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“From Confederate Park to Jackson Square, Fight White Supremacy Everywhere!”

Jacksonville, Florida, March 23.

By Tina Orlandini

This past weekend, March 22–24, a delegation of Take ‘Em Down NOLA comrades traveled to Jacksonville, Florida for the second annual Take ‘Em Down Everywhere international conference. This global grassroots movement is “a black-led, multiracial, international, intergenerational, inclusive coalition of organizers committed to the removal of ALL symbols of white supremacy from the public landscape as a part of the greater push for racial and economic justice and structural equity” (TakeEmDownEverywhere.org). Take ‘Em Down Everywhere was inaugurated last year in New Orleans, bringing together organizers from Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Trinidad & Tobago.

This year in Jacksonville, described by locals as “the city that time forgot,” organizers and allies spent the weekend sharing local history, exchanging organizing strategies, and hitting the streets. On Saturday, March 23, local historian Rodney Hurst led a bus tour of Jacksonville, visiting the birth place of James Weldon Johnson, author of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (also referred to as the Black National Anthem); Hemming Plaza where the monument of the Confederate soldier stands (for now), along with a historical marker commemorating Youth Council sit-in’s at W.T. Grant Department Store and Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store in 1960. Though this was not the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in Jacksonville, it signaled a turning point in local consciousness and was succeeded by further agitation that forced the integration of lunch counters, schools, parks, restrooms and other public facilities within the decade.

Later that day, Take ‘Em Down Jax, the Northside Coalition, and the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition organized a rally, beginning with a press conference at Confederate Park in front of the Women of the Confederacy monument, where they proposed an economic boycott of Jacksonville. Ben Frazier of Take ‘Em Down Jax and the Northside Coalition said to a cheering crowd, “it’s time for us to start telling people not to come to Jacksonville, Florida. Don’t come to Jacksonville because Jacksonville is a racist city which refuses to deal with these Confederate monuments.”  The crowd of about 140 marched in Take ‘Em Down NOLA style formation to the International Brotherhood of Electoral Workers (IBEW) Union Hall for a panel discussion featuring Take ‘Em Down NOLA’s very own co-founder, Michael “Quess” Moore. Other panelists included Reverend Ron Rawls, Pastor of St. Augustine Church in Saint Augustine, a city 40 miles south of Jacksonville described by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 as the most racist city in the United States. Maya Little of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s “Move Silent Sam” movement skyped into the panel and shared her account of the recent removal of the Silent Sam Confederate Soldier monument, current attempts to bring it back to campus, and ongoing intimidation she’s experiencing from local white supremacists and the police.

Following the panel, Take ‘Em Down organizers broke bread and continued to build at the Yellow House Art Gallery, described by director and Take ‘Em Down Jax member Hope McMath as a space where art and activism meet to create change.

On the final day of the conference, organizers from New Orleans and Jacksonville discussed specific successes and strategies to move forward the work of dismantling white supremacy, rooted in the South with eyes on the more than 1,500 white supremacist symbols littering the United States, and even more internationally. By the end of the conference, Take ‘Em Down Everywhere announced that next year’s convening will take place in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Take ‘Em Down NOLA delegation left Jacksonville with gratitude for Take ‘Em Down Jax and energized by this growing movement of working class organizers, teachers, historians, artists, faith based leaders and elders unified in the revolutionary struggle to end white supremacy everywhere.

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Take Em Down NOLA Confronts Zulu Club’s Use of Blackface

By Take Em Down NOLA

Take Em Down NOLA (TEDN) exists for the purpose of removing ALL symbols to white supremacy from the landscape of New Orleans, as a very necessary part of the struggle toward racial and economic justice. This has been our consistent stance since we began this leg of the long historical journey to remove symbols that honor, celebrate, and perpetuate white supremacy. These symbols support a white economic power structure—a SYSTEM—designed to exploit and oppress Black working class people.

TEDN has continued this work by taking a clear stance against blackface. On Thursday, February 21, during a press conference outside ZULU headquarters, we issued an appeal to their members to end this practice, which originates in the degrading caricature of Black people.

ZULU has completely lied about its Blackface tradition claiming that there is a difference between black face and black makeup. This explanation is a disrespectful dismissal of the actual history and an exploitation of those who don’t know it. ZULU also pretends that their wearing of blackface, grass skirts and tightly curled fro wigs pays tribute to the proud ZULU nation in South Africa. Actual South Africans and other people from Africa have called the practice offensive and confusing.

The sad truth is that ZULU’s use of blackface has its origins in the minstrel tradition, which was created to mock, degrade and stereotype Black people as lazy, oversexed and of low intelligence. No pride can be generated from such a white supremacist beginning.

