The insanely woke National Park Service wants to renovate Philadelphia’s Welcome Park by removing its statue of William Penn as well as Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House. The proposed redesign will highlight Native American history at the expense of the memorial to Penn, who founded the colony, now state, of Pennsylvania.
The Park Service says it proposes to “rehabilitate” Welcome Park “to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors.” It is called Welcome Park after the ship that brought Penn to America from England: “The Welcome.” The proposed overhaul was developed with the assistance of several Native American tribes, including the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
The current park was to tell the story of Penn’s vision for the city giving visitors an overview of the city’s layout and the history of Penn’s landing. On Penn’s statue is a farewell ode to Philadelphia, passing on “what love, what care, what service, what travail have thee been to bring thee forth.” The park is in need of repairs and sprucing up, to be sure. Nobody thought it was in need of a historical airbrushing eliminating all traces of Philadelphia’s founder.
True, there are other Penn statues around the city, and the state is named after him. Penn, however, does not have the typical black marks against him that has toppled other statues to prominent Americans around the U.S..
The Philadelphia Inquirer, essentially taking the now familiar “Republicans pounce!” approach, quotes several from the party who object to the plan. Republican state Senator Scott Martin, for example, tweeted, “Absolutely disgraceful. As the United States and our Commonwealth are planning the coming celebration of America250, for anyone to think doing this to the founder of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia, which was the epicenter of freedom and our nation’s founding, was a good idea, is completely absurd.”
Don’t any Democrats think dissing the city’s founder as the nation’s 250th birthday approaches is inappropriate? Or is William Penn just another old white guy who, in their eyes, deserves to be kicked to the metaphorical curb?
UPDATE: Approximately one hour after I posted this, Pennsylvania’s governor tweeted, “My team has been in contact with the Biden Administration throughout the day to correct this decision. I’m pleased to announce that Welcome Park will remain the rightful home of this William Penn statue — right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Penn founded.”
Clearly, it was my post that turned the tide…
Ethics Alarms 
Public commentary is open until Jan 21st, on the NPS site to which you linked.
I wonder what Fetterman thinks…
Hmmm, it’s been withdrawn because it was accidentally released before full internal review.
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-withdraws-review-of-welcome-park-rehabilitation-proposal.htm
Sure, I believe that one. A rogue intern, I bet!
Their little echo chamber had some unexpected outside voices.
If that statue could talk, it’d be saying “Don’t you know who I am? Morons.”
If I am not misremembering, wasn’t Pennsylvania a haven for dissenters in colonial days?
I know that the Quakers (and Philadelphia) were important figures in the Underground Railroad. Does the Park Service know what that is?
I was just watching Men in Black last night. Maybe the Park Service is run by aliens.
I wonder if the officials at the Park Service are going to tear down the lightning rods for their office buildings or their homes. That seems on a par with this proposal.
A white male colonizer is the problem. Regardless of his virtues or importance to the state, he founded Pennsylvania on “stolen land”.
It was never about slavery because it was never going to stop at slavery.
Well isn’t this interesting?
“Park withdraws review of Welcome Park rehabilitation proposal”
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-withdraws-review-of-welcome-park-rehabilitation-proposal.htm
I invite you all to read the story. While it says that “No changes to the William Penn statue are planned. ” they are going to continue with the review and submit a final proposal later (when our backs are turned?).
OK, so I clicked on the link and it says that I have reached my free article limit for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Apparently that limit is zero.
Yeah, that will get me to subscribe to their rag.
Fake news!
They aren’t doing this apparently:
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-withdraws-review-of-welcome-park-rehabilitation-proposal.htm
It also wasn’t an airbrushing since Penn is on top of City Hall.
The original press release is still on their web site.
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-seeks-input-on-the-rehabilitation-of-welcome-park.htm
And it does say that the statue of Penn and model of his house will be removed and not reinstalled. So it appears they got enough blowback that they are rethinking how to present this to the public.
Gee, I guess those Republicans pounced really well this time!
It’s not fake news if they flip-flop mid-story.
Just idle curiosity…are they going to change the name of the State (PENNsylvania)?
To Indiana, apparently….
I object!
So as long as there’s a Lee statue somewhere, he wasn’t airbrushed away either, right?
Penn isn’t “somewhere”… he’s on top of City Hall and one of the most iconic and visible statues in the city.
They put hats on him during important playoff series.
