Many on the left were disturbed by the appearance of a burning cross at a park in Chicago, but the man who claims he put it up says he is not racist and was protesting President Donald Trump.
Police released video of a man they called a person of interest after someone set up the cross and lit it on fire on June 10 at Grant Park in downtown Chicago.
‘I don’t wanna wait until he may or may not get impeached. I want him gone right now.’
Community members immediately blamed racism and hatred, and one even mentioned “the South.”
“I was horrified; I was angry!” said Rev. Michael Pfleger of the Faith Community of Saint Sabina in an interview with WGN-TV.
“This is a decades-old symbol of hate and supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan. This is their symbol,” he added.
“This is something that’s been used in the South to harm and scare black Americans, so it was very distasteful,” said Keinika Carlton, who saw the cross burning and captured it on video.
“There’s no way to explain this nicely, except it’s hate!” Pfleger added in another interview with WBBM-TV.
“A burning cross is not a prank. It is not a misunderstanding. It is one of the most recognizable symbols of racial terror in American history,” said attorney Benjamin Crump, known for representing many race-related cases.
“Hate cannot be normalized, excused, or ignored. Those responsible must be identified and held accountable,” Crump continued.
“This isn’t random vandalism. It’s a direct message of hate meant to intimidate Black people in the middle of downtown Chicago. How many more times will racists use this symbol of terror in public before it’s treated like the hate crime it is?” an anti-racism account said on social media.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was also investigating the incident.
A few days later, a 21-year-old Asian man claimed to have set up the cross and said he didn’t even know it was a symbol of racism.
“I did know about this historical relevance beforehand, but I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” University of Illinois Chicago senior Merlin Lu said to WMAQ-TV.
Lu said the cross was intended as a protest against Trump’s alleged Christian-nationalist supporters and the “Make America Great Again” movement and that he had put a red hat on top of the cross to try to get this message across.
“I put a red hat to signify the MAGA hat, the Make America Great Again hat,” he added. “So that was, yeah, that’s what I tied on top.”
“I don’t want to wait till his term ends,” Lu said of the president. “I don’t wanna wait until he may or may not get impeached. I want him gone right now.”
RELATED: Activists rage over racist vandalism at a Sacramento high school. The district says a black student was caught on camera committing the hoax.
Lu was asked how he came up with the idea for the burning-cross protest.
“Just it came up to my head one day,” he said. “I wanted to find something that I could do by myself, like no organization, no friends.”
WMAQ said Lu is a native of Naperville.
“He’s just scamming people,” Lu added about Trump.
“I think that’s a great reflection of how this country works right now, where money controls everything. Money has power over health care. Money has power over transportation,” he continued.
Lu said he was thinking of surrendering to the police, and WMAQ reported in an update that the police confirmed the arrest of a person of interest.
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