Removal of Labor Mural Akin to Action by ‘Totalitarian Regimes’
Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s unilateral decision to remove an 11-panel mural depicting the state’s working families raises “grave concerns,” wrote Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquarella in a letter to LePage. The mural, which LePage removed from the Department of Labor over the weekend, includes a depiction of 1902 Mount Holyoke graduate and former U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. (Kudos the Maine Democratic Party for posting the mural on its website.) As Pasquarella told LePage:
I was particularly surprised to read that you were influenced by an anonymous fax comparing the 11-panel mural to North Korean political propaganda, because the act of removing images commemorating Maine’s history itself conjures thoughts of rewriting history prevalent in totalitarian regimes.


