The Statue Of Liberty Went Dark Just Hours Before The Women's General Strike
An electrical outage killed the lights at the Statue of Liberty, but it still seemed pretty symbolic
It was before 11 p.m., just over an hour before midnight and the start of International Women’s Day — and the “A Day Without A Woman” general strike — when the lights at the Statue of Liberty went out. At the time, there was no explanation. Lady Liberty still stood, just cloaked in darkness.
The statue stayed dark for more than an hour. The symbolism was lost on no one.
As one Twitter user put it, the timing was “too perfect.” Many were quick to jump to the conclusion that Lady Liberty was in on the strike, and that there was symbolism behind the darkness.
Others posited that the blackout had to do with President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban on people from several Muslim majority countries, or the GOP’s newly released plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with a new healthcare system that is projected to cut costs for the wealthy while driving costs up for the elderly and poor.
The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington and the general strike even thanked Lady Liberty for her support of their cause.
Around midnight, though, the lights came back on.
According to the Washington Post, the National Park Service explained that “power and a lighting system controller had been switched off in order to change out faulty lighting equipment.”
In a statement, the NPS added, “Upon completion of that project, power was restored, but the outage was a result of a failure to properly reset the lighting system controller. While this was an unplanned outage, there will be some planned outages related to the installation of new emergency backup generator for Liberty Island. We anticipate those outages will take place over the next few weeks.”
Jerry Willis, a public affairs officer for the NPS, told the Post that the blackout was “not in any way” related to the general strike.
“We don’t use the lighting system to back any particular cause,” he said.
Still, the timing. It was just too good, and Twitter continued to point that out.
Even though the Statue of Liberty’s lights are back on, “A Day Without A Woman” is still taking place, and holding events in many major cities today. To see how you can participate, check out the Women’s Strike website.