Many have expressed confusion about our agenda or tactics since our confrontation of ZULU. Below we address some of those questions and concerns:

“TEDN is mostly comprised of transplants.”

This is false. Half of our leadership are natives to New Orleans. Two who were born elsewhere, have lived here for a collective 50 plus years, one of whom has direct family ties that go back 8 generations. Even if we were transplants, that shouldn’t matter. The legendary Civil Rights Activist Rev. Avery Alexander wasn’t born in Orleans, yet it didn’t stop him from fighting on behalf of his people. Nor did it stop the people from benefiting from his fight; holding both white and Black people accountable. Charles Deslondes was a Haitian transplant after the Haitian Revolution, and he helped lead the 1811 Enslaved People’s Revolt in New Orleans. If Black working class people around the world are to ever achieve collective liberation, we must learn to think, act and build with one another beyond the mental and physical limitations of colonial borders and parish lines. We must be as united as the white supremacist force that oppresses us.

“The issue is petty. Why does it even matter?”

Symbols reflect systems. They are a way of telling us what our roles are supposed to be in daily life in New Orleans. White supremacist monuments hover over us to tell us who’s still in charge. Blackface tells us that we are still minstrel servants of the rich white ruling class, as we entertain them joyfully. If the symbols didn’t matter, why would the rich white ruling class spend millions to build and maintain them in the first place? Why would they fight so hard to keep them up?

Think: what your oppressor proactively supports is 9 times out of 10 not good for you.

“TEDN doesn’t tend to anything but statues and symbols.”

False. TEDN is mostly comprised of black educators who have taught black students for a collective 4 to 5 decades in New Orleans. TEDN organizers actively work in support of abundant issues. TEDN organizers fight for hospitality workers’ rights, jobs for youth, education equity, protection against police terror, and the long-overdue fully-funded relocation of the Residents of Gordon Plaza off toxic soil. TEDN fights against environment racism, militarism, and the dysfunction of the Sewerage and Water Board, supporting the moratorium on water shut offs, and much more.

“Why didn’t TEDN go after Rex?”

We did. Our 2016 campaign “Racism at Mardi Gras” was a direct shot at ALL the racist symbolism reflected at Mardi Gras every year, from Rex’s KKK-like regalia to Zulu’s blackface. Also, when we took on the monuments, we were confronting the real life version of Rex. The people that put those monuments up generations ago are the ancestors of the rich white ruling class that masks as Rex every year and controls our city’s economy to this day. And it is that same class that fought so viciously to keep the monuments up.

“Why take to the streets like that?”

We wrote a letter to Zulu requesting a meeting. When no response came, we called the leadership. All was ignored, as these types of requests are by the petty bourgeois class. So we were forced to take to the streets as we always do when those in power ignore us. The history of organizing shows that only direct action will bring direct social change. Now that the global and national consciousness has risen to contend with the issue of blackface—as they should—the city of New Orleans can finally confront our own symbolic and systemic value of Black lives.

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Grounded by Sky: A Southern Epitaph

A construction worker cheers as a monument of Robert E. Lee, who was a general in the Confederate Army, is removed in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

By A Scribe Called Quess?

knowing that I walk atop the bones of my ancestors

in the shadow of their oppressors

towering statuesque above me

I cannot look down without feeling

the puzzled pieces of my past beckoning me back together

cannot look up without feeling

the weight of history break me into pieces

 

I cannot leave this ground and feel whole

cannot stand it either

without its heavy sky

pummeling my dreams into nightmares

the ground is a haunt

is a restless cauldron of simmering spirits

bubbling over beneath the soles

of callous sojourners singed

by the heat beneath their feet

yet numb to the stories in its foment

 

the sky is riddled in dead eyes

the probing gaze of ghastly men

now ghosts cast into iron

who when flesh

owned men, women, and children my kin

who when flesh

beat men, women, and children my kin

who when flesh

raped men, women, and children my kin

who when flesh

slaughtered, maimed, murdered

men, women, and children that looked like me

 

I cannot leave this ground

where the scattered bones of my ancestry

lay namelessly

without tomb nor headstone

sans burial ground much less monument

and not feel the echoes of a chorus

of gnashing teeth testimonies hissing at my heels

can not stand this ground

their once slavers hovering above us

without feeling

the frozen laughter of gilded antebellum

the sky a glacier of silence

that yet speaks so loudly

if you dare to listen closely

you’ll hear their names

whispering proclamations of self praise

form the perch of street signs

that hang like still nooses

suspended in time

lynching the esteem of listless passersby

the stories beneath their feet

and above their heads

having passed them by

 

yet the themes having ground their weight

into their subconscious

making of their minds infertile soil

insufficient to nourish the seeds of dreams

for the dead eyes have probed

and made lifeless the soil

the bones have spoken

but their voices have been muted

by the cast iron gaze above

 

