A woman who climbed to the feet of the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday to protest the separation of migrant families is in detention, police say. For almost three hours on US Independence Day, Therese Patricia Okoumou - who has been described in US reports as Congolese immigrant who has been living in New York for 10 years - walked around the base of New York’s landmark statue. At times she sat on the sandal of ‘Lady Liberty’ and on the folds of its dress. Ms Okoumou, said to be 44, declared she would not come down of the statue until "all the children are released", referring to the children that have been held in detention centres away from their parents at the US-Mexico border. She had a t-shirt that said “Trumpcare makes us sick” on one side and “Rise and Resist” on the other. Authorities were forced to evacuate Liberty Island on the day the US celebrated its Independence Day.<doc-sep>Liberty Island was evacuated because of a person climbing the Statue of Liberty's base on July 4, 2018, shortly after seven protesters who unfurled an 'Abolish ICE' banner from the statue's pedestal. Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images This Fourth of July, the immigrant activist Therese Patricia Okoumou climbed up to the Statue of Liberty’s feet to protest the treatment of immigrants and asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexican border. In particular, her protest spotlighted the thousands of children whom the U.S. separated from their families and has yet to reunite. Yet Okoumou isn’t the first person to employ Lady Liberty in getting her message across. For more than 130 years, the statue, with its famed inscription “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” has served as a powerful symbol for Americans who want to protest injustice. Lady Liberty wonders why she can’t vote. The Statue of Liberty became a potent symbol for dissenters starting with its unveiling on October 28, 1886. Suffragists objected to the use of a female statue as a symbol of liberty when real women in the U.S. didn’t have the right to vote. “It is the sarcasm of the 19th century to represent liberty as a woman, while not one single woman throughout the length and breadth of the land is as yet in possession of political liberty,” remarked Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the suffragists who protested the unveiling event. The New York State Woman Suffrage Association couldn’t get tickets to attend the unveiling on Bedloe's Island (now known as Liberty Island) because they were unaccompanied women, according to the National Park Service. No matter. There was a parade of ships sailing by the island to celebrate the unveiling that day, so suffragists chartered a boat and crashed the procession. The suffragists on that steamer held up banners protesting the unveiling, attended by 2,000 to 2,500 men on the island. The men were also joined by at least two women, both of whom were there with their husband or father. A group of women rally at the Statue of Liberty in August, 1970. In the background on the Statue of Liberty reads a banner saying, "Women of the World Unite." Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Lady Liberty joins women’s lib. In 1970, feminist Betty Friedan called for a national women’s strike on August 26 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted U.S. women the right to vote. Friedan, the outgoing president of the National Organization for Women, urged women to forego paid and unpaid work in order to draw attention to gendered disparities in employment, education and household responsibilities. “I propose that the women who are doing menial chores in the offices as secretaries put the covers on their typewriters and close their notebooks and the telephone operators unplug their switchboards, the waitresses stop waiting, cleaning women stop cleaning and every one who is doing a job for which a man would be paid more stop,” she announced during the organization’s annual convention, according to TheNew York Times. Two weeks before the march, about 100 protesters hung a banner on Statue of Liberty’s pedestal that said “Women of the World Unite.” This “liberation” of Lady Liberty helped build momentum for the August 26 strike, during which 50,000 women marched through the streets of New York City. Inside the Statue of Liberty, a spokesman reads the demands of members of Vietnam Veterans Against the war (VVAW), who barricaded themselves inside the structure overnight as a symbolic protest. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Lady Liberty takes a stand against Vietnam. The year after the women’s strike, 15 or 16 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War occupied Liberty Island for three days to protest the Vietnam War. On the door to the statue, they posted a letter to President Richard Nixon. “When we were in Vietnam we excused our actions because we thought that we had no choice,” they wrote, according to a New York Times article published during their occupation in December 1970.