Kentucky lockdown protesters condemned for hanging effigy of governor from tree

Political leaders in Kentucky have condemned rightwing protesters against the state’s measures to fight the coronavirus, after the demonstrators hanged an effigy of Democratic state governor Andy Beshear from a tree.

The incident happened on Sunday during a protest in favor of gun rights and other mostly conservative causes. Several men produced a rope and an effigy and strung it from a tree outside the state capitol building in Frankfort.

The state representative Charles Booker, who is African American and the Democratic party challenger for the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s seat in Kentucky in November, described the representation as “ vile and traumatic”.

“It’s not just the threat on his life, it’s the fact that they demonstrated an act rooted in our history of racism. I’ve had family lynched in Kentucky,” Booker added.

“The act that was displayed on Capitol grounds today, near where the Governor and his young children live, was wrong and offensive. This type of behavior must be condemned,” Beshear’s communications director, Crystal Staley, said in an email to CNN.

“As Kentuckians we should be able to voice our opinions without turning to hate and threats of violence. Put simply – we are and should be better than this.”

McConnell and the state Republican party issued their own condemnations.

“As a strong defender of the First Amendment, I believe Americans have the right to peacefully protest,” McConnell’s press office posted on Twitter. “However, today’s action toward Governor Beshear is unacceptable. There is no place for hate in Kentucky.”

The Republican party of Kentucky echoed that condemnation, posting: “What occurred at today’s rally was unacceptable and has no place in Kentucky’s political discourse.”

The rally, which drew about 100 people, soon turned into a protest against Beshear’s lockdown directives, according to the journalist Gerry Seavo James, who passed an image of the mayor’s effigy to CNN.

According to James, the rally was wrapping up when someone pulled the effigy of Beshear out of a bag and hanged it. The figure included a note around its neck with the words “sic semper tyrannis” – Latin for “thus always to tyrants”.

The phrase is generally attributed to Julius Caesar’s assassin Brutus but was also uttered by John Wilkes Booth as he shot Abraham Lincoln. It remains the state motto of Virginia.

“It’s a very chilling image to see in modern America. And especially as an African American man,” said James, who has been documenting gun rights rallies across the south.

James said the effigy was removed soon after. “There’s a gentleman that came up. He was pretty upset about it, and he cut it down. And he was like, ‘This has no place at this rally. We’re trying to be peaceful.’”