This was the scene this morning at Lincoln Park, located less than a block from our house, with the “rally” to topple the statue scheduled to take place tonight. I can’t help but wonder if this is the new normal for our park; even Sahraa doesn’t like going there anymore.

See the previous four pictures for the rest of the story.

Some information on the statue:

The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group, and sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent so-named memorial was dedicated in 1922, is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball and erected in 1876, the monument depicts Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation freeing a male African American slave modeled on Archer Alexander. The ex-slave is depicted on one knee, with one fist clenched, shirtless and shackled at the president's feet.

The campaign for the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, as it was to be known, was not the only effort of the time to build a monument to Lincoln; however, as the only one soliciting contributions exclusively from those who had most directly benefited from Lincoln's act of emancipation it had a special appeal ... The funds were collected solely from freed slaves (primarily from African American Union veterans) ...

Best to view in "Original" because other versions resized by Pbase are decidedly unsharp.

How things have changed, posted earlier: