TEDN legal team ramps up federal court battle over racist monuments
11th January 2016 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
Take Em Down NOLA (TEDN), the multiracial coalition working to bring down statues dedicated to white supremacy, has been joined by a cadre of lawyers, that will file an amicus brief on Monday, January 11, 2016, on behalf of TEDN, in support of the removal of Confederate monuments from New Orleans.
The brief will be filed in federal court against the lawsuit brought by opponents of removing the monuments honoring Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard, and the Battle of Liberty Place Monument.
The plaintiffs in the case are The Monumental Task Committee Louisiana Landmarks Society, Foundation for Historical Louisiana, Inc., Beauregard Camp No. 30, Inc., the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed the lawsuit the evening of December 17, 2015, shortly after the City Council’s 6-1 vote to remove the monuments. They sued the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and Federal Transit Administration, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, the City of New Orleans and Mayor Mitchell Landrieu.
A federal judge will hear the first arguments in the case on Thursday, January 14, 2016, in the federal court for the Eastern District at 500 Poydras Street.
“New Orleans has a great community of movement lawyers who will do our best to support TEDN however we can. “Movement lawyers” are lawyers who support social movements and take direction directly from the groups we support,” the group advises.
“The monuments in this matter honor and glorify white supremacists. Their hyper-violent actions supported the continued enslavement of millions of people. The individuals honored in the Robert E. Lee monument, the Jefferson Davis monument, the Beauregard Equestrian Monument, and the Liberty Monument were slave-owning, racist, and violent traitors; their monuments were constructed and maintained to perpetuate historical myths of white supremacy and domination, and to deny the South’s shameful legacy of African slavery.
“The issues before this Court must be viewed in the context of the history of slavery and white supremacy in Louisiana. That history demonstrates that the four monuments at issue in this case were chosen, built, and maintained to honor white supremacy,” the lawyers wrote.
“This amicus brief is filed on behalf of Take ‘Em Down NOLA, a multi-racial association of people from New Orleans that is dedicated to the removal of all symbols of white supremacy in New Orleans as part of a broader campaign to achieve racial and economic justice.”
Take ‘Em Down NOLA is also active in the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Black Youth Project 100, and other civil and human rights organizations committed to racial equality. Take ‘Em Down NOLA has an interest in this case because the prominent display of racist, white-supremacist monuments in public places in New Orleans glorifies slavery and the South’s history of racial violence. “These monuments also undermine the collective efforts of so many New Orleanians to make the Constitutional guarantee of racial equality a reality in this City,” the brief maintains.
Ironically, it was the post-Reconstruction government of the City of New Orleans, whose enduring support, adoration and love for the Confederacy and slavery that led to the erection of these pillars of white supremacy. So, it was entirely fitting for the New Orleans City Council on December 17, 2015, to undo the vile acts of their predecessors.
That same day, Take ‘Em Down NOLA (TEDN) held a press conference and announced a boycott of the historic vote. “We’re tired of the talk, we want action,” said veteran organizer Malcolm Suber, a TEDN spokesperson.
Since then, TEDN has drawn supporters in their campaign to take down the racist monuments that have stood too long in a city that is at least 60 percent African-American.
On January 2, 2016, City Councilmember James A. Gray, II – District E, said, “The monuments will come down,” but he couldn’t provide a specific date. “There are technicalities involved,” he adds. A private firm will pay for the removal but the city will have to approve of the group because the monuments are on city property. The monuments will be warehoused, until a final repository is decided upon.
“There has been some conversation about creating historical spaces for the monuments,” Gray continues, “but I will not agree to move them to a place where it still looks like a shrine to them. Wherever they go, the full story has to be told.”
A veteran with a keen interest in military history, Gray says at least 200,000 Black men fought in the Civil War. At least 180,000 of those fought for the Union, 20,000 for the U.S. Navy. And the death rate was highest for Blacks who fought in the Civil War.
Gray has two ancestors, one Black and one white, who fought for the Confederacy but, “I’ve never received an invitation for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans,” he laughed.
About those opposed to taking down the statues, Gray offered, “We can’t change history but you don’t honor criminals. I realize slavery is part of our history. I realize Lee and Beauregard were part of the Civil War but they are, after all, traitors who fought to destroy this country and honoring history does not mean putting traitors in a position of honor. Beauregard started the war when he fired on Fort Sumter.”
Gray believes the federal judge hearing the opponents’ lawsuit will rule in the City of New Orleans’ favor. He said the monuments represent a major myth. New Orleans did not participate in the Civil War. No shots or battles occurred here.
“Thirteen months after Louisiana seceded from the U.S., it became a part of the Union in 1862, when Union troops came into the city. General Lee never came to New Orleans or Louisiana. The statue of Lee was put up to celebrate a return to the old ways. It sent a message to the world, ‘We white racists are back in charge, we’re going to take away your (Blacks) right to vote.’”
Gray says the monuments must come down to send the opposite message, “We’re going to take them down to convey the message that we’re not going back to the days of slavery.”
The removal of the statues have faced opposition from whites, who say they are about history and heritage and should not be removed and from Blacks who say the Black community has far greater problems than monuments. Unemploy-ment, Black-on-Black crime, education, and the lack of economic parity are more important issues.
The amicus brief states, “Some people believe that the struggle to remove white supremacist symbols is a deflection from the more meaningful struggle to end present day discrimination. They couldn’t be further from the truth. They do not understand that it is the white supremacist ideas, represented by these symbols, which permeate American society and result in actual discrimination and murder. That is why policemen with white supremacist conceptions can murder young Black people so easily.”
“This why the so-called criminal justice system can practice mass incarceration of Black people with the approval of most white people. This is why we have over 50 percent unemployment for Black men in New Orleans and there is no editorial outcry by the white ruling class press,” the lawyers wrote.
The amicus brief is based on the authority of the New Orleans City Council to remove statues considered to be public nuisances.
“Section 146-611 (b) of the New Orleans Code of Ordinances empowers the City Council to remove statues from public property when those statues are a nuisance. Part One of the ordinance defines what constitutes a nuisance:
“The thing honors, praises, or fosters ideologies which are in conflict with the requirements of equal protection for citizens as provided by the constitution and laws of the United States, the state, or the laws of the city and gives honor or praise to those who participated in the killing of public employees of the city or the state or suggests the supremacy of one ethnic, religious, or racial group over any other, or gives honor or praise to any violent actions taken wrongfully against citizens of the city to promote ethnic, religious or racial superiority of any group.”
“The people and events that are the subject of the monuments in this case epitomize this definition. First, they foster ideologies that are in conflict with the requirements of equal protection of our citizens. Second, they honor the killing of public employees. And third, they honor and praise violent actions taken to promote white supremacy and the racial superiority of a group of whites who fought one of our nation’s most violent and bloody wars.
The issue for TEDN is not if but when will the monuments come down. “The easiest thing for a judge to do is to delay action,” says Bill Quigley, Loyola law professor and executive director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center. Quigley is among the top civil rights lawyers in the nation.
People have only to look to the words of Martin Luther King Jr. to know that what Quigley is saying is spot on. “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Will the federal judge in this case rule on the right side of history? Time will tell.
This article originally published in the January 11, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