I live in New Orleans

where the bones of my ancestors

beat the ground like a drum

bang Bamboula rhythms

through the soles that walk this land

 

I live in the South

where monuments to Robert E. Lee

Andrew Jackson & Jefferson Davis

stand taller than most homes

and the street signs are noosed

in the names of slavers

 

I cannot leave this ground & feel whole

 

cannot stand it either

and not feel history

trying to break me

on its cyclic wheel

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Roots Rising: The Take ‘Em Down NOLA Zine

Debuting January 2019 is the first issue of “Roots Rising: The Take Em Down NOLA Zine.” This will be the first and only official account of the grassroots movement that catalyzed the world with the removal of four white supremacist monuments right here in New Orleans. Hear the stories from the organizers themselves, learn how the power of the people really made change happen and support the movement that made history in our city. A limited amount of copies may be purchased at the People’s Assembly Office at 1418 North Claiborne Ave. Email info@takeemdownnola.org for more info.

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New Orleans Disgrace: A Statue Glorifying Andrew Jackson, Slave Holder, Murderer of Native Americans

Ten Reasons to Remove the Jackson Statue

1. Using his position as a colonel in the Tennessee militia, by force Jackson seized land from poor farmers to benefit slave holding plantation owners. He personally acquired over 640 acres and set up the Hermitage Plantation, owning over 300 slaves.

2. With his partner Overton they acquired land reserved for Cherokee and Chickasaw, in violation of law, to found Memphis, Tennessee.

3. Jackson whipped slaves and sent troops out to capture runaway slaves.

4. To acquire more land for slave owners he embarked on stealing land from Native American tribes across the Southeast.

5. As President he enacted the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the Supreme Court ruled against this policy, Jackson defied the court and ordered removal.

6. Jackson represented the slave state who voted to enact the removal policy. The southern state governments destroyed tribal governments, banned assemblies, the right to sue or testify in court, or dig gold on their own land.

7. 17,000 Cherokees were forced from their farms.

8. This came to be known as the Trail of Tears. 8,000 Cherokee and Chickasaw, 4,000 Choctaws died from brutality, hunger, exposure and disease and in prison camps.

9. While in the military Jackson invaded Florida in 1818. He carried out wars against the Seminole, Creek and Muscogee Indians. This was to acquire Florida for slave owners and to prevent runaway slaves from joining the Seminoles. Jackson burned the homes and crops of the Seminole and others.

10. Jackson was opposed to treaties calling them “an absurdity” and said “the government should simply impose its will on them.” TAKE DOWN ANDREW JACKSON PUT UP HARRIET TUBMAN & LEONARD PELTIER Take Em Down Nola, info@takemdownnola.org,

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Take ‘Em Down NOLA Takes on Mayor Cantrell’s Backwards Ways

By A Scribe Called Quess

After Take ‘Em Down NOLA’s groundbreaking summit last March, welcoming Take Em Down organizers from around the country and ending in the disruption of Mayor Landrieu’s book signing, the coalition celebrates the one-year anniversary of forcing the city to remove four monuments to white supremacy by continuing to charge unapologetically forward. This time, TEDN’s sights are set on mayor Latoya Cantrell. TEDN recently issued a letter and held a press conference calling Cantrell out for her latest flubs regarding white supremacist monuments.

It’s not the new mayor’s first time being on the wrong side of this issue. During the infamous monument hearings of 2015, the former City Councilwoman earned the nickname Latoya “Cant Tell” for refusing to pick a side as pro or anti-monument removal. She recently revisited her compromised stance by allowing leaders of the pro-monument movement to set up a committee to determine what to do with the four monuments removed last year. That committee included renowned racist Tulane professor Richard Marksbury, bigoted Monumental Task Committee president Pierre McGraw, and multi-millionaire Frank Stewart, who publicly faced off with Mitch Landrieu over the former mayor’s attempt to remove monuments.

TEDN’s letter informed mayor Cantrell that “we are very disappointed and angry that [she] would set up a secret working group to discuss the fate of these monuments, not meet in public.” On May 16, TEDN cofounder Malcolm Suber stated that “we are calling on Mayor Cantrell to get rid of that committee and to have a public forum where she discusses with the public what are her plans not only towards the removed statues, but what is her attitude toward our ordinance that mandates that the rest of these white supremacy monuments be removed from our city.”

