Protestors interrupt White Linen Night festivities

15th August 2016   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

Julia Street’s sultry White Linen Night usually is a wine-drenched affair of art lovers and social butterflies prancing from gallery to gallery to see the latest modern art pieces, decked in their coolest linen frocks and slacks.

At dusk on August 6, 2016, though, the sea of White Linen Suits suddenly parted for a biracial collection of protesters, dressed mainly in black T-shirts, when their leader began to chant, “Take down Robert E Lee!”

And the entire black-clad crowd responded, “And all symbols of white supremacy!”

As the lead cantor yelled, “Take Down Andrew Jackson,” and the group’s members replied, “No Peace,” the multiracial protesters began to lie down on the street in a circle, blocking the intersection of Julia and Camp streets—one of the only open automobile cross-through accesses in the otherwise pedestrian White Linen Night. The Circle joined hands as they chanted, their vestments providing the visual effect of a dot of Black on a canvas of white.

With a manifesto entitled, “White Supremacy, the Ghost, the Altar, The Flesh,” they passed out on fans to passersby from their grounded position. The fans were imprinted, “The violence of slavery did not end with slavery. If the monument is an altar, we must ask ourselves, what is the sacrifice? Very simply: Black bodies. Our human bodies brutally slaughtered by the very racist police who defend and uphold racist policies that continue to enslave Black people in the prison industrial complex as second-class citizens. The recent rash of killing of Black people by the police has revealed to the country that the ghost of white supremacy still lingers in this country.”

The circle of prostrate protestors was meant to represent a human collage of the concept tempting the cars to pass over them. However, when an RTA bus needed to transverse the intersection of Julia and Camp, NOPD officers who had observed the protest patiently finally opted to scatter the circle.

One of the ironies of the timing of the protest was the proliferation of Black art exhibits in many downtown galleries, dealing with similar concepts to the manifesto. Boyd-Satellite Gallery had just paid homage to the Black Lives Matter movement with pieces from 12 artists, including a polarized picture of Jose Holmes, the Danziger Bridge shooting victim, by Blake Boyd and “Possession” symbolizing the injustice of Black men in prison by TI-Rock Moore. Nearby, the CBD’s Stella Jones Gallery is celebrating 20 years of African-American Art, with many of the same themes.

Many of the protestors, who asked not to be named, vocalized their appearance at the summer art night over the frustration with the City in securing a contractor who would agree to remove the Robert E. Lee, PGT Beauregard, Liberty Place, and Jefferson Davis Monuments.

The implication was that the Landrieu Administration was “dragging its feet” under public pressure. However, the Mayor and his staff point to the extraordinary efforts they have undertaken to find a contractor. Each time they are close, contractors pull out due to the impact they fear removing the statues will have on their future business viability.

Defenders of Mitch Landrieu note that the Mayor’s support in the white community has fallen after he embraced the removal of the Confederate Monuments.

This article originally published in the August 15, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.