tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9343848228052388432024-03-14T01:54:17.143-07:00Robert E. Lee ParkEdward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-13740933598344028762018-12-30T10:22:00.002-08:002018-12-30T10:22:25.608-08:00This blog is going to be inactive. Go to Dallas Landscape blogThis blog is going to be inactive. For continuing developments on de-racializing the Dallas landscape go to the blog <a href="https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com/">https://dallaslandscape.blogspot.com</a>/Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-67152038373788114712017-09-05T11:15:00.000-07:002017-09-05T11:20:07.281-07:00Letter to Mayor Rawlings about Frances Cudjoe Waters being chosen to head a task force concerning the Confederate monumentsA copy of the letter was sent FedEx to all 14th city council members. I don't think Rev. Waters should head up the task force unless she can speak to the United Methodist Church (UMC) hosting neo-Confederate groups.<br />
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This is the letter:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Edward
H. Sebesta</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> edwardsebesta@gmail.com<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mayor
Mike Rawlings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mayor and
City Council City of Dallas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dallas
City Hall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dallas,
Texas 75201<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear Hon.
Rawlings: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In your
online published memo I see that you have appointed as Confederate monuments
task force chair Rev. Frances Cudjoe Waters who in your memo list as a minister
of the United Methodist Church (UMC) and who has been a leader and strategist
in that denomination. A brief review of Rev. Waters activities show a
remarkably talented person and a person with a social conscious and active in the pursuit of social justice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However,
since you brought up Rev. Waters’s leadership role in the UMC as a
qualification, I would like Rev. Water’s to speak to the UMC’s history of
lending their facilities to neo-Confederate groups, the Sons of Confederate
Veterans (SCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have
been writing denominations and individual churches asking them to not lend
their facilities and the prestige of their denomination and historical
buildings to neo-Confederate groups. After writing St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
in 2014 in Richmond, Virginia they decided to disinvite the UDC. (</span><a href="http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2014/nov/07/confederates-hold-service-downtown-church/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2014/nov/07/confederates-hold-service-downtown-church/</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">St.
Paul’s later decided to give up the Confederacy. This was the church which both
Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis attended during the Civil War. (</span><a href="http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/article_fda4f734-e732-5c7f-bbe3-5f66f1f09cb3.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/article_fda4f734-e732-5c7f-bbe3-5f66f1f09cb3.html</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However,
the UMC record on this is very poor. Despite extensive correspondence to
individual hosting churches, UMC bishops, and the national leadership the
record has been a refusal to engage the issue. UMC churches continue to lend
their facilities to the UDC. I enclose a package documenting the UDC activities
at UMC churches. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I enclose
some documentation about the SCV and the UDC. The SCV documentation was written
up a dossier published at <i>Black
Commentator</i>, (</span><a href="http://www.blackcommentator.com/526/526_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.htm"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">http://www.blackcommentator.com/526/526_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.htm</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">), and I
enclose three articles from <i>UDC Magazine</i>. One <i>UDC
magazine</i> argues that the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment was a mistake; another
is about “shrine to the Red Shirts,” a violent white terroristic group in 1876
in South Carolina, and yet another recommends the pro-Klan book, “Southern by
the Grace of God,” to be given to children as a “treasure.” I enclose a short
article on these materials published in the <i>Dallas
Morning News</i>, which provides more information about this book. (</span><a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Incidentally
these groups often come with sad, sad faces talking nostalgic memory. Everyone
might well consider these materials while they are talking to the city council
and to the task force. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have no
idea if Rev. Waters knows of this UMC activity much less endorses it. I suspect that Rev. Waters probably is entirely
unaware of this activity and very likely would be very much dismayed to learn
of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However,
Rev. Waters is tasked to deal with the difficult issues of historical memory in
Dallas. I think it would be instructive to know Rev. Waters’s thoughts
