Written by Taylor Satchell, CNN
Five days before Thanksgiving, the social justice group Black Lives Matter is not only calling out racism but “stolen land.”
In an Instagram post from its Black Lives Matter-New York chapter, which has since been deleted, the activist group posted a photo of the Statue of Liberty — which it dubbed “a direct product of looted stolen slave labor — and the “other interiors of this room” which supposedly belong to the country, the U.S.A.
Why did they delete it? @Angry_Rainbow speculates it was to protect his privacy. pic.twitter.com/AIAUPHpB1V — deray mckesson (@deray) July 8, 2018
… and, “What if we redefine the land?”
The post comes just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case of an Alabama couple who sued the federal government over the continued use of their federally owned property after Hurricane Katrina.
The case, which is based on the 14th Amendment, was filed in 2012 by John and Kim Hastie after they were ordered to sell their 12,000-square-foot home in a subdivision built off the Webber’s Ferry Road of the Madison County Cross Lake Estates.
The Hasties originally bought the property in 2004, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which owns the land – gave them the right to build on the site where it had previously sat, where two housing developments were built during Reconstruction.
The statement also comes a week after President Donald Trump visited the state of Georgia, where he offered his “hope and full faith and credit” to an individual who helped fight for the state’s right to vote — an individual who was later accused of creating a disturbance after allegedly knocking on the doors of black voters.
TMZ posted a video of Trump speaking with Randall Royer, a member of an Georgia Senate committee that decided to strengthen voter ID laws, who also owns a home in Creola, Georgia.
The MAGA-President and Royer seemingly couldn’t contain their excitement about the historic “Voter ID” that’s part of Georgia’s election law — they called it “really cool.”
The attorney for Royer, John Kiernan, claimed he had not seen the video — something which, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Trump’s lawyer dispelled Sunday.
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“For me to get the President of the United States out to these communities, we need to ask the good people who are sitting around. If they don’t know them, ask them, but Mr. Trump would like to see you vote,” Kiernan said.
But as TMZ pointed out, Royer may not have been actually voting. On election day, he was paid $1,000 to spend a few hours at a polling place.
“What he does work for is a real estate broker, where he does provide this service,” lawyer Ann Kerstand, who represents him, told People.
Two weeks after Trump visited Georgia and Royer became caught up in the controversy, Americans were debating how to define the national debate over voter suppression.