Police are checking for surveillance video of the incident and are looking for at least one person who was seen near the statue.
Images on social media show the base of the 10-foot-tall statue covered in red paint, which also streaks on the sides. The equestrian sculpture itself does not appear to be hit.
The bronze statue by James Earle Fraser, which was erected in 1939, depicts the former president on horseback flanked by an indigenous African and an American Indian.
The vandalism comes amid a national debate over statues dedicated to controversial historical figures triggered by the violence sparked by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
President Trump, who refused to condemn the Charlottesville participants, has slammed people who want to tear down statues of Christopher Columbus, saying “it has to be stopped” because they are destroying the country’s “heritage.”
A neighborhood resident called the vandalism “horrible.”
“There is no cause for doing things like this in this society where everybody is free to express their opinion, but not in this way,” said Hans Gesell, 82, a structural engineer who rides past the statue every day.
Gesell is not a fan of the Rough Rider.
“I think he was an egotistical person who thought his opinion mattered more than anyone else’s. That’s not the way to go,” he told The Post.
But he denounced the defacing, saying “it is the opposite of the way you express yourself. The way to express yourself is you vote. You want to express your opinion — you vote.
“It is not a true expression of democracy and you can see it upsets people, and we should find better ways of expressing ourselves,” he added.
A pair of Columbus statues in the Big Apple were recently vandalized, including one in Central Park, where a vandal smeared red paint on its hands and scrawled “Hate will not be tolerated” on its pedestal.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed a commission to review monuments dedicated to controversial historical figures like Columbus.
Activists last year called for the museum to take down the “racist” statue, calling it a “stark embodiment” of white supremacy that Roosevelt “espoused and promoted.”
Earlier this month, protesters rallied outside the museum to call for the city to remove the statue and to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s Day,” the West Side Rag reported.
“Flanked by figures that appear to be Native and African stereotypes in a position of subservience, the statue is a stark embodiment of the white patrician supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted and is an affront to all who enter the museum,” the group, called “Decolonize This Place,” wrote to the museum and the city.
The museum recently agreed that “the statue needs to be addressed,” the Upper West Side news outlet reported.
“Several factors will figure into determining the exact approach,” the museum said. “The Museum is conducting its own research and development process, but the decision on how to address the statue is not solely in the Museum’s control.
“The statue sits on New York City park land and as such is owned and managed by the City. This summer, the City created a commission to review statues and monuments on public land, and we expect the Roosevelt statue to be considered in that process.”
A 14-year museum worker said she was surprised to see the vandalism near her “beloved museum.”
“I think that statue causes a lot of trouble. It belongs to the city, not the museum. Nobody wants it there,” said the worker, who declined to give her name.
“When you notice who is by his side … it’s a racist statue,” she added. “This is New York City. We are culturally diverse. The museum wants Teddy there but not what the statute represents. That statue is a concern for the museum. It presents values we do not support.”
Roosevelt — the first president to invite and dine with an African-American, Booker T. Washington, in the White House — espoused a gradual approach to improving the country’s stark racial inequality.
He referred to white Americans as “the forward race,” whose responsibility it was to lift up the status of minorities by training “the backward race[s] in industrial efficiency, political capacity and domestic morality.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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