regarding the UMC enabling of neo-Confederate groups. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Sincerely
Yours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Edward
H. Sebesta <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" /></span>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-85661851473381623012017-09-05T04:47:00.002-07:002017-09-05T04:51:25.852-07:00Letter to Dallas Mayor Rawlings about his proposed task force. You can see that I incorporate into this letter the concept of the speech I didn't give on August 12, 2017.<br />
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This is the link to the blog posting at the Anti-Neo-Confederate blog.<br />
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<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-speech-i-didnt-give-at-saturday.html#.Wa1wJsh96iM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-speech-i-didnt-give-at-saturday.html#.Wa1wJsh96iM</a><br />
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This is one of the two letters I sent Fed Ex Sunday to reach the mayor. Copies were sent to all city council members.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"> edwardsebesta@gmail.com<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I enclose a copy of an article published in <i>The Grio</i>, May 26, 2017 online at <span style="color: blue;">http://thegrio.com/2017/05/26/hundreds-of-confederate-statues-still-standing/</span>. I am quoted on the 4<sup>th</sup> page of the article about what the form of opposition to Confederate statues will take. The section is highlighted in yellow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">The sections explains that these rationalizations to retain Confederate monuments will be represented as some type of sophisticated understanding of historical memory instead of the issue of race. It is my belief that these are manifestations of banal white nationalism driven by fear of loss of control over the landscape and how America is defined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">One method to enable these rationalizations is to set up a commission, committee or task force composed of members of the local establishment who are predisposed against removal to formulate these rationalizations and present them as expert opinion. We already have an indication what type of task force this might be with the Bravo Walker interview in the <i>Dallas Morning News</i> in which Walker states that he wants to “save so badly” the Robert E. Lee statue. <span style="color: blue;">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/09/01/dallas-mayors-confederate-monument-task-force-member-questions-mission</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I think it needs to be considered that as other cities take down their Confederate monuments that Dallas’s Confederate monuments will be scarecrows indicating what type of city Dallas is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"> Sincerely Yours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-26223288208440513322017-08-17T20:39:00.000-07:002017-08-17T20:39:35.068-07:00Article about the ideology of violence of the neo-Confederate movement published in the "Dallas Morning News" The ideology of violence of the neo-Confederate movement. <br /><br />The fear, rage and fantasies of revenge. I wrote the first draft Friday before the death of Heather Heyer. I am hoping that people are alerted so that there won't be another death.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles</a>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-10459427637196675172017-08-17T17:57:00.002-07:002017-08-17T17:57:52.206-07:00Maurice Ash of Up n Up News has a great video on the struggle against Confederate Monuments in Dallas and CharlottesvilleThis is the link to the video. If you are on Facebook please share.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_326812481"><br /></a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/UpnUpNews/videos/1993425950873175/">https://www.facebook.com/UpnUpNews/videos/1993425950873175/</a><br />
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It is about the struggle against Confederate monuments in Dallas and Charlottesville.<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-81817824567514684462017-08-06T07:59:00.003-07:002017-08-06T08:00:42.988-07:00Ed Gray on Channel 8 about why the Dallas Confederate monuments need to go. <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/inside-texas-politics-8617/462208923">http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/inside-texas-politics-8617/462208923</a><br />
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It is in the My Voice segment.<br />
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<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-37463123978211009212017-08-05T07:59:00.001-07:002017-08-05T08:00:05.642-07:00Rally at Pioneer Park, Thursday Aug. 10 6:30 to 7:30 pm. This is the link to the Facebook event.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/315156162228508/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22bookmarks%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22bookmarks_menu%22%2C%22extra_data%22%3A%22[]%22%7D%2C%7B%22surface%22%3A%22dashboard%22%2C%22mechanism%22%3A%22calendar_tab_event%22%2C%22extra_data%22%3A%22[]%22%7D]%2C%22ref%22%3A46%2C%22source%22%3A2%7D">https://www.facebook.com/events/315156162228508/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22bookmarks%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22bookmarks_menu%22%2C%22extra_data%22%3A%22[]%22%7D%2C%7B%22surface%22%3A%22dashboard%22%2C%22mechanism%22%3A%22calendar_tab_event%22%2C%22extra_data%22%3A%22[]%22%7D]%2C%22ref%22%3A46%2C%22source%22%3A2%7D</a><br />
