Mitch
Landrieu
On Removing Confederate Monuments
"Today
I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to
the
Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why
this process can move us towards healing and understanding each
other."
"The historic record is clear:
Robert E. Lee,
Jeff[erson] Davis,
P.G.T. Beauregard statu[es] were not erected
to just honor these men, but
as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost
Cause. This "cult" had one goal and one goal only: through monuments and through other
means to rewrite history, to hide the truth, which is that
the
Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
First erected 166 years after the founding of our city, 19 years
after the Civil War, these monuments that we took down were
meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of the
Confederacy."
"It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of
America; they fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in
this cause they were not patriots."
"So relocating these monuments is not about taking something away from
someone else. This is not about politics. It's not about blame. It's not
about retaliation. This is not about a naïve quest to solve all of our
problems at once."
"This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city, that
we as
a people are able to acknowledge, to understand, to reconcile, and more
importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what
has been crooked and making right what was wrong.
Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division,
and yeah, violence."
Text
and Video of Address
