TEDN calls for open discussion on fate of monuments
29th May 2018 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
A day after holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall to issue a pointed challenge to Mayor LaToya Cantrell to include more voices in deciding the fate of four removed Confederate monuments, representatives from pro-removal group Take ‘Em Down Nola said they’re willing to take legal action to force the issue.
Last Thursday, TEDN leader Malcolm Suber said the group is reviewing city government rules and procedures for guidance on how to proceed with their efforts, with filing for an injunction or other court remedies definitely on the table.
“It’s one of the options we are considering, depending on how the Mayor responds,” he told The Louisiana Weekly.
At last Wednesday’s press conference, TEDN decried Cantrell’s policy of consulting with a largely pro-monument committee of seven to decide the fate of three Confederate monuments – Robert E. Lee, PGT Beauregard and Jefferson Davis – that were removed from public view by the city last year.
At the press conference, Suber asserted that “there should be a public process” for determining what to do with the monuments. In an earlier interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Suber said, “We’re calling on the Mayor to have public meetings to discuss what to do with these statues.”
According to reports in the New Orleans Advocate, that committee issue a formal recommendation that the Lee and Beauregard statues be moved to Greenwood Cemetery, a privately-owned business, and the Davis monument go to the Confederate president’s former homestead in Biloxi. According to the Advocate, Cantrell told the committee to not consider the future of a Liberty Place monument removed at the same time as the three other statues.
At TEDN’s press conference last Wednesday, Suber suggested that public hearings be held to determine how to dispose of the monuments.
A day later, Suber told The Louisiana Weekly that many citizens have expressed support for TEDN’s cause and the efforts to open up the decision-making process regarding the monuments.
“A lot of people have responded,” he said. “More people are siding with us. They think we’re right to call out the Mayor for the way she’s behaved.”
The Mayor’s Office has been tight-lipped about the controversy, with multiple but similar prepared statements being issued through Cantrell’s representatives, including one given to The Louisiana Weekly recently by Cantrell’s press secretary, LaTonya Norton.
“Mayor Cantrell believes the next steps regarding the monuments should be in the hands of those who care about them,” it stated. “She has invited those individuals to present suggestions. They did. The Mayor has encouraged them to move forward in developing consensus and support among the community of people invested in preserving and moving the statues.
“Malcom Suber’s stance on the monuments is well-established, and the goals of his group, Take Em Down NOLA, have been achieved in this instance – the monuments are down. He was not involved in this part of the discussion.”
Last Thursday, Richard Marksbury, one of the leaders of the pro-monument efforts that criticized their removal, reiterated his belief that Suber, TEDN and other pro-removal groups have already achieved their goal – taking the monuments down and out of public spaces – and as such should play no further role in the matter.
He said that as long as the city disposes of the statues in a legal way that conforms to existing laws and procedures, the decision is out of pro-removal forces’ hands.
“Take Em Down had their say,” said Marksbury. “[TEDN shouldn’t have any more say [the monuments] go. [TEDN] should back away from it.”
Marskbury believes that even if pro-removal supporters do try to file for an injunction or other legal remedy, “they’d have no standing. They don’t have any stake in it.”
Marksbury added that he and other monument supports pushed for a public referendum on the fate of the monuments before they were removed. He said TEDN representatives “don’t represent the majority, and they never have.”
But Suber disagreed, saying that most New Orleanians oppose any public display of the Confederate monuments. In an earlier interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Suber said the statues “have no historical significance,” adding that “we are opposed to any of them being displayed in public in New Orleans.”
“We reject anyone who puts the interest of a small minority of white supremacists over the interests of the majority of the people,” Suber said.
He said the city should go even further than removing monuments, asserting that the names of Confederate leaders and antebellum-era slaveholders on the city’s street, buildings and other institutions should be changed or removed. He said these street names and buildings are a painful reminder “of a time when complete control of the state government was in the hands of white supremacists and plantation owners after the Civil War.”
This article originally published in the May 28, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
