Monument supporters pin hopes on Trump, state legislature
18th April 2017 · 0 Comments
As the City of New Orleans scrambles to find a way to relocate four Confederate-era monuments on a shoestring budget and the 2017 legislative session gets under way in Baton Rouge, those who oppose the removal of the statues from public spaces throughout the city are hoping that they might get some help from President Donald Trump and state legislators.
La. Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, the state’s top tourism official, defended the Confederate-era monuments last year when legislative committee members mulled several bills to block their removal from public spaces. Despite the support of Nungesser and others who argued that the monuments are a part of the city, state and nation’s history, those bills faltered before they could be voted on by the full legislature last spring.
Nungesser, the former president of Plaquemines Parish, told FOX 8 News in a recent interview that he still supports the monuments and has contacted President Donald Trump to enlist his help to keep the statues in their current public spaces.
Nungesser said that many people have reached out to him and offered to assist him and other monument supporters in blocking the removal of the statues.
“People are outraged. We’re getting calls from all over the country,” Nungesser said.
The lieutenant governor added that he is trying to figure out how his office could potentially block the statue-removal project and is seeking legal counsel from the Attorney General’s Office.
While several bills have been filed to block the removal of the Conferate-era monuments, Nun-guesser said he is not certain that those bills will survive at the State Capitol long enough to be voted on by the full legislative body.
“Some of the lawyers for the state are looking at it to see if the Lieutenant Governor’s office has any grounds. I know a lot of people are hanging their hat on the legislation in Baton Rouge. My concerns are the committees that those bills are being put in are not favorable committees for those bills to get out of committee and we need to be honest about that,” Nungesser told FOX 8.
As legislators push bills to block the removal of the monuments, the City of New Orleans is dealing with its own issues. It received just one bid for the statue-removal project that more than triples the projected cost of moving the monuments to a city-owned warehouse, but that estimate only covers the removal of the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard. The City will open a separate bidding process for the removal of the Battle of Liberty Place monument, an obelisk near the foot of Canal Street that celebrates white supremacy and commemorates an effort to overthrow the local, diverse government during Reconstruction.
The City of New Orleans had raised $170,000 in private donations to pay for the project but Couzan Services LLC said that it would cost $600,000 to relocate the Lee, Davis and Beauregard monuments.
While Nungesser and others have said that the New Orleans City Council opened a “Pandora’s box” and set a dangerous precedent when it voted 6-1 in December 2016 to relocate the monuments, one of the local groups spearheading efforts to remove the monuments says the Council vote doesn’t go far enough.
The group, Take ‘Em Down Nola Coalition, has identified dozens of statues, buildings and street signs bearing names of white supremacists that they say should be removed from public spaces. Among their list of offensive landmarks, is the famed Andrew Jackson statue at Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Other statues noted include one of Justice E.D. White and another of New Orleans founder Sieur de Bienville. “When people talk about a slippery slope, I contend that those who have been subjugated, the majority of Blacks in the city have been on the bottom end of a slippery slope for the past hundred plus years anyway,” Take ‘Em Down Nola member Quess Moore told FOX 8 News in a recent interview.
“They want to change the name of Tulane University. Where does it stop? I think it’s being led by a group of people that just want to erase history and it’s unfortunate because it’s put a divider in this community that didn’t need to be there,” Nungesser said.
Take ‘Em Down Nola members contend, however, that the statues are the divider and the community can only be whole when they are removed from public spaces.
“We keep it in that context and I understand that we still have a lot longer to go, a lot further to go. These were four, we’ve always been talking about much more. This whole city needs a re-upholstering,” Quess Moore said in March.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Nungesser is hoping that President Donald Trump would declare the statues fedora monuments to cut off this movement to remove “nuisance” monuments from public spaces before a single monument is taken down and placed in a city-owned warehouse.
“I wrote him a letter and I asked him to look out your window, look at the statute of Jackson there at the White House because Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square is next in New Orleans if we don’t do something,” Nungesser said.
There are currently three bills seeking to block the relocation of the Confederate-era monuments. State Rep. Philip DeVillier, R-Eunice, has filed a bill that would allow Louisiana voters to decide this fall whether cities can remove thee monuments from public spaces. In order for DeVillier’s proposed amendment to make it onto the Oct. 4 Louisiana ballot, it would need to get two-thirds the vote in the state House and Senate.
State Sen. Beth Mizell’s (R-Franklinton) bill would require a resolution by the Louisiana Legislature approving the removal or relocation of a monument that has been in place for more than 25 years.
State Rep. Thomas Carmody’s (R-Shreveport) bill would create a statewide commission to determine the fate of historical monuments, essentially stripping local governments of any power to determine the fate of monuments that commemorate historical figures or events.
This article originally published in the April 17, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