“Now, as we sit inside the Statue of Liberty, having captured the hopes and imaginations of a war‐weary nation, we have run out of all excuses … Mr. Nixon: You set the date. We'll evacuate.” The occupation was part of a series of simultaneous protests that Vietnam Veterans Against the War held around the country at that time. When the Statue of Liberty protesters ended their occupation, they declared it a victory. “Did we succeed?” said Al Hubbard, director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, according to another Times article. “Of course, we did. We got the war back on Page One, where it belongs.” The flag of Puerto Rico flying from the head of the Statue of Liberty after 28 Puerto Rican nationals seized the Liberty Island and the statue. Jim Garrett/NY Daily News/Getty Images Lady Liberty dons the Puerto Rican flag. In October 1977, Puerto Rican nationalists draped a Puerto Rican flag across Lady Liberty’s crown. For decades, residents of the U.S. territoryhad lived as second-class American citizens who couldn’t vote—so activists draped a banner across the statue’s pedestal, calling for Puerto Rico’s independence. These 30 Puerto Rican nationalists occupied the Statue of Liberty for several hours. According to The New York Times, their main demand was the release of four militant nationalists who had participated in a shooting at the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954 to protest the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Two years later, President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of those four individuals: Oscar Collazo, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores Rodriguez and Lolita Lebron. Carter based his decision on a favorable recommendation from the Attorney General and the Secretary of State’s judgement that it would be a positive humanitarian gesture. A mural of Statue of Liberty with a skull face in front of an American flag on the walls of the former US embassy in Tehran. Jean-Michel Coureau/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Lady Liberty has had dissenters from other countries, too.<doc-sep>Protester Climbed Up the Base of the Statue of Liberty Share Tweet A woman climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty yesterday to protest the separation of migrant families. She was taken into custody by police. Liberty Island was closed during the standoff, and around four thousand people had to be evacuated. On the day after America’s birthday, if you’re concerned about your country, you’re not alone. Bloomberg is carrying an article titled, “Freaked-Out Americans Desperately Seek to Escape the News.” Here is some of their evidence. Last fall, the American Psychological Association discovered that almost two-thirds of Americans listed “the state of the nation” as their primary source of stress. They ranked it above both money and work. According to the Pew Research Center, almost 70 percent of Americans feel a sense of “news fatigue.” When Enterprise Rent-A-Car surveyed more than 1,100 Americans about their summer travel plans, the top three reasons given for travel were stress, the news, and the political climate. Discovery Inc. owns networks HGTV, Food Network, and TLC. It has seen a 12 percent increase in time spent by viewers watching its networks since the 2016 election. The head of research for Hallmark Channel says, “When we asked people why they watched Hallmark, we used to hear things like ‘I want an escape.’ Now it’s ‘I want to be reminded that there’s still love in the world. '” “The United States became a singular noun” America turned 242 years old yesterday. Our democracy has been tested many times across our history. In the decades from our founding to the Civil War, the unresolved tension at the heart of the nation had to do with federal power versus state power. The Second Continental Congress knew George Washington would become the first president and created a Constitution with strong federal and executive powers. Thomas Jefferson, by contrast, believed in a weak federal government and strong states’ rights. The conflict between the two views of national authority laid the foundation for the War Between the States. As esteemed historian James M. McPherson notes, “The United States went to war in 1861 to preserve the Union; it emerged from the war in 1865 having created a nation. Before 1861 the two words ‘United States’ were generally used as a plural noun: ‘the United States are a republic.’ After 1865 the United States became a singular noun.” Two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, and our ongoing struggle with global terrorism have all challenged our commitment to government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” And yet our democracy prevails. What explains “the greatness of America”? In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that “the greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Despite deep fault lines dividing Democrats from Republicans, pro-life from pro-choice, biblical marriage from “marriage equality,” affluent from impoverished, and believers from atheists and “nones,” we are not witnessing the kind of uprisings that have plagued so many other countries around the world. One foundational reason is that Americans believe we can change our government and our country. We can vote for new leaders. We can persuade others to our beliefs. We each have access to influence. If we were ruled by hereditary kings, everyone outside the royal family would be consigned to second-class status. If we were ruled by a dictator, we could change our nation’s leadership only by a coup or revolt. If we were ruled by a political class such as the Communist Party, we would have to achieve status in the party to change our country. Our founding document captures the essence of our democratic ethos: “All men are created equal.” While America has often failed to keep this promise to all our citizens, the fact that we measure ourselves by it demonstrates its foundational power in our lives and nation. “All men are created equal” These five words lie at the heart of our democracy. They are derived ultimately from the biblical worldview, which declares that all humans–without exception–are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). God loves “the world,” including every inhabitant of every nation (John 3:16). Jesus died for “the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). God’s word invites us all to our Lord: “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17). To what degree did such biblical truth influence our nation’s Founders? To address this very complicated subject, I recommend an insightful essay by historian Mark Hall (PhD, University of Virginia), a specialist in