Cantrell’s enlistment of these men to make decisions about the future of this city is reminiscent of the Yankee government that squashed the progress of Reconstruction after the Civil War by compromising with racist white militias that carried on the legacy of the Confederacy. By removing federal troops from the South in 1877, the US government allowed groups like the KKK to rise as monuments to white supremacy went up all over the South. Likewise, Cantrell has chosen to compromise with the present day losing defenders of white supremacy. And their ideas promise harm for the city’s future like their ancestors’ did for the city’s past. They proposed to put Robert E. Lee up in Greenwood Cemetery and make that place a landmark for Confederacy defenders nationwide. This would only turn New Orleans into a hub for the lowlife types that swarmed Charlottesville in August of last year, leaving Heather Heyer dead under the wheels of a racist’s car.

TEDN’s next step this summer to push the ordinance to remove all signs, symbols and statues to white supremacy will be a large public forum. Community members will be informed and speak their piece on next steps around dealing with the already removed monuments as well as the remaining symbols. Mayor Cantrell and other community politicians will be invited to this forum and thereby be forced to pick a side in the fight for racial and economic justice as opposed to hiding in back rooms making deals with the oppressive ruling class.

Take ‘Em Down NOLA invites everyone to come out and be heard and take a stance against the symbols that represent the system that continues to oppress working class Black, brown and white poor people in the city. If Cant Tell—ahem, Cantrell’s actions show nothing else, they show that she, like so many New Orleans mayors before her, will bow down to the money system of the ruling class rich white elite unless we the people force her to do otherwise. Take ‘Em Down NOLA encourages you to come out, be heard, and take part in shaping the future of this city to be free from the chains of its past.

Take Em Down NOLA’s next moves: Take Em Down NOLA Zine is looking for experienced educators, writers and copy editors interested in contributing to our first Zine. Email us at info@ takeemdownnola.org for more info.

In June, TEDN will hold a public forum to speak on the remaining monuments and our ordinance to remove ALL remaining symbols to white supremacy.

TEDN continues to support its comrades in other cities and states making major moves against white supremacy. To that end, shout out Take Em Down JAX, who completed 40- mile march against white supremacy in May. This is the largest march against white supremacy by a Take Em Down coalition and we are hugely inspired by their efforts!

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The Next Five Targets for Take ‘Em Down NOLA

E.D. WHITE
As a Supreme Court Justice, White ruled with the majority in Plessy vs. Ferguson, legalizing the Jim Crow system. He was a member of the Crescent City White League, which murdered Black and white police officers in an attempted coup. He was a former Confederate soldier and segregationist.

ANDREW JACKSON
A genocidal, lying racist who owned 150 people as slaves, Andrew Jackson betrayed the enslaved people to whom he promised freedom after the Battle of New Orleans. He led military forces against the “Negro Fort” in Florida where 270 Black people were murdered in 1816. He authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which caused the ethnic cleansing and forced migration of 60,000 Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole and other indigenous nations.

MCDONOUGH
The famed plantation owner whose name is on many local schools, McDonough’s statue in Lafayette Square serves as a monument to a man who owned slaves, fought to protect slavery, and wrote that slavery was good for African people. The money he donated to public education created the first separate and unequal schools in New Orleans.

BIENVILLE
Credited with founding New Orleans, Bienville brought the first enslaved people to the city in 1708. He used enslaved and convict labor to build the settlement after it was established in 1718 and stole millions of acres of land from Choctaw, Chickasaw, Chitimatcha, Natchez and other indigenous nations for France. He expelled Jews from the colony and restricted the rights and freedom of African people in Louisiana through the Code Noir colonial laws.

HENRY CLAY
A statue of South Carolina slave-owner Henry Clay stands in Lafayette Square, honoring a man who was responsible for the Missouri Compromise that upheld slavery until the Civil War.

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Take Em Down Everywhere Conference Comes to New Orleans

By Toni Jones

On March 23 to 25 a historic strategic organizing conferenc hosted y Take Em Down NOLA convened to build up support and create bonds of unity between groups organizing in many states to rid public spaces of symbols to white supremacy.

The weekend included strategy sessions, videos, a public rally of hundreds and a Sunday march. At the march, Shabaka from Trinidad and Tobago, (fighting statues of Rhodes and Columbus), spoke in front of the Bienville statue. Bienville was a brutal slaveholder, and oppressor of Native Americans, stealing their land for his plantation. Shabaka said “You are an inspiration to people all around the world. Everytime you take down one of these genocidal monsters, we in the Caribbean, Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica, and Haiti, we see it and we are inspired. we are strengthened, and we know that what we are doing is right. and it gives us fuel to keep our work going.”

