City begins taking down monuments
1st May 2017 · 0 Comments
With several legislators still waiting for a chance to block the removal of four Confederate-era monuments in New Orleans, the lieutenant governor hoping that President Donald Trump could keep the monuments in place and a steeper-than-anticipated cost for removal of the statues, the City of New Orleans began the task of relocating the monuments and storing them in a city-owned warehouse until a permanent home for them can be found.
Just days after the City of New Orleans denied crafting a plan to take down the statues overnight on April 13 until the media caught wind of it, the Landrieu administration moved to take down the Battle of Liberty Place monument about 2:30 a.m. on April 24.
In the wake of threats from monument supporters, workers who took down the Battle of Liberty Place monument last Monday donned helmets, flapjacks and bandanas covering their faces to conceal their identities and covered up the names and license plates on the vehicles used to transport the obelisk to a city-owned warehouse near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Questions were raised last week about what role firefighters played in the removal of the Liberty Place monument. After meeting with the Landrieu administration Wednesday, NOFD Union President Nick Felton met with reporters on the steps of City Hall.
“We should not be in riot gear,” Felton told reporters. “We should not be doing police-type work, and we are absolutely concerned that type of thing is going on.”
Late Tuesday night, the firefighters union issued a statement saying that rank-and-file firefighters were not involved in taking down the Liberty Place monument.
The Mayor’s Office issued a statement after Felton’s press conference that confirmed that firefighters were on hand as part of a security plan but it was not clear what specific role the firefighters played in the process.
“The emergency response agencies and essential city personnel, who are always engaged in the logistics and planning of major emergencies and events, were involved in the process to ensure a safe removal of the Battle of Liberty Place statue,” Landrieu spokesman Tyronne Walker said in a statement. “The city’s public safety agencies took part in this lawful operation, and we commend them for safely executing the plan and protecting the lives of all involved.”
Both sides in the monument debate criticized the Landrieu administration for providing the public with very little information about when the monument was going to be taken down, who was responsible for taking it down and the identity of the private donor or donors who came forward with enough money to overcome a hefty bid submitted by Cuzan Services LLC in early April to take down monuments of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Although the Landrieu administration had secured an estimated $170,000 in private donations by early April, Cuzan said it would cost more than triple that amount — $600,000 — to remove the three monuments.
With three bills to block the statue-removal project in the state legislature, a request for President Donald Trump to step in and save the monuments and the whopping bid by Cuzan to take down the monuments, it had begun to look as though the City of New Orleans might not be able to make its self-imposed deadline of May 19 to have all four monuments moved to a city-owned warehouse until new locations could be found for them.
Then came the news that the Battle of Liberty Place monument had been taken down overnight Monday.
Nola.com reported that cops arrived at about 1:30 a.m. Monday to secure the area and that it took several hours for workers to haul off sections of the obelisk on flatbed trucks about 5:30 a.m.
Several news stations had reported Sunday night that a midnight vigil had been planned at the Jefferson Davis statue in Mid-City, which suggests that news had begun to spread that steps were being taken to begin removing one or more of the monuments.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu justified keeping the removal project under wraps by saying that it was necessary to ensure the safety of the workers. Later in the day Monday, Landrieu refused to answer several questions about the name of the contractor who carried out the project, and the identity of the person or persons who made anonymous donations to pay for the project. He did say that the City had now collected more than $600,000 in private donations to pay for the removal of all four monuments and that the other three monuments would be taken down “sooner rather than later.”
That means that the City of New Orleans could conceivably still reach its goal of having the four monuments taken down by May 19, which happens to be the birthday of Black nationalist leader Malcolm X.
Ironically, the Battle of Liberty Place monument was taken down on April 24, the same day that residents in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia were observing Confederate Memorial Day.
Landrieu spokesman Tyronne Walker told Nola.com that the timing was “strictly coincidental.”
Both sides said they had problems with the Landrieu administration’s lack of transparency in removing the Liberty Place monument.
“To me, that’s saying that you have bowed to the white supremacist agenda, rather than saying that this is our city we control and our police force can handle any situation,” Take ‘Em Down Nola co-founder Malcolm Suber told WWL News.
After working for the removal of the monuments, Take ‘Em Down Nola had hoped that the residents of New Orleans would be able to witness and celebrate the removal of the monuments from public spaces.
Groups like Save Our Circle and the Monumental Task Committee, which lost several legal challenges to block the relocation of the monuments, was not happy about the secrecy under which the Liberty Place monument was taken down.
“It was done in the dead of night, last night,” Kurt Buchen, a member of Save Our Circle and supporter of the Monumental Task Committee, told WWL. “They had snipers on the top of the garage — snipers on American citizens.”
Monument supporters had proposed erecting new monuments to honor those who fought for civil and voting rights and adding plaques to the existing monuments to explain the history behind the monuments.
As late as Wednesday, monument supporters were spotted camping out near the P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis monuments.
Take ‘Em Down Nola has put together a list of about 100 statues, 24 street names, seven schools and two hospitals that should be removed or renamed because they honor people who supported slavery, the Confederacy or racial oppression.
When asked about the issue April 19 by a caller on his monthly radio show, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said that New Orleans should decide what to do with its monuments.
“This is an issue for New Orleans, and I don’t know that the state ought to be weighing in on the internal management of the City of New Orleans,” Edwards added.
Three state legislators disagreed and authored bills seeking to block the relocation of the monuments. One of those bills seeks to force a statewide vote on the fate of the monuments.
“We want the City Council to complete the job,” Malcolm Suber told WWL. “We want them to say not because they are nuisances, but because we as a people in this city are against white supremacy.”
While the City has proposed finding new homes for the monuments in museums, Suber suggested that the monuments be thrown into the Mississippi River and “used as anchors.”
“We owe it to our ancestors and we owe it to future generations to get it right, get it straight,” Suber said. “Let’s have a city that really embraces democracy and freedom rather than one that endorses oppression and exploitation and racism and white supremacy.”
“The interesting thing about this uproar over the monuments is that the City of New Orleans took all of the necessary legal steps to make this happen,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly.
“The anger and disappointment from monument supporters sheds light on the degree to which local whites are used to getting their way.”
This article originally published in the May 1, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
