Editor's note: This letter has been edited from its original version, which was published in the July 16 issue of the Bristol Phoenix.

Given the Black Lives Matter brand placement over Bristol Town Hall and Gov. Gina Raimondo’s executive amputation of “and Providence Plantations,” let’s ditch Bristol’s crest. Like our town, it’s much too white to go unamended.

Readers unfamiliar with this hateful hieroglyph can find it at Town Hall’s entrance, where it’s traditionally stepped on by our leaders rotating in and out of office. The garrack (left) is obviously a slave vessel and the indigenous man (right) is a patronizing stereotype. And just what’s that white hand doing, choking that poor snake?

I propose the town assemble a body of tastemakers tasked to redesign the crest. Members of the Historic District Commission won’t mind. Despite their declared function “to protect the unique physical character, historic fabric, and visual identity of [Bristol],” the precious bluehairs kept schtum when “Sculpture on the Lawn” blighted our view of Colt School; and the guy who cuts the grass is a better sculptor than the vandals responsible for those eyesores.

To get the ball rolling, my first nominee for tastemaker is Lisa Peterson. Recall her 2019 “transvestites for tots” initiative? Peterson grumbles that Concerned Citizens’ 501(c)3 status precludes it from political work, and nimbly omits that rabidly-political BLM is fiscally sponsored by Thousand Currents, a 501(c)3, because she knows Bristolians deserve the truth and which truth they deserve.

My second nominee, Stephan Brigidi, always sticks out; his moralizing droppings litter many opinion pages. Ever staring down his degree at us unlettered incorrigibles, this gallant art professor is a shoo-in for town reillustrator.

Finally, I nominate Dyshell Palmer, who risked her life to march against racist police actions, marching down Hope Street amid parade-stifling pestilence, with a supernumerary herd of posable warm bodies. Palmer unburdens every white liberal of the dread necessity (in undiverse towns) of speaking for minorities, by regurgitating for them the dogma of her blond schoolteachers. Let’s hope Palmer hasn’t eloped with her megaphone to start a family in the comparative safety of Chicago or Detroit: Democrat havens where blacks are more often killed by other blacks, fair and square, than by racist white “pigs.”

The crest has got to go; it’s a living symbol of our history and, according to the nationwide trend of cultural suicide, we must disfigure one to disavow the other. I’m eager to see in whose image we shall be uncreated.

P.S. Readers, next time you want to demolish your farmhouse, get it registered as a Confederate monument for a hassle-free teardown, compliments of the protectors of “historic fabric” and “visual identity.”

Zachary Cooper
Bristol