The city of Philadelphia on Wednesday morning took down a statue of the former mayor Frank Rizzo, a champion of conservatives who aggressively policed black people and gay people in the 1960s and ’70s, and whose likeness has long been criticized as a symbol of racism and oppression.

Mayor Kenney said that the statue was already scheduled to be removed in 2021 - according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. But he said the protests showed that the statue “had to go away for us to understand where we need to go to look forward.”