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It is at Pioneer Park in Dallas from Thursday, August 10th, 6:30 to 7:30 pm.<br />
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It is being hosted by In Solidarity.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/InSolidarityMovement/">https://www.facebook.com/InSolidarityMovement/</a><br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-29526350379916975632017-08-04T10:04:00.002-07:002017-08-04T10:04:59.612-07:00"Dallas Morning News" publishes our letter asking for Confederate monuments to come down and for plantation wedding functions at Robert E. Lee Park to stopThe following is the link. We have about 100 co-signers. I haven't had time to count.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy</a><br />
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We have just gotten support from our first national organization.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational/posts/10155042602247695">https://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational/posts/10155042602247695</a>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-65187541962732174292017-07-20T02:56:00.001-07:002017-08-04T07:04:26.431-07:00News coverage of the public letter to de-Confederate Dallas UPDATE: More coverage UPDATE2: Our letter has been published by the "Dallas Morning News." <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/letters-petition-sent-to-end-dallas-confederate-monuments/458080268">http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/letters-petition-sent-to-end-dallas-confederate-monuments/458080268</a><br />
<br />
The letter was finished Wednesday July 19, 2017 and we are gathering signatures.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPDATE:<br />
<br />
More coverage.<br />
<br />
WBAP talk radio is covering the story.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wbap.com/2017/07/20/historian-wants-dallas-to-remove-confederate-memorial/">http://www.wbap.com/2017/07/20/historian-wants-dallas-to-remove-confederate-memorial/</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Michael Phillips has an op ed in the <i>Dallas Morning News</i>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/opinion/2017/07/20/dallas-monuments-confederacy-must-come">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/opinion/2017/07/20/dallas-monuments-confederacy-must-come</a><br />
<br />
UPDATE2:<br />
<br />
Our letter has been published online by the <i>Dallas Morning News</i>.<br />
<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy</a>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-33452532145273030182017-07-19T17:30:00.001-07:002017-08-04T07:04:42.339-07:00Letter to the mayor of Dallas, the public, DISD school board, and Dallas City Council: UPDATES Our letter has been published by the "Dallas Morning News" <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is the letter Michael Phillips and I are gathering signatures for. We expect to have 20 or 30 local scholars sign if not more. Michael Phillips was interviewed today for WFAA Channel 8 in Dallas, Texas about removing the monument. It is supposed to air 10pm tonight. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/letters-petition-sent-to-end-dallas-confederate-monuments/458080268">http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/letters-petition-sent-to-end-dallas-confederate-monuments/458080268</a> News coverage of the letter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">UPDATE: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The letter has been published at the Dallas Morning News. <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The letter: </div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
the people of Dallas, Members of the Dallas City Council, and Trustees of the
Dallas School Board from the Committee of Scholars: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
Kathryn Allamong Jacob masterfully explains in her book, “Testament to Union:
Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Mundane as they
may appear, ubiquitous as they may be, public monuments constitute serious
cultural authority. They are important precisely because, by their mere
presence and their obvious expense, they impose a memory of an event or
individual on the public landscape that orders our lives. These monuments
confer a legitimacy upon the memory they embody. Their size and costliness
testify to its importance. And by imprinting one memory, they erase others.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Furthermore,
monuments have authority because of their prominent placement in public
locations, often near prestigious institutions or government buildings. Their location implies that the community
endorses the ideals the monuments represent. Jacob explains that “public monuments help
shape collective memory. They weave an intricate web of remembrance in which
certain threads are highlighted, or validated, while others are dropped or
disappear.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
effort to shape the public’s understanding of the past is a method of shaping
the values of the present. If someone is supposedly a hero fighting for a
cause, then the cause that person fought for<s> </s>must have been heroic as
well. A monument to a movement or nation
or event inherently defines that movement, nation, or event as being glorious.
