{"id":12821,"date":"2021-01-25T21:53:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T21:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=154441"},"modified":"2021-01-25T21:53:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T21:53:00","slug":"joe-biden-rearranges-the-oval-office-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/25\/joe-biden-rearranges-the-oval-office-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden Rearranges the Oval Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of Donald Trump\u2019s first acts on moving into the White House in January 2017 was to hang<\/a> a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the former U.S. President and known racist<\/a>, in the Oval Office. (Trump would later also lay a wreath<\/a> on Jackson\u2019s grave in Tennessee and block<\/a> the Treasury Department\u2019s plan<\/a> to replace Jackson on the $20 bill with the image of renowned anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman.)<\/p>\n

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Biden wanted \u201cto walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as President.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When Joe Biden moved into the Oval Office on January 20, 2021, even before signing<\/a> his first seventeen executive orders and directives, he had the Jackson portrait removed and replaced<\/a> with a portrait of founding father Benjamin Franklin. He also installed sculptures of C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez, Rosa Parks, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. <\/p>\n

The bust of labor union organizer Ch\u00e1vez, by artist<\/a> Paul A. Suarez, sits<\/a> on a small table behind the Resolute desk, looking down on photos of Biden\u2019s family. The bust of civil rights activist Parks is by Detroit-based<\/a> artist Artis Lane, whose 2009 bust of Sojourner Truth is also featured in the nearby U.S. Capitol. The bust of King, by Charles Henry Alston, was the first image of an African American ever displayed in the White House, when it was initially placed there<\/a> in 1990.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s choices of these symbols are not arbitrary. On his first day in office, Biden proposed<\/a> legislation to allow migrant farmworkers access to \u201cgreen cards\u201d for legal work status. Paul Ch\u00e1vez, son of the late labor leader, told<\/a> CNN, \u201cIt represents the hopes and aspirations of an entire community that has been demonized and belittled, and we hope this is the beginning of a new day, a new dawn in which the contributions of all Americans can be cherished and valued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden has often quoted King, and did so again<\/a> on his personal Twitter feed on January 18, saying the late civil rights leader\u2019s \u201cwords remind us that darkness cannot drive out darkness and hate cannot drive out hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a U.S. Senator, Biden was a cosponsor of the 2005 resolution<\/a> to allow Rosa Parks to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol after her October death (the first woman ever to be so honored), and in January 2006 he cosponsored<\/a> the bill to issue a commemorative postage stamp in her honor. <\/p>\n

Just this past December, in an \u201coff-the-record\u201d Internet conversation, Biden reportedly<\/a> told a group of supporters, \u201cSixty-five years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the definition of \u2018civil rights\u2019 should be expanded to include the rights of women, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, immigrants, the elderly, the LGBTQ community, the mentally ill, the physically impaired, and others.\u201d <\/p>\n

Biden wanted \u201cto walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as President,\u201d deputy director of Oval Office operations Ashley Williams told<\/a> The Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The portrait of Franklin, deemed to represent<\/a> Biden\u2019s interest in following the guidance of science (although it is worth noting that Franklin also founded the U.S. Postal Service, which Trump attacked<\/a>), and a bust of Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady and architect<\/a> of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also send a message about the new President\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the room, facing the desk, a portrait of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is hung\u2014perhaps to remind the room\u2019s new occupant of the history of a Democratic President who came into office at a time of both economic and social crisis and united a nation with government-sponsored<\/a> programs that rebuilt a society.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden has quickly managed to install the right symbols. Now he will need the courage, perseverance, and support that it will take to transform a wounded and bitterly divided nation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Donald Trump\u2019s first acts on moving into the White House in January 2017 was to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the former U.S. President and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12822,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12821\/revisions\/12822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}