Say It Isn’t So!
I wish this wasn’t true. Last week, an anonymous donor offered to pay the city of New Orleans $125,000 to remove four Confederate monuments, according to Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s top aide. This seems like the most loathsome and disrespectful act someone could make as a political statement. I guess that’s why the donor is remaining nameless.
A one-page report from the mayor’s chief administrative officer, Andy Kopplin, was sent to the City Council last week. Several similar letters were sent from other city department heads as well, and all the reports recommended that the City Council should vote to remove the monuments.
“It is true that these landmarks have served for decades as geographic compass points on the city’s grid, but how can this geographic compass compare to a great city’s moral compass?” Kopplin wrote in his letter.
The four monuments in question are the Robert E. Lee statue in Circle on St. Charles Avenue, the Jefferson Davis monument on Jefferson Davis Parkway (they’ll probably change the name of the street later on), the P.G.T. Beauregard statue at the entrance to City Park, and the monument to the battle of Liberty Place on Iberville Street. The Liberty Place monument was originally placed on Canal Street. In 1993, an ordinance was drawn up to have this monument removed, and this is the final step in the process. The monument signifies an uprising by the White League against Louisiana’s Reconstruction-era government in 1874, when 34 people were killed.
Beginning earlier this summer, Mayor Landrieu made several public calls to remove the monuments, leaping on the momentum of the recent politically correct bandwagon, so the findings by various city departments comes as no surprise. The City Council has not scheduled a vote.
What’s next? I wouldn’t be surprised if these racists target Confederate soldiers’ graves and start digging them up. Removing these four monuments would take away part of New Orleans’s rich history, and that would truly be a shame.
