Banksy to sell t-shirts to aid defendants in tearing down statue of slave trader

(CNN) – British graffiti artist Banksy announced that he will sell T-shirts to help those accused of tearing down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Anti-racist protesters toppled the statue in the south-west England city of Bristol on June 7, 2020, during a rally in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd in the United States.

The protesters tied a rope around Colston’s bronze statue and removed it from its pedestal. They then took him to the port of Bristol and dumped him into the River Avon, which runs through the city.

Four people were charged by the police for the removal and are due to go to trial next week. Banksy said his souvenir T-shirts would “mark the occasion” and are available in Bristol outlets starting Saturday for $ 33.

In a instagram postThe anonymous artist, who is also believed to be from Bristol, though relatively little is known about his identity, said he would allocate “all proceeds to the defendants so they can have a pint [de cerveza]”.

Banksy also shared a photo of the shirts, emblazoned with the stenciled word “Bristol” over an image of the empty pedestal where the statue previously stood, with the rope dangling from it and a poster of a protester next to it.

Ujima Radio of Bristol said the shirts will be available for purchase at five independent stores in the city, with only one shirt allowed per customer. PA Media reported that thousands of people were lining up to purchase the limited-edition items on Saturday.

Who is Edward Colston

Colston was a slave trader and merchant who helped transport tens of thousands of people from Africa as slaves across the Atlantic and sold them as labor, primarily to work on sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Virginia.

His statue, installed in 1895, is just one example of the way he was honored in his hometown of Bristol, with roads, schools and buildings also named after him, though many have changed names since then.

At the time of the collapse, Banksy suggested that an idea for the statue’s future would be to “put it back on the pedestal, tie a cable around its neck, and commission some life-size bronze statues of protesters in the act of tearing it down” .

The statue now is temporarily displayed at the M Shed museum in Bristol, along with posters from the protest where it was torn down. It was placed there in June and will remain until at least January 2022 pending consultation on its future.

Following the murder of George Floyd and the worldwide rise of the Black Lives Matter movement last year, Banksy, who has been confirmed in interviews to be a white male, shared an anti-racist statement online.

“The system is failing people of color. The white system,” wrote. “Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people who live on the ground floor. This faulty system makes their life a pittance, but it’s not their job to fix it … this is a white problem.”