the study of America’s founding principles. Dr. Hall states: “If one is to understand the story of the United States of America, it is important to have a proper appreciation for its Christian colonial roots. By almost any measure, colonists of European descent who settled in the New World were serious Christians whose constitutions, laws, and practices reflected the influence of Christianity.” Because of such Christian influence, “America’s Founders believed that humans were created in the imago dei–the image of God. Part of what this means is that humans are reasonable beings. This led them to conclude that we the people (as opposed to the elite) can order our public lives together through politics rather than force.” Does this mean that the Founders intended to force Christianity on all Americans? Not at all: “Although the Founders were profoundly influenced by Christianity, they did not design a constitutional order only for fellow believers. They explicitly prohibited religious tests for federal offices, and they were committed to the proposition that all men and women should be free to worship god (or not) as their consciences dictate.” However, Dr. Hall notes: “We ignore at our peril the Founders’ insight that democracy requires a moral people and that faith is an important, if not indispensable, support for morality.” He adds: “Such faith may well flourish best without government support, but it should not have to flourish in the face of government hostility.”<doc-sep>“We started engaging in a dialogue of why she was up there,” said ESU cop Brian Glacken, one of two officers who ascended the ladder. “She was basically up there about the children in Texas. At first she wasn’t friendly with us, but we took our time to get a dialogue with her, to get her to trust us. That took a while.”<doc-sep>
History can repeat itself in good ways sometimes, like it did today, the Fourth of July, at the Statue of Liberty in New York. You may have heard about it. An LGBTQIA group of more than 30 activists occupied the base of the Statue of liberty today and unfurled a banner for the whole world to see: ABOLISH ICE, the banner read, a statement of protest against enforcement of the Trump administration’s erratic and inhumane immigration policy. The event was reminiscent of an Aug. 26, 1970 action, the largest demonstration for women’s rights the United States had ever seen, held to highlight Women’s inequality on the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The National Organization for Women gained worldwide attention when it scaled the Statue of Liberty and unfurled its banner: “Women of the World Unite.” The action was the brainchild of newly out lesbian and NOW NYC founder Ivy Bottini, then 44 and now 92 years old, and it is now widely recognized as an iconic moment in the women’s movement for equality. On Sunday June 30, 2018, the last day of Pride month, in a speech at a West Hollywood demonstration protesting Trump’s immigration policies and family separations, Bottini exhorted the rise of a new generation of LGBT activism and the return of ACT UP. “At 92 it feels like this is where I am supposed to be. I am saying this — GET OFF YOUR ASSES — and bring back ACT UP. Bring it back. Bring it back. ACT UP, fight back!” It was poetic then that the scene of Bottini’s greatest activist moment was so eerily repeated today, this time in protest of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and the continued separations of thousands of refugees crossing the nation’s southern border but this time the banner read ABOLISH ICE. One of the members of the activist group, 44 year old Patricia Okoumu, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who lives in Staten Island, climbed the statue after protesters from Rise and Resist New York unfurled the banner there; she made it to the Statue’s base. Liberty Island, crowded with visitors on the July 4th holiday, was evacuated as police responded and attempted to coax her down. For more than three hours she lingered at the foot of the statue, pacing around, lying down and casually kicking her legs as if watching TV while police attempted to reach her. When they finally did she politely explained her protest — the children in Texas — and was arrested for trespassing, interference with National park regulations, and disorderly conduct. Det. Brian Glacken of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit remarked that she was “a little combative” at first, but eventually she “apologized” that officers had to climb up to get her. It took a squad of officers, about 16, to put a safety harness on her and get her down. CBS News reports that Sgt. David Somma of the U.S. Park Police says she was not considered a direct threat, but said her climbing the statue was a “threat to public safety.” In addition to Okoumu, at least six people were taken into custody after unfurling the banner. Federal regulations prohibit hanging banners from the monument. ( (Video by Ken Kidd) Rise and Resist, a New York based group that engages in Queer Nation and ACT UP style street theater organized today’s action. Many of the group’s members are also members of Gays Against Guns. “ICE has proved to be a threat to our liberty and way of life, and should be abolished,” said Leon Kirschner, Rise and Resist member. “They go after the most vulnerable among us, acting without due process to detain people. For-profit companies are making money off family separation. This has to stop now.” Jay W. Walker, an organizer, told The Los Angeles Blade that “Patricia is a powerful, committed, and passionate activist. She has become an integral member if Rise and Resist over the course of the last several months. We are so incredibly relieved that she was brought down safely and without injury. We are now doing everything we can to ensure that she gets the best possible legal representation.” Check back for more reporting.