Monuments monumentally endorse a set of values. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Monuments
in public spaces represent what the city, county, state or nation seeks to
represent as its core beliefs. Monuments work to shape identity. Shaping
identities and influencing values is a strategy to influence, if not control,
the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Every
Confederate monument standing today loudly proclaims that, whatever might be
said about civil rights and racial equality in contemporary political discourse,
that the enduring values of this place, this city, and this people is white
supremacy. <s><o:p></o:p></s></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Discussion
of Confederate monuments has focused on what offense they might give to African
Americans, but it is overlooked that they poison others with their message of
white supremacy. It is not surprising that white nationalist Richard Spencer grew
up in Dallas and marches in defense of Confederate monuments, for he grew up in
the shadow of such edifices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Every
Confederate monument proclaims that African American lives, their suffering, and
the crimes committed against them really don’t matter. For if African American lives mattered these
monuments would be gone. These monuments instruct the public, including judges,
police officers, and jurors that fair treatment under the law for African
Americans represents an avoidable inconvenience. The plaque at the Lew Sterrett
Justice Center honoring Robert E. Lee in the hallway to the Dallas County Central
Jury Room instructs those jurors that African American freedom is expendable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
monuments also instruct African American youth, that despite all the claims
that might be made in the schools, that their hopes and their dreams are not treasured
by society. British journalist of Barbadian descent, Gary Younge, in his book,
“No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South,”
describes his feelings while walking amidst a series of one hundred-year-old
statues depicting Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I turned around to
walk back up Monument Avenue, feeling angry and confused… I had spent about an
hour walking along a road in which four men who fought to enslave me… have been
honoured and exalted. I resented the fact that on the way to work every day,
black people have to look at that. Imagine how black children must feel when
they learn that the people who have been raised and praised up the road are the
same ones who tried to keep their great-great-grandparents in chains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Confederate
monuments are ongoing source of alienation. We should not be surprised that when
alienation is taught, in the schools, in political debates, and in public
spaces that young people receive the message and become alienated themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
city has a massive Confederate War Memorial near the Dallas Convention
Center. This work features statues of
Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Albert Sidney
Johnston, as well as the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis. The figures surround a statue of a
Confederate soldier atop a 60-foot pillar. One inscription on the monument pays
tribute to “the genius and valor of Confederate seamen.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
have a Robert E. Lee Park in Oak Lawn that features an equestrian statue of the
commander of the Army of Northern Virginia near a replica of a slavery-era
plantation home. Meanwhile, multiple
sculptures referencing the Confederacy and the Great Seal of the Confederate
States of America can be found at Fair Park.
A Confederate flag hangs at Fair Park’s Great Hall, which also includes
a massive medallion on one wall incorporating a female figure representing the
Confederacy. A mural featuring portraits
of Confederate generals John Bell Hood, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Dick
Dowling adorns another wall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Although
the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School will be changed, there are numerous
other Dallas schools named after prominent Confederate military officers and
political leaders: William Cabell,
William H. Gaston, John Ireland, Sidney Lanier, Stonewall Jackson, Albert
Sidney Johnston, John H. Reagan, and Oran M. Roberts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some
of the individuals honored have no direct relationship to Dallas history while
some figured prominently in Dallas’ past, but all willingly, and often
enthusiastically, participated in a treasonous war fought to preserve chattel
slavery, that caused the deaths of 750,000 Americans and the maiming of tens of
thousands more, and attempted to
tear the nation asunder. The time<span style="color: red;"> </span>has come for these tributes to
the Confederacy to come down and for public buildings that bear the names of
those whose fame is primarily tied to their service to a slave republic to
assume a new identity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most
loathsome of Dallas’s monuments, and perhaps singularly loathsome of
Confederate monuments everywhere is the one-third replica of Robert E. Lee’s
plantation home, Arlington House, in Lee Park.
Weddings frequently take place there.
Plantations were sites of the rape, beating, and torture of slaves. The faux plantation features a portrait of Robert
E. Lee, a white supremacist who fought for slavery and white supremacy. The participants in such weddings demonstrate<s>
</s>by their actions that they consider the horrors of slavery a triviality.
