The Most Recognizable Icon of Liberty Was One of America’s First Crowdfunded National Projects
Congresswoman Diane Black Monday morning on Fox News proudly announced her plan to pay for President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant border wall to keep Mexicans and Central Americans from entering America illegally. Black has a bill to establish a crowdfunding site run by the government to pay for the border wall. Trump promised Mexico would pay for it, but Mexico, understandably, has refused, since it is a slap in the face to them born of the president’s racism and bigotry.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump infamously announced as he launched his presidential campaign. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The Republican from Tennessee, who is running to become that state’s governor, was asked by the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts if anything like crowdfunding a national project has ever been done before.
“Well actually there has been crowdfunding before for something in our country that we all love, and that’s the Washington Monument,” Black told “Fox & Friends” co-host Griff Jenkins. “Many years ago when the monument was just half completed the American people rose up, and state by state there were donations to help the fund.”
The Trump administration has been under fire the past few days for losing 1500 migrant children it removed from their parents who came to the U.S., many seeking asylum from drug gangs, violence, rape, and murder their families are facing. Trump enacted a policy of tearing children apart from their parents, which he claims will deter illegal entry.
Congresswoman Black’s choice of the Washington Monument to illustrate crowdfunding of a national project was an interesting one, because there’s another national monument that’s far better known as one of the original crowdfunded projects in America: The Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty was crowdfunded by the people of France, and the base of the Statue was crowdfunded by the people of the United States. There are countless stories of poor American children donating a penny, or a few cents, and of some of the neediest in the country sending their pocket change in to Joseph Pulitzer, who, as publisher of the New York World, created a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the statue’s base on what now is Liberty Island.
Among the most famous contributors was the poet Emma Lazarus, who contributed what became the historic inscription on the icon of liberty, a welcome to immigrants wishing to enter America: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Here’s Congresswoman Black on “Fox & Friends: