Statue of Liberty goes dark. Activists aren’t buying the National Park Service’s explanation
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Reporting from NEW YORK — The very first participant in the Day Without A Woman strike on Wednesday was none other than New York’s most illustrious female, the Lady of Liberty.
For several hours on Tuesday night, the Statue of Liberty went dark, her body and robes entirely cloaked in darkness with only her torch shining on New York harbor.
“Lady Liberty got the memo,” crowed the organizers of the one-day strike, which is being held to commemorate International Women’s Day, on social media. “Thank you Lady Liberty for standing with the resistance and going dark for #DayWithoutAWoman.”
The National Park Service, which operates the monument, claimed that the outage was due to a “technical glitch,’’ but the timing seemed too perfect to be coincidental.
“Some lights on the Statue were temporarily off tonight. Likely related to new emergency generator/Hurricane Sandy recovery project work,” the Statue of Liberty National Monument official Twitter account posted early this morning.
Women’s activists weren’t buying the explanation, especially since the National Park Service has been exhibiting some resistance to President Trump on matters ranging from the size of his inauguration crowd to climate change.
On social media, many doubted the explanation of a technical glitch. The outage, some New Yorkers suggested, was either an observation of the women’s day strike or a protest against President Trump’s immigration policies. Or Russian hacking.
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