They befoul their marriages and bequeath to any heirs a legacy of racial
callousness and indifference to evil. <s><o:p></o:p></s></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">These monuments have stood mostly
unchallenged for decades because the </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">American history textbooks used in public
schools are in themselves largely, metaphorically, Confederate monuments, which
obscure, if not erase history, diminish the value of African American lives,
and train generations of Americans to not comprehend the horrors of human
bondage as practiced in the United States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Robert E. Lee so elaborately honored at Lee Park and elsewhere in Dallas was a
harsh slave master. Wesley Norris, who
suffered the misfortune of being owned by Lee, recounted that he endured a
beating after he attempted to escape in 1859.
When Norris was captured, Lee said he would teach Norris “a lesson he
would never forget.” Norris offered the following account of what happened
next:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">[H]e then ordered
us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr.
Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and
give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we
were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had
sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county
constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee,
in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well,
an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply
lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly
wash our backs with brine, which was done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">During the Civil War Lee stated that
slavery represented the most appropriate relationship between whites and
African Americans since African Americans were an inferior race.</span><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After the Civil
War, Lee campaigned against granting African Americans civil rights. He stated in testimony to the Reconstruction
Committee of Congress that Virginia would be better off if it got rid of
African Americans. </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is the man families honor when they
hold weddings at Lee Park at the replication of Arlington House. Consciously or not, they celebrate their
marriage by paying tribute to the slave past.
For this reason, t</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he
clergy should not agree to perform weddings at Arlington House. Whatever the resolutions, position papers or
published policies of denominations might be regarding race, whatever fine
phrases these proclamations might say, religious leaders of prominent churches,
temples, and other places of worship who perform marriages at the Arlington
House replica in Dallas will be complicit in a Robert E. Lee plantation
wedding. They will give their seal of approval to a ceremony that renders frivolous
the oppression of African Americans in the slavery era, whitewashes history,
and promotes a white supremacist worldview.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Organizations
that meet at the replica plantation house show contempt for African Americans
as well. When the owners of properties like The Claridge, 21 Turtle Creek, 3525
Turtle Creek, The Mayfair, The Vendôme, and The Wyndemere sponsor “Lighting Up
Lee Park” we see how the upper classes of Dallas embrace a duplicate Robert E.
Lee plantation, and adorn it to celebrate the birth of Christ. What does this
say about the Dallas Christian community that this doesn’t raise a cry of
disgust?<s><o:p></o:p></s></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
monuments glorify violent insurrectionists who sought to tear the United States
of America apart. The implied
endorsement of the Confederate cause these monuments represent is toxic to
today’s politics. Multiple polls, both
national and statewide, have shown disturbingly high percentages of the Texas public
supporting secession. In May 2016, the Texas state Republican Party platform
committee at their convention in Dallas astonishingly voted down a secession
resolution by only 16 to 14 with one abstention. It might be thought that such
a resolution would not get a single vote or even be presented for a vote by a
mainstream political organization. This past June, participants in the Texas
Boys State government education program sponsored by the American Legion,
during an exercise in which they portrayed members of the state Legislature,
voted for the secession of Texas from the United States. The tributes to the
Confederacy that pockmark the landscape are teaching the state’s next
generation of leaders that treason is an honorable political option. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sadly,
Americans today need to be reminded why secession took place in 1861. The
purpose of the Confederacy was clearly to preserve white racial dictatorship.
Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens made this clear in his
infamous “Cornerstone Speech” on March 21, 1861, when he said that the
Confederate nation that he and the other leaders of the secession movement
hoped to establish rested “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to
the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural
and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of
the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the “Declaration of Causes Which Impel Texas to Secede from the Federal Union,”
Feb. 2, 1861, of the Texas secession convention repeatedly cited slavery as the
reason for leaving the Union:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In all the
non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which
should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed
themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to
control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling
of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal
system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of
all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in
opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest
revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery
throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the
white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their
crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> For years past this abolition
organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union,
and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and
hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> By consolidating their strength,
they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal
congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights
against their exactions and encroachments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> . . . They have, through the mails
and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up
servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> They have sent hired emissaries
among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the
same purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That in this free
government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil
and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these
States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly
authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of
the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the
destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by
our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and
desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To its shame, Dallas still honors the
Confederacy, its institution of slavery, and Confederate leaders. It is time for these memorials to come
down. Some will argue that the
Confederate monuments are “history.”
