[Peace-discuss] [Peace] NYT: Few in St. Louis Knew Confederate Memorial Existed. Now, Many Want It Gone.

Sat May 27 12:35:55 UTC 2017

The people who are objecting to it aren't asking for it to be torn down.
They're asking for it to be moved to a local museum which has already
agreed to accept it. The park district says it doesn't have the money to
move the statue. So a local official started a GoFundMe page to raise the
money to move it. She's halfway to her goal.

https://www.gofundme.com/forest-park-monument

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 7:11 AM, Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
>
> *DON'T TEAR IT DOWN--INSTEAD, RE-DEDICATE TO VICTIMS OF U.S. WARS!*Midge
> O'Brien
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Naiman via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>
> To: peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Sat, May 27, 2017 7:02 am
> Subject: [Peace] NYT: Few in St. Louis Knew Confederate Memorial Existed.
> Now, Many Want It Gone.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/st-louis-confederate-
> monuments-south.html
>
> Few in St. Louis Knew Confederate Memorial Existed. Now, Many Want It Gone.
> By JULIE BOSMAN
> MAY 26, 2017
>
> ST. LOUIS — The angry, divisive fight over public symbols of the
> Confederacy has swept through Columbia, S.C., Birmingham, Ala., and New
> Orleans. This week, the debate made its way some 600 miles north, up the
> Mississippi River, to St. Louis, the home of a Confederate memorial many
> residents did not know was in their midst.
>
> Here in a graceful public park stands this city’s own grand monument to
> the Confederacy, a 32-foot-tall granite column adorned with an angel and
> bronze sculpture of a stoic group of figures. It rises in a thicket of
> trees, next to a trail teeming with runners, bicyclists and wanderers.
>
> Many residents said that until very recently, they had no idea that the
> 103-year-old memorial honored Confederate soldiers.
>
> “Not till they started making all that hoopla over it,” said Larry
> Randall, 54, who was setting off on a bike ride one afternoon this week in
> front of the memorial. “I’ve been coming out here for years. I never paid
> it no mind.”
>
> Mr. Randall, who is African-American, said he understood why some people
> are now calling for it to be removed. “If it’s causing problems, then they
> should get rid of it. Or maybe just polish the words off,” he said. “I
> could give a hoot.”
>
> This monument has emerged from obscurity in the last few weeks, as four
> prominent memorials to the Confederacy and its aftermath in New Orleans
> were pulled down amid protests. The debate has rippled across the South. On
> Wednesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed a measure that blocked the
> “relocation, removal, alteration, renaming or other disturbance” of
> “architecturally significant” monuments that have been on public property
> for at least 40 years. In Hampton, Ga., a museum said on its Facebook page
> that it would close next week after a county official asked that it remove
> all Confederate flags from its building.
>
> Here, a vocal group of activists has turned its attention to this city’s
> Confederate Memorial, arguing that it, too, should be carted away, out of
> its prominent place in Forest Park, one of the most beloved public spaces
> in St. Louis.
>
> The antimonument activists have a powerful lineup of city officials on
> their side, including Lyda Krewson, the newly elected mayor of St. Louis,
> who said that she favored removing the Confederate Memorial from the park
> permanently.
>
> “My own opinion is that it is hurtful,” Ms. Krewson, who is white, said in
> an interview on Thursday. “It reveres something that, you know, we’re not
> proud of.”
>
> Tishaura O. Jones, the city treasurer, started a GoFundMe page
> <https://www.gofundme.com/forest-park-monument> to raise money for the
> monument’s removal. In about a week, she has gathered more than $11,000.
>
> She passes the memorial during her weekly drive to the grocery store,
> usually with her 9-year-old son in tow. “What I’m trying to do is set the
> record straight,” she said. “The Confederates, in my opinion, were
> traitors. And in this country, we honor patriots.”
>
> Other St. Louisans are resisting the move, arguing that removing it would
> be tantamount to blotting out the history of the Civil War. Some have said
> that the enormous monument is too heavy and expensive to move, particularly
> when it doesn’t have an obvious new home. Still others say that the
> monument has rarely attracted attention for more than a century — why
> should St. Louis be caught up in a debate that, in their view, belongs to
> the Deep South?
>
> “My first choice would be that everyone forget it was there, like before,”
> said George Stair, 77, who paused at the monument on an evening walk with
> his wife, Jane Yu, who agreed that it should stay.
>
> Mr. Stair gazed at the sculpture. “I feel like it’s O.K. to honor ordinary
> soldiers,” he said. “People went to Vietnam even though they didn’t agree
> with it.”
>
> Missouri, once a slave state, was torn between North and South during the
> Civil War, a border state where families and neighbors sympathized with
> warring sides and were often pitted against one another.
>
> “It was a divided state, which explains why we have so many of these
> problems here today,” said Mark L. Trout, the executive director of the
> Missouri Civil War Museum outside St. Louis. (Mr. Trout said his museum
> would be happy to accept the memorial as a gift, though he did not have a
> place for it to be displayed at the moment.)
>
> Divisions over the Confederate Memorial turned especially sharp this week,
> when demonstrators calling for its removal gathered in the park on Tuesday
> evening. They were joined by a handful of counter-protesters, men who told
> reporters that they were from outside St. Louis and who carried a
> Confederate flag.
>
> One opponent of the statue, Amy Maxwell, said that people from both groups
> were carrying handguns, and at one point someone snatched the Confederate
> flag and ran off, instigating a chase from the pro-monument group.
>
> Sometime during the night, the monument was spray-painted in blue with the
> phrases “This is treason” and “Black lives matter.” Workers were seen on
> Wednesday morning removing the words.
>
> Out for a run on Wednesday, Ms. Maxwell, a 22-year-old student at Saint
> Louis University, paused in front of the memorial, stepped around the metal
> barriers and spat on it.
>
> Ms. Maxwell, who is white, said she planned to demonstrate every week
> until it is removed. “It would be nice to have some black abolitionists
> memorialized in this city.”
>
> Dorothy Bohnenkamp, 51, a psychotherapist who was born and raised in St.
> Louis, was taking her usual run in the park on Wednesday, directly past the
> memorial.
>
> She said she had rarely given the monument a thought until recently, when
> it appeared in the news, and was not cheering for its removal.
>
> “Personally, I don’t see where it represents anything specifically related
> to racism,” Ms. Bohnenkamp, who is black, said. “So they take it down. What
> does that represent? It’s still the same history.”
>
> Ms. Krewson, the mayor, said she would like to act quickly, drawing up a
> plan for removal within the next three weeks. She has seen cost estimates
> of close to $130,000, and envisions using a mix of public and private money
> for the project.
>
> For now, the memorial has become an object of curiosity in the park.
> Passers-by stopped to inspect the monument, snapped cellphone pictures and
> traced their fingers over the worn and stained surface.
>
> Ayana Parker, 12, was exercising with her mother, Shalonda Bolden, in the
> park when they paused to read the lettering on the memorial.
>
> “It’s nice that it’s honoring soldiers,” Ayana said. Her mother gently
> explained that the memorial was honoring Confederate soldiers in particular.
>
> “It’s for the people who wanted to keep slavery?” Ayana said, her eyes
> returning to the monument. She grew quiet. “Oh.”
>
> Ms. Bolden said she didn’t believe the memorial should be destroyed. “They
> should put it in a museum so people can get an explanation of what it is,”
> she said. “It just shouldn’t be here.”
>
> ===
>
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898>
>
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