in expanding our shared history. Monuments are not just static timeless statues but a critical tool of resistance, especially as the current administration seeks to erase not just history but the lived realities and experiences of Americans.
Alison Cuddy is a writer and consultant for the city of Chicago Community Markers program. Lisa Yun Lee is the executive director of the National Public Housing Museum and a member of the Chicago Monuments Project and the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Fact check: Trump calls to prosecute Beyoncé based on a nonexistent $11 million payment
Fact check: Trump calls to prosecute Beyoncé based on a nonexistent $11 million payment

Yahoo

time23 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Fact check: Trump calls to prosecute Beyoncé based on a nonexistent $11 million payment

President Donald Trump over the weekend called for the prosecution of music superstar Beyoncé – based on something that did not actually happen. Trump claimed in a social media post that Beyoncé broke the law by supposedly getting paid $11 million for her endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris during an October 2024 event in Houston. But there is simply no basis for Trump's claim that Beyoncé received an $11 million payment related to the Harris campaign, let alone for the endorsement in particular. Federal campaign spending records show a $165,000 payment from the Harris campaign to Beyoncé's production company, which the campaign listed as a 'campaign event production' expense. A Harris campaign spokesperson told Deadline last year that they didn't pay celebrity endorsers, but were required by law to cover the costs connected to their appearances. Regardless of the merits of this particular $165,000 expenditure, it's far from an $11 million one. Nobody has ever produced any evidence for the claim of an eight-figure endorsement payment to Beyoncé since the claim that it was '$10 million' began spreading last year among Trump supporters on social media. Fact-check websites and PolitiFact looked into the '$10 million' claim during the campaign and did not find any basis for it. The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request late Saturday for any evidence of Trump's $11 million figure. When Trump previously invoked the baseless figure, during an interview in February, he described his source in the vaguest of terms: 'Somebody just showed me something. They gave her $11 million.' A Harris spokesperson referred CNN on Saturday to a November social media post by Beyoncé's mother Tina Knowles, who called the claim of a $10 million payment a 'lie' and noted it was taken down by Instagram as 'False Information.' 'When In Fact: Beyonce did not receive a penny for speaking at a Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harrris's (sic) Rally in Houston,' Knowles wrote. A spokesperson for Beyoncé told PolitiFact in November that the claim about a $10 million payment is 'beyond ridiculous.' What Trump wrote Sunday Trump revived the false claim in a social media post published after midnight early Sunday morning in Scotland, where he is visiting. He wrote that he is looking at 'the fact' that Democrats 'admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT.' Democratic officials actually reject the claim of an $11 million payment. The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for any evidence of a Democratic admission of such a payment. Trump went on to criticize other payments from the Harris campaign to organizations connected to prominent endorsers. He asserted without evidence that these payments were inaccurately described in spending records. And he wrongly asserted that it is 'TOTALLY ILLEGAL' to pay for political endorsements, though no federal law forbids endorsement payments. Trump concluded: 'Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter.' Trump has repeatedly called for the prosecution of political opponents. His Saturday post about Harris and celebrity endorsements was an escalation from a post in May, when he said he would call for a 'major investigation' on the subject but did not explicitly mention prosecutions.

China, US to extend tariff pause at Sweden talks by another 90 days, SCMP reports
China, US to extend tariff pause at Sweden talks by another 90 days, SCMP reports

Yahoo

time23 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

China, US to extend tariff pause at Sweden talks by another 90 days, SCMP reports

(Reuters) -Beijing and Washington are expected to extend their tariff truce by another three months at trade talks in Stockholm beginning on Monday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. During the expected 90-day extension, the U.S. and China will agree not to introduce new tariffs or take other actions that could further escalate the trade war, the report said. While the earlier discussions in Geneva and London focused on "de-escalation", the latest meeting the Chinese delegation will also press Trump's trade team on fentanyl-related tariffs, the report further said, citing three sources familiar with the matter. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The third round of U.S.-China talks is set to be held in Stockholm on Monday to tackle longstanding economic disputes at the centre of the countries' trade war. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store