Conference participants and New Orleanians took to the streets to make their demand: “Take ‘Em Down Everywhere!” in the heart of the tourism capital of the south. Large metal fences had been erected, barricading the State Supreme Court, and the iron gates of Jackson Square had been locked shut in a cowardly attempt from the rich to save dead men’s monuments from retribution for their racist crimes and genocidal hatred.

TAKE EM DOWN NOLA TAKING IT TO THE NEXT STEPS
As Angela Kinlaw said at the rally about the four white supremacy monuments removed due to Take Em Down NOLA organizing, despite threats from fascists and police, “people said we’d never see this in our lifetime….But when you have an uprising, a collective mass movement that demands forward change, that change will come.”

Mayor Landrieu, New Orleans outgoing white mayor, seeking national office, is trying to claim credit for his “bravery”, all the while he has presided over increasing institutional racism in housing, wages, schools and mass incarceration. It was non-stop organizing in the streets, community, schools and workplaces that forced the first four down.

Participants decided to carry the work forward together by forming a national network called Take Em Down Everywhere.

As Rev. Marie Galatis, a veteran leader of the civil rights struggle and struggle to get rid of white supremacy monuments said, no one will stop us, we will keep marching, keep protesting until they’re all down.

NEXT STEP – NEW ORDINANCE
A new ordinance has been drafted that calls for all monuments to white supremacy come down as they represent past and present racism. The former council resolution merely named four monuments to come down because they are a “nuisance”. While that was a victory it still took over a year of protests to get Lee, Davis, Beauregard and one more off our streets.

But there are many more. The most well known is that of Andrew Jackson a symbol of the city in tourist ads. Jackson was a brutal slave holder who committed murderous attacks on “free” people of color and carried out genocide against Native Americans, as the architect of the Trail of Tears.

So even though Robert E. Lee came down (a joyous day) there is still Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Jefferson Davis Parkway, the main criminals of the confederacy who enslaved Africans and fought to continue slavery for the rich plantation owners and northern bankers.

At the same time, education and activism will continue focusing on the next five which are listed here with explanations of who these racist, rich monsters were.

The New Orleans Workers Group has been and will continue to be involved all the way and we urge you to roll up your sleeves and get with Take Em Down NOLA

Contact us at: Facebook. com/TakeEmDownNOLA/

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New Orleans Disgrace: Statue Venerates Andrew Jackson, Slaveholder and Mass Murderer of Native Americans


On March 15, 2017, Trump laid a wreath on an Andrew Jackson monument in Nashville, giving a ten-minute speech in which he declared himself a “big fan“ of Jackson. Previously, he had hung a portrait of Jackson, his “hero“, in the Oval Office.

Ten Reasons to Tear Down the Jackson Statue:

1. Using his position as a colonel in the Tennessee militia, Jackson seized land by force from poor farmers to benefit slave holding plantation owners. He personally acquired over 640 acres and set up the Hermitage Plantation and owned over 300 slaves.

2. Jackson acquired land reserved for Cherokee and Chickasaw, in violation of law, to found Memphis Tennessee.

3. Jackson whipped slaves and sent troops out to capture runaway slaves.

4. To acquire more land for slave owners, Jackson stole land from Indian nations across the Southeast. As President, Jackson enacted the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the Supreme Court ruled against this policy, Jackson defied the court and ordered the removal.

5. Jackson represented the slave states that voted to enact the removal policy. The southern state governments destroyed Indigenous governments, banned assemblies, denied Indians the right to sue or testify in court, or dig gold on their own land.

6. Jackson drove 17,000 Cherokees from their farms and force-marched them to Oklahoma in winter, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears.

7. Jackson’s Trail of Tears caused the death of 8,000 Cherokee and Chickasaw and 4,000 Choctaws. They died from brutality, hunger, exposure, and disease in prison camps.

8. In 1816 Jackson ordered the horrific massacre of 330 free Blacks, men women and children at “Fort Negro” in Florida. This was a thriving farming/herding community of free Blacks. Jackson wrote “it ought to be blown up…destroy it and return the stolen negroes to their owners.”

9. While in the military, Jackson invaded Florida in 1818. He carried out wars against the Seminole, Creek and Muscogee Indians. Jackson’s purpose was to acquire Florida for slave owners and prevent runaway slaves from joining the Seminoles. Jackson burned the homes and crops of the Seminole and others.

10. Jackson was opposed to treaties calling them “an absurdity” and said, “the government should simply impose its will on them.”