ONE NATION, UNITED

[thnidu]

From Quartz

The New Orleans mayor is here to remind us that no one is free until everyone is free

Photo caption:
A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is lowered to a truck for removal Friday, May 19, 2017, from Lee Circle in New Orleans. The city council voted to remove the monument and three other Confederate and white supremacist

Comments

[ravenclaw_eric]

This business of "let's tear down monuments to people of whom we've decided we disapprove" does remind me strongly of China's Cultural Revolution.

Today's "antifas" are very like the Red Guards. They might find reading up on what happened to the Red Guards instructive...

[thnidu]

Do you support, do you approve of what those men did that is being commemorated by those statues? Do you approve of and revere the history that those monuments represent? I would remind you of some of Mayor Landrieu's words-- and if "remind" is the wrong word because you have not read the article, you should not have commented on the post.

~~~~~ ~~~~New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.America was the place where nearly 4000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined “separate but equal”; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp

Monuments to slave ships? Sounds like a good idea to me!

[ravenclaw_eric]

If people want monuments to slave ships and the like, what is preventing them from putting some up? I bet if I started a Gofundme for something like that, I could raise a lot of money for the cause

Re: Monuments to slave ships? Sounds like a good idea to me!

[browngirl]

That's because you haven't had to live with the subsequent history. Black people have had our monuments torn down and what we've build destroyed -- look up the Tulsa Race Riots and so many like them, or go back even further and see how Seneca Village was destroyed to build Central Park. Also, your leap from removing monuments valorizing those who fought to defend slavery to vandalizing private graves is both vast and ludicrous.

Taking down these monuments IS an attempt to tell both sides of the story, to point out the horrors of slavery and subsequent racism. But I should thank you for supporting its valorization, I suppose -- that's useful information about what I, a Black woman, could expect from you.

[annonynous]

While Lee is a fairly generic last name (think of "1776" and the song about the Lees of Virginia), I think it is pretty likely that Lee Circle refers to the same person whose statue was removed. So I wonder if they are going to rename the traffic circle and maybe any streets named after him while they are at it.

Ann O.

[thnidu]

I've been thinking the same thing.