I was down in New Orleans at the Take 'Em Down NOLA (TEDN) national conference, 3/23-25/2018, this last weekend. It had people from across the nation attending. I will be doing a series of posts on what happened. The neo-Confederate movement is now doomed and it is just a matter of time before the Confederate landscape is gone.
Sunday, 3/25/2018 we had a morning march in the streets of New Orleans to the statues of white supremacists. Then a little later in the early afternoon we went to for lunch. Saturday, the previous day, I learned that TEDN was not happy with Mitch Landrieu taking all the credit.
The plan was that after the lunch we would go to the Mitch Landrieu book signing at 2pm.
During lunch, I shared with them Kevin M. Levin's posting on Mitch Landrieu's book where Levin criticizes Landrieu for taking too much credit for the monument removal. This is the link to Kevin Levin's posting.
http://cwmemory.com/2018/03/24/mayor-mitch-landrieu-and-the-mythology-of-confederate-monument-removals-in-new-orleans/
One of the TEDN leaders was very interested and read it through on my cellphone. I also shared the link. This was good preparation when we tracked down Mitch Landrieu's book signing several blocks away at a museum.
It was on the second floor with tables with linen cloth and African American food servers in an elite space and thus creating plantation optics. You needed a ticket to get up.
I was asked to reconnoiter and find out where it was.
I was able to get upstairs anyways by just walking up and saying no I did not have a ticket, but I was a historian that just happened to be in town and wanted to get a book. I had a nonchalant attitude that I expect to be admitted anyways and it worked.
I did photo documentation of the event and the audience and the food servers and the whole elite thing. Then I went down to report. However, TEDN had decided to come up and I direct them to the book signing where Landrieu was just spinning his narrative.
Malcolm Suber entered into a dialog with Landrieu but his is a very able politician, that is he had some rationalizations for everything. He also spoke to Suber as if he was an acquaintance.
I had explained that Kevin M. Levin was a person who wrote articles for the
Smithsonian and
The Atlantic and was an establishment figure and Levin saw what Landrieu was doing. I have shared the link and showed the URL of Levin's blog to them. There was a lot of interest and I think some gratification that others were seeing what Landrieu was doing.
I also explained that though Levin and I am opponents that his blog often has good information. I also explained that Levin got on the train to remove monuments very late in the historical process.
TEDN during the march criticized academics for being missing in action and not challenging the built environment that honors white supremacists. They are right to a great degree, but I was able to show that there were exceptions.
The power of these conferences is that they connect resources. I was able to alert TEDN to Levin's posting. It lets TEDN know that there are people who see their side of this story and are supportive. It encouraged TEDN to continue to assert their narrative.
The following are photos of the event. Click on them to see the WHOLE photo.
Then TEDN appeared. It no longer was just an elite event.
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