(Headline USA) Crews removed a Confederate monument from a Jacksonville, Florida, park Wednesday morning following years of public bickering.
Mayor Donna Deegan, a Democrat, ordered the removal of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument, which has been in Springfield Park since 1915.
“Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be,” Deegan said in a statement.
“By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity,” she claimed. “That we are all created equal. The same flesh and bones. The same blood running through our veins. The same heart and soul.”
Serious discussion of the monument’s fate began in 2020 after Deegan’s predecessor, Mayor Lenny Curry, ordered the removal of another monument, a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier that had been in a downtown park for more than 100 years, amid a spate of 2020 race riots and a reactive wave of cancel-culture virtue-signaling, driven in large part by the corporate ESG movement.
The mass, nationwide protests, which took place for months in the lead-up to the 2020 election, were ostensibly inspired by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. However, some of the funding for radical groups like Black Lives Matter was traced to China, and BLM has been open about its pro-Marxist agenda, including efforts to erase U.S. history, thereby diminishing American’s sense of cultural identity and patriotism.
A proposal to remove the Confederate women tribute was introduced to the Jacksonville City Council in 2021, but the Republican-controlled board never moved on it. Earlier this month, Jacksonville’s Office of General Counsel determined that city council approval was unnecessary because city funds were not being used for the work.
As the city’s top executive, Deegan had the authority to order the statue’s removal, city attorneys said. The $187,000 bill is being covered by a grant that the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors made to 904WARD, city officials said.
Florida Rep. Dean Black, who is chair of the Republican Party of Duval County, posted on social media that the monument’s removal was a stunning abuse of power.
“This action, undertaken in the middle of the night, during the holidays, without consultation of city leaders or a vote by the council, is another in a long line of woke Democrats obsession with Cancel Culture and tearing down history,” Black said.
The uniltateral decision to remove the Women of the Southland Memorial at Springfield Park is a stunning abuse of power by @MayorDeegan.
This action, undertaken in the middle of the night, during the holidays, without consultation of city leaders or a vote by the council, is…
— Dean Black (@DeanBlackFL) December 27, 2023
The monument will remain in city storage until members of the community and the city council can determine what to do with it, officials said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
