Last week, President Donald Trump's unveiled the Executive Order on Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes, a measure that sets out to create a new "National Garden of American Heroes" to be filled with statues depicting "historically significant Americans. 

The executive order, which comes as a national reckoning over the thousands of confederate and other pro-slavery and anti-Indigenous public monuments continues, has been widely criticized as an outdated and likely problematic concept.

To this end, Philadelphia-based Monument Lab, a group that has led critical discourse on the nature, history, and significance of public monuments with an eye toward equity and justice since 2012, has rewritten the executive order to reflect the group's more expansive vision for the future of American monuments. 

The full text of the re-write is highlighted below:

On Building and Reimagining Monuments

Section 1. Purpose

To unearth the next generation of monuments based on a full reckoning with America’s history.

Section 2. Task Force for Building and Reimagining Monuments 

The task force shall be led by artists, activists, scholars, and young people.

Section 3. Garden of Monuments

The garden will include works by contemporary artists that elevate the power of creativity over violence and oppression. Plans for the garden must respond to the catastrophic loss of life in the COVID-19 pandemic and to centuries of systemic racism. 

Section 4. Commissioning of New Statues and Works of Art

The task force shall support Black, Indigenous, and other artists of color through radically increased funding for the NEA, NEH, and local public art and history agencies. 

Section 5 Educational Programming

Shall prioritize the allocation of funding to programs and projects that educate Americans from pre-K through college along with providing universal healthcare, affordable housing, and the environmental justice necessary for thriving communities.

Section 6. Permanence

No Monuments are permanent.

Section 7. Definition

The term “historically significant American” includes citizens and non-citizens who have lost lives and land through state violence as well as those who have upheld traditions of resistance and dissent. 

Section 8. General Provisions

Reallocate funds away from state violence and toward a commitment to monumental justice, education, and care for the people this government is meant to serve.