The campaign to remove Confederate statues around the country continues with Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) taking action to get rid of those sitting on the Capitol.

On Thursday, Booker tweeted plans to introduce a bill to remove the statues honoring the Confederacy from the halls of the United States Capitol building. Inside the building is the National Statuary Hall Collection, which includes two statues from each state. While there are statues that recognize civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks, just steps away there are also statues that honor men like Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who served as vice president of the Confederacy and was a strong supporter of slavery.

“Individuals who were treasonous to the United States, who took up arms against their own country, and inflicted catastrophic death and suffering among U.S. citizens, should not be afforded such a rare honor in this sacred space,” Booker told HuffPost in a statement.

“The Capitol is a place for all Americans to come and feel welcomed, encouraged, and inspired,” he added. “Confederate statues do the opposite. They are, unequivocally, not only statues of treasonous Americans but are symbolic to some who seek to revise history and advance hate and division.”

Some have argued that the removal of the statues is "erasing history," but Booker notes that the statues belong elsewhere.

“These statues belong in a museum, where they are put in the proper historical context," Booker continued.

“Our nation must heal and unite,” he said. “Part of this process must be unflinchingly and courageously confronting the truth of our past and realizing that what makes us great is not sanitizing our history with its bigotry, hatred, and racism, or watering down the vicious brutality and terrorism that ran rampant, but demonstrating America’s greatness in how we have overcome those evils with the best of who we are and our continued focus on the injustices that still demand our work today.”

“These statues must be moved not just because of who they were in the past,” he added, “but because of who we are now as a nation and who we must be to ensure an even better and brighter future.”

Several Confederate monuments have been removed in cities all over the country including Los Angeles, Baltimore, New Orleans, Austin, Orlando, Brooklyn and more. Proposals to remove statues are in Boston, The Bronx, San Antonio, Tampa, Birmingham and more.

Source: huffingtonpost.com