Of course Perry Groten would cover this event: the City of Sioux Falls now honors a vote-fraudster and Republican crony capitalist turned flag-insulting socialist sympathizer with a larger-than life statue in Falls Park.
The 900-pound, ten-foot bronze statue of R.F. Pettigrew will gaze upon visitors who enter the park, while staying true to the artistic vision Darwin Wolf had nearly a decade ago.
"My biggest fear was that it wouldn't be good enough for what it was intended to do, the agony and the ecstasy," Wolf said [Perry Groten, "Pettigrew Statue Dedicated at Falls Park," KELOLand.com, 2013.05.17].
I'd like to organize some pranksters to go through the agony and ecstasy of swiping the Pettigrew statue and hauling it across town to go toe to bronze toe with plutocrat T. Denny Sanford.
Making one of Lenin's favorite writers the sentinel of Falls Park is a fine flip of the bird to the city that scorned this changed man a century ago:
The statue is holding a piece of paper symbolizing Pettigrew's request to the city years ago not to develop this area.
"And the City blew him off and developed it and a hundred years later, we spend millions of dollars to do what he told us in the first place, so that's why that piece had to be here with that letter," Wolf said [Groten, 2013.05.17].
The contents of Pettigrew's letter to the city calling for the preservation of Falls Park might make a nice inscription at the base of his new statue. But so would any number of excerpts from his 1922 book Triumphant Plutocracy, such as...
I believe the new century will open with many bloody revolutions as a result of the protest of the masses against the tyranny and oppression of the wealth of the world in the hands of a few, resulting in great progress toward socialism and the more equitable distribution of the products of human toil and, as a result, the moral and spiritual uplifting of the race [R.F. Pettigrew, letter to Clara Barton, 1900.11.22, quoted in Triumphant Plutocracy].
Let those words be a starting point for debate at the next Tea Party rally in Falls Park.
Wow, thats's awesome!
Cory, as long as you and the merry pranksters have that 900-pound rock loaded up, you might as well keep heading south to Canton and drop it off in front of the former Hiawatha Insane Asylum at the current Hiawatha Golf Course. This disgrace was the brainchild of Sen. Pettigrew who brought home the pork to build an asylum for Natives from all over the USA. Steve Young wrote a remarkable story on this a couple weeks ago: http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013305050033
From the story, Young describes Pettigrew's pivotal role: 'While other agents and health care providers expressed their doubts, arguing that they didn’t think insanity was all that prevalent among the indigenous people, Pettigrew pushed on. He had his supporters, particularly among those who saw the asylum as one more tool in the assimilation of recalcitrant Native Americans.
'In 1890 America, it was thought that those labeled backward, be they races or classes or nationalities, could improve their lives only with guidance through the proper developmental stages. The federal Indian Office viewed its mission then as moving Indians from their perceived state of savagery to one of civilization through schooling, farming and public health reform.
'Those natives who balked found themselves at the mercy and whims of their reservation agents. Refuse to bend and they could watch their children leaving for boarding schools, or themselves shipped to an asylum such as the one proposed in South Dakota.
'All it took was one letter from the agent.'
While it was viewed at the time as a job creator for the folks in Canton until its scandalous conditions forced it to shut down, it has a perpetual reputation as a stain on South Dakota and the federal government.
I would like to see a picture of the band of merry pranksters posing with this statue in some humorous pose.