There is a fundamental difference, however, between history and
propaganda. History does not have as its
primary object glamorization. History is
about analysis, context, and explaining the origins of ideas, institutions, and
events. Confederate memorials do none of these things. We should not continue to honor the
Confederacy even as there are people who played a critical and positive role in
Dallas history who receive inadequate or no tribute such as: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
African American slaves and sharecroppers whose unpaid labor built the city’s
and the county’s economy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carl
Brannin, who fought for the rights of workers in Dallas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jessie
Daniel Ames who, unlike Lee, actually lived in Dallas and led the Association
of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A.
Maceo Smith, who led voter registration and poll tax payment drives in Dallas
and was the man most responsible for the creation of the “Hall of Negro Life,”
the only acknowledgement of the African American contribution to Texas culture
and history at the state’s Centennial Fair held here in 1936.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Leslie Patton, a Dallas school principal who fought to bring a consciousness of
African and African American history to black students in this city in the
1930s and 1940s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
Mason Brewer, who taught in this city in the 1930s and preserved for the ages
Texas’ African American folklore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Juanita
Craft, a leader of the Dallas NAACP who battled to end segregation at the State
Fair at Fair Park. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">W.J.
Durham, a local NAACP attorney who fought to end discrimination against African
Americans at Neiman Marcus and other Dallas department stores.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John
W. “Preacher” Hays, who not only fought for Dallas workers but resisted racism
within the white union movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pancho
Medrano, a crusader for Latino/a, African American, and workers’ rights. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rabbi
Levi Olan, an often-lonely voice for civil rights in Dallas in the late 1940s
and the 1950s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Adelfa
Callejo, who in 1961 became the first Latina to graduate from Southern
Methodist University’s law school, who led protests against the murder of
12-year-old Santos Rodriguez by a Dallas police officer in 1973, who resisted
selective and racist deportations of undocumented workers, and fought to
democratize Dallas politics through single-member city council districts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Confederate
monuments, if left to stand, will proclaim a sad truth about Dallas to the
world, that these accurately reflect the values of modern Dallas however much
it might be denied. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
residents of Dallas have to decide who they want to be. Do they want to be the
residents of an American city with democratic values that promote civil rights
and racial equality, or do they want to be residents of a Confederate city with
plantation values, with the values of a hierarchical society of inequality?<s><o:p></o:p></s></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
residents of Dallas have to decide whether they want to leave the metaphysical
plantation of the past and enter a brighter American future or to be forever
prisoners of it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
short, who do we want to be and what future do we wish to choose: American and
democratic, or Confederate and anti-democratic?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Other
cities have chosen the American future. The Charlottesville, Va. City Council
voted to sell its Robert E. Lee statue. And this spring, the city of New
Orleans made international headlines when it removed four racist
monuments. Three were statues of
Jefferson Davis, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and Robert E. Lee. The
fourth was the so-called Liberty Place Monument, which glorified the assault by
the White League, a Reconstruction-era racist organization that assaulted New
Orleans’ bi-racial police force and temporarily overthrew a Republican governor
accused of ushering in an era of “negro domination.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
Mayor Landrieu said after the removal of the Lee statue in his city, “To
literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of
honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past. It is an affront to our
present, and it is a bad prescription for our future . . . The Confederacy was
on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation
and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never
forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">More
and more cities are choosing to give up the Confederacy. We can do this also,
if we are willing to confront the reality of what these Dallas Confederate
monuments do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask the citizens of Dallas not to hold weddings or wedding receptions at Robert
E. Lee Park or any other location that celebrates or attempts to honor the
Confederacy and that guests not attend any such functions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask the religious leaders not to perform weddings at Robert E. Lee Park or any
other locations that celebrate the Confederacy, nor perform weddings which will
later be celebrated at such places. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">We ask businesses to not provide goods or
services for plantation weddings at Robert E. Lee Park or any other locations
that celebrate the Confederacy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask that organizations not have events at Robert E. Lee Park or any other
location that celebrates the Confederacy and we ask the citizens of Dallas not
to attend any events at the Robert E. Lee