The Democratic state senator said he was attacked outside the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison late Tuesday after protesters dropped two statues – including one made by a pioneering female sculptor and another abolitionist who died in a battle against the Confederacy in the US Civil War.
State Senator Carpenter Team to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter where he was attacked while taking photos of protesters on his way back to complete some late-night work at the Capitol. Image posted on Twitter by a reporter, Lawrence Andrea, showing Carpenter doubled in pain after the incident.
“I don’t know what happened … what I did was stop and take pictures, and the next thing I got was five, six hits, kicked in the head,” he said.
The new round of protests in Madison was triggered by the arrest of a black man who recently entered a restaurant near the capitol with a megaphone and a baseball bat.
He is identified by the Wisconsin State Journal as Devonere Johnson, a local activist and organizer displayed on the cellphone video following a white customer in a restaurant. In the trailer, Johnson called the man racist, and shouted various obscenities through the loudspeakers he brought.
During Tuesday’s protests, participants toppled the statue of ‘Forward’ Wisconsin, a seven-foot-tall bronze statue depicting a woman standing at the bow of a ship. It was made by artist Jean Pond Miner, and placed near the capitol stairs in 1895 – ‘an unusual honor for a woman of her day,’ according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Later, the group also dragged the statue of Colonel Christian Heg, an abolitionist who was killed in battle for the Union during the US civil war. The statue was thrown into a nearby lake, according to the Journal Sentinel.