Talk above removing one random insignificant statue doesnt equal “airbrushing” Especially in the grand scheme of Philadelphia.
When they talk about renaming Penns Landing, then get back to me.
This is nothing more than pearl clutching by Republicans who barely occupy the city
“Pearl clutching”—lazy cliche, Bob. My point was and is that taking down statues of legitimately honored and important Americans is both disrespectful and unwise, particular when the memorial, as in the case of Welcome Park, is in a place of genuine significance in the life of that individual. The language of the Park Service’s announcement was obnoxious: what’s unwelcoming about a park centering on the life of William Penn, in the city he founded, in the state he first settled? Those Native American Tribes have nothing to do with the city’s importance in American history—this was just more woke virtue-signaling by the Park Service. I guarantee that more than just Republicans objected to the proposed coup—Quakers had something to say about it, I’m sure.
Ok but this is a different argument than the one you were making where you said this was airbrushing and I was responding to.
Sometimes historic buildings get torn down and statues topple to make way to serve another purpose. That’s not airbrushing.
“Sometimes historic buildings get torn down and statues topple to make way to serve another purpose. That’s not airbrushing.”
Thank you, Joseph Stalin. Nothing to see here, then?
“This is nothing more than pearl clutching by Republicans who barely occupy the city”
Why do you assume that only Republicans care about the Penn Statue? I’m sure there are Democrats out there who feel the same way but may be afraid to vocalize that lest they be accused of lacking pure revolutionary fervor.
And are you really arguing that, if a particular group of people are in the minority, their position on the subject shouldn’t be taken into consideration? Is that really how you want government to operate, Bob? Dismissing the opinion of the few if you don’t like them or if you don’t believe they represent a substantial portion of the population? How many Native Americans live in Philadelphia? I’m betting there are fewer indigenous people there than Republicans. Why put up a park dedicated to promoting those who, in your words, “barely occupy the city”?
It’s the same argument: historical airbrushing.
Yep, a welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors, except White people. And now you see those typical black marks you speak of Jack, which were nothing more the general prevailing attitudes of their time, are just excuses to cloak their true anti-White agenda. This anti-White fervor is happening throughout the country, and even the founding fathers are not immune as the statue of Thomas Jefferson has been removed from NYC’s city hall Every justification they’ve used for removal of every statue, monument, bust, street/building/park names, etc. has always been to obfuscate their true agenda. Add to this their importing of millions of illegals, it becomes clear their intentions are to render White people to minority status in a few short years, and they’re almost there. All this and I don’t even own a tin foil hat.
This isn’t about inclusiveness. This is about destroying the history of this country. Once again Donald Trump was right. He predicted this scourge would not end with the statues of Confederate slave owners. It is uncanny to me how many times what was thought as madness spuing forth from Trump’s mouth has turned out to be right on the money.
I predicted it before Trump did. Maybe he reads EA.
This is a discussion that started here in 2017 the latest when they started in with the idea of taking down Confederate statues. It had been going on on and off for years before that. We all knew that it was not going to stop there because it wasn’t about taking down a few statues of Confederate leaders that were no longer tolerable 150 years after the fact. It was about tearing down the history of this nation completely and replacing it with wokeism.
Oh, and regarding the renaming of Penn’s Landing, don’t give these people any ideas. If I’m not mistaken, the National Park service falls under the department of the interior, and the Biden “first” chosen to head that department is a native American activist, who has prioritized renaming Federal sites that she finds offensive. She’s an advocate of a big lie, just not the same big lie to the left accuses everyone else of being in favor of. She wants to push the myth that America was a peaceful Paradise where the Indians lived you complete harmony with nature and each other, until the white guy showed up to mess everything up, because that’s all that white guys do. What does that one article say? Something to the effect of white men are one part stoicism, two parts anger, three parts racism, four parts violence, and five parts control of women, or something like that. To these people, white men are a scourge of destruction who are enslaving people of color and destroying everything they touch, but they take a break occasionally to rape a woman.
The first EA went into it was in 2015: “Stop Your Cultural Bulldozing, America: Disney World Taking Down Bill Cosby’s Bust Is Like Removing The Jefferson Memorial”
So you did. I remember that too, although it seems like the issue really took off like a rocket in 2017 with the first round of attacks on Confederate statues.
Jack: Clearly, it was my post that turned the tide…
Causation always implies correlation.
-Jut