⁍ More than 43,000 people say they want a statue of Marsha P. Johnson in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
⁍ Johnson was a pioneering trans-rights activist and one of the central figures in New York City’s gay liberation movement from the 1960s through the 1980s.
⁍ Last year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would commemorate both the work of Johnson and her friend and activist Sylvia Rivera with statues.

– A call for the removal of a Christopher Columbus statue in Elizabeth, NJ, has gained momentum after a 19-year-old created a petition. Celine Da Silva, who grew up in the city, says she wants the city to replace the statue with one of Marsha P. Johnson, a black transgender woman who was a central figure in New York City’s gay liberation movement in the 1960s and ’80s, CNN reports. “I’ve always said that Marsha was more recognized in New York City and around the world than she is in her own hometown,” Johnson’s nephew, Al Michaels, tells the New York Daily News. “It tells me that times are changing. People are becoming more accepting to people who identify as LGBT. It tells me that people are realizing how whitewashed our history is and how some figures that we learn about, we don’t learn everything about them.” Michaels, who helped create the petition, tells CNN that Johnson is a “legend” for the LGBTQ community. “Black trans women are the most ignored and the most disrespected people, in my opinion, out of anyone,” he says. “So I feel just her being a statue here will give hope to a lot of younger people, for sure, a lot of LGBT

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/27/us/marsha-p-johnson-statue-petition-elizabeth-new-jersey/index.html