Paxton-Gate is currently displaying a human skeleton in their street-facing window. It is standing in between taxidermied animals and other “curiosities.” It is a retired medical specimen from the 1930s. This display— and attempted sale to hobbyists— continues an unbroken, dehumanizing legacy of racism in the way that medical skeletons have been created, used, and sold for over a century.

As community members who live, work, and/or shop in the Mission, we demand that Paxton-Gate:

1. Immediately remove the human skeleton from your window display. This is an incredibly dehumanizing way to treat a person’s body.

2. Change your policy on selling human remains. Do not acquire any more human bones or other human specimens to sell moving forward.

While it is legal to trade in human bones in California, simply clearing the low bar of legality is not an acceptable standard. You as a business will have to do better than that to maintain the respect and trust of the community around you.

Beyond this, we encourage you to thoughtfully find a more respectful home for this person's skeletal remains instead of selling them in your store or on your website.

For important information on where this skeleton and other retired medical skeletons come from, read from The bioethics of skeletal anatomy collections from India by Sabrina C. Agarwal:

"Human skeletons from India were the primary global source of human bone for over 180 years, with the exportation of skeletons that began under British colonial rule and expanded to global exportation after Indian independence."

"Indians in the 19th and 20th centuries did not voluntarily choose to be made into an anatomical study skeleton instead of burial or cremation without some duress. [...] There are accounts of intact bodies being taken from the Ganges River from impoverished families that were not able to conduct cremation. Further, there are several accounts in Bengal of the widespread robbing of skeletons from cemeteries before and after the ban, and/or the purchase or agreement to take bodies prior to death from families that had no resources for burial or cremation.”

“We are obligated to historicize the people that were systematically made into anatomical objects, to reflect on our role in upholding the necropolitical aims that created and continue to create these skeletal collections, and to search for appropriate ways to return their dignity.”