Save Teddy Roosevelt!
“This statue is of a proud American. Was he perfect? No. No one was perfect… he did a lot for this country, We’re here today because we’ve bettered ourselves as a society and we continue to better ourselves as a society. But we’ll never be able to do that anymore if we continue to tear down our history and forget our past — and we’ll be doomed to repeat it.” – Gavin Wax
A crowd of 200 patriots rallied to Save Teddy Roosevelt’s statue, in front of the American Museum of Natural History on Sunday June 28th. The “Save Teddy” rally was organized by Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club. Many Queens people, and the Queens Village Republican Club and Whitestone Republican Club were on hand to stand up for American History and to raise our voices against the influence of the mob tearing down our statues and our shared history.
Unlike the recent protests, which often descend into violence and mayhem, and always are accompanied by openly hateful anti-police and anti-America slurs, the diverse crowd at the Save Teddy rally were respectful, peaceful, and articulate. The New York Post quoted Gavin Wax: “This statue is of a proud American. Was he perfect? No. No one was perfect… he did a lot for this country, We’re here today because we’ve bettered ourselves as a society and we continue to better ourselves as a society. But we’ll never be able to do that anymore if we continue to tear down our history and forget our past — and we’ll be doomed to repeat it.”
The museum is bowing to a small minority of thugs who don’t know anything about American History. They are even tearing down statues of Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, and George Washington, the father of our county. They are defacing monuments to abolitionists, anti-slavery activists, as well as the Massachusetts 54th Regiment dedicated to black soldiers who helped the Union win the Civil War. Teddy Roosevelt, who is memorialized on Mount Rushmore, was one of our greatest Republican and American presidents. He was the protector of the common person, the working person of any race. His list of accomplishments for the benefit of the people is endless, including busting monopolies, protecting our environment with conservation acts, protecting our food products and health with the FDA, starting college athletic programs with the NCAA, uniting Americans of all races, colors and creeds, and so much more. Here are some of the highlights of the rally in video and photos.
President of the Whitestone Republican Club, Vickie Paladino speaks out powerfully and even stood up to the BLM protestors later on saying “you got something to say, little boy?”
Dawn Eskew standing here with two great patriots Bevlyn Bevelyn Beatty and Edmee Chavannes protecting Teddy Roosevelt from being torn down.
Christopher Wright, Conservative in NYC, speaks up for what is RIGHT, fighting to save our history, and will never kneel to the mob.
President of the Queens Village Republican Club, Phil Orenstein speaks out loudly to save Teddy Roosevelt’s statue.
Statue of Teddy Roosevlt, leader of the Rough Riders, flanked by Native American and African American soldiers representing fighting groups that helped achieve the U.S. Victory over the Spanish forces in Cuba.
The views expressed by the protestors goes against the wishes of Theodore Roosevelt’s descendants. Two have spoken out publicly in support of the statue’s removal; Kermit Roosevelt III and Theodore Roosevelt IV. In a public statement shared with and reported by The New York Times last month, Theodore Roosevelt IV – who addressed the 2016 Republican National Convention and serves on the museum’s board of trustees – said the statue doesn’t express his great-grandfather’s legacy. I agree, and I note this as the Darwinian Conservative Republican I am, having been registered as a Republican since my senior year at Stuyvesant High School many years ago, and as someone trained in evolutionary biology, with emphases in evolutionary ecology and paleobiology. The statue doesn’t acknowledge Roosevelt’s true ties to the museum as a collector of zoological specimens donated to the museum that remain part of its research collections in systematic zoology more than a century later, and as an explorer who explored remote parts of the globe on the museum’s behalf. The protestors probably didn’t know that they were demonstrating in front of the official New York state memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, the two Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Halls that are the second floor main entrance, and immediately below it, the staff entrance containing displays of Roosevelt’s personal effects and other memorabilia demonstrating his life-long love for natural history. A third hall, the Hall of Biodiversity, directly across a short hallway from the 1st floor Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, will be renamed for him, recognizing his pioneering work in conservation; a legacy continued today by the museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. These halls are substantially better and more appropriate memorials to Roosevelt’s memory and legacy than a mere statue, and i also note this as a life-long fan of THeodore Roosevelt.
The July 12, 2020 edition of CBS Sunday Morning will include an interview with one of Theodore Roosevelt’s great-grandsons, Mark Roosevelt, President, Saint John’s College, Santa Fe, NM (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-week-on-sunday-morning-july-12-2020), He joins his relatives, University of Pennsylvania law school professor Kermit Roosevelt III, and Theodore Roosevelt IV (a member of the American Museum of Natural History’s board of trustees), in calling for the statute’s removal. Perhaps we should respect the wishes of these three prominent great-grandsons of Theodore Roosevelt. May I suggest respectfully that in lieu of continuing to protest the statue’s removal, perhaps it might be better to support the American Museum of Natural History’s research in biodiversity and conservation, especially its Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, as well as ongoing collaborations in epidemiological research with colleagues at Columbia University, as well as public programming in these areas. Much to its credit, for example, the American Museum of Natural History has had two online programs on COVID-19 , with the second one held just a few days ago that covered COVID-19 antibody testing and the search for a vaccine: https://www.amnh.org/explore/covid-19-science.