This is the original inscription found on a New Orleans monument to a deadly white-supremacist uprising in 1874 tin New Orleans' Liberty Place that was removed under cover of darkness by workers in masks and bulletproof vests Monday as the city began taking down symbols of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South. The city will also remove three statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and neo-Confederates who are not happy about the plan, are showing up to keep it from happening.
We are supposed to be the United States. The conservatives keep hyping that up in their neo-Patriot routines. But screw with anything honoring our most disunited time, and you realize they aren’t really married to the idea.
“When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath one thousand years of sleep
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found.”
–Hurdy Gurdy Man
1960’s era singer, Donovan
In 2017, when racism, bigotry, and misogyny lives at The White House, time is demanding a turnaround. People are taking to the streets, the voting booths, town hall meetings, and letters or phone calls to their Congressional representatives & Senators demanding truth and honesty from our politicians who willfully and selfishly decided not to represent the ordinary everyday citizen, but have pledged their allegiance to greedy corporations and the millionaires & billionaires. For their loyalty, they get compensated one way or another.
Conservatives cannot preach unity and acceptance of the jokes residing in The White House while enabling a lot of their supporters to glamorize treason and rewrite or hide history. They refused to work with President Obama. We have not forgotten the unprecedented level of hatred and disrespect shown to him.
The most recent example of glamorizing treason is what happened in New Orleans, Louisiana. Monuments in that city commemorating the failed rebellion of White Supremacist militia have been or will be removed. The 1st monument to go is “The Battle of Liberty Place” All 4 of these monuments and statues are Confederate that the City of New Orleans in court won the right to take down. The other three statues are tributes to Confederate army heroes that has been in place since the 1800’s. The Liberty Place monument was erected in 1891 to celebrate the return of White rule in Louisiana after The Civil War.
New Orleans Government officials in the 1930’s placed a new plaque on the monument. That read:
“UNITED STATES TROOPS TOOK OVER THE STATE GOVERNMENT AND REINSTATED THE USURPERS, Post Katrina BUT THE NATIONAL ELECTION NOVEMBER 1876 RECOGNIZED WHITE SUPREMACY IN THE SOUTH AND GAVE US OUR STATE.” The plaque was removed in 1992 when Civil Rights groups fought for the removal of the monument and the totality of all Confederate statues.
Not all the residents of New Orleans were happy campers. To see the statues removed. They claimed it was criminal to remove them. They felt insulted claiming you can’t remove the history of the area. They further claimed you couldn’t remove the history by removing the statues.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (pictured) responded on NewsOne Now, Roland MarPost-Katrina, we are rebuilding the city from scratch. I am trying to gently repeal from the hands of some folks of the false recollection of what our total history is. But we need to remember all of our history, not just some of it. New Orleans is about to celebrate its 300th anniversary. A thousand years before we actually became part of the United States of America, we had folks here.
The great thing that separates New Orleans from any of the cities around the world and makes us really wonderful is the incredible diversity that we celebrate all the time. So as we begin to rebuild the city, rebuild our schools, rebuild our health care facilities, our housing, one of the things we thought is we have the right to determine what goes on the property we own. When we began to look at that, we saw those 4 Confederate monuments that were put up as a result of a very narrow part of our history that reflects only one very narrow part of it. It doesn’t reflect actually all of it. It doesn’t actually reflect it at all. The Confederate flag was designed to tear the nation apart. It wasn’t something that supported the United States of America. The monument that we took down last night that actually venerated those who killed police officers, so from the perspective of the people of the city of New Orleans, we have a right to do on our property what we think is right. Secondly, we want to make sure we keep our public spaces for monuments and statues and other kinds of emblems that reflect what our complete diversity is.”
Some peoples’ memories are short. One of their heroes Confederate General Lee after the South lost the Civil War, told Confederate troops to furrow the Confederate rebel flag and store it in their attics because it was a symbol of treason. That Confederate rebel flag was not the official flag used in the Civil War. The Confederate rebel flag disappeared from American society until it was resurrected at a 1948 Dixiecrat Convention in Mississippi to oppose Civil Rights and the integration of our Armed Forces.
In 1954, a lot of these statues and flags expanded across the country after The Brown vs. The Board of Education decision. A number of schools were named after these treasonous Confederate
Army heroes also because of the result of that Supreme Court decision. These Conservative Trump lovers are celebrating folks who wanted to keep slavery and oppose Civil Rights. The Civil War was fought over dehumanizing of a great number of our American citizens. It was fought to destroy the United States. Check yourselves Conservatives. We see you !!! You are not religious and patriotic as you claim to be.
New Orleans City workers took down the 1st monument in the middle of the night. They wore protective gear because they were under numerous threats. One city worker had his car torched. Mayor Mitch Landrieu will not announce when the other three monuments will be dismantled to further protect his workers.
If the totality of true American History were taught in our schools, then it wouldn’t give fuel to these folks who have their own agenda and who are willfully misinformed. Trump, the GOP, and Conservatives have made their mayhem & foolishness mainstream and acceptable. Non-Whites, LGBTS, Muslims and Progressive women are scapegoated as the reason for our country’s problems. The GOP purposely uses racism, bigotry, and misogyny to divide us so greedy Corporations, millionaires, and billionaires make more money. They impoverish the poor and the middle class refusing to recognize if we make more money, we will spend it keeping the economy flowing.
Progressive Whites it is your turn to speak out and correct the behavior of your Conservative brethren. For decades, people of color and other marginalized groups have tried to reason with them that we are all in this together, but their White supremacy thinks the 1% values them because they have the protection of the complexion. Maybe you can get through to them.
They can’t have it both ways. They can’t ask the country to be united while celebrating people who committed treason. They can’t ask for unity while propelling themselves to superior status.
Chuck’s Chat operates under an open authority. Opinions and comments are welcome. Send them to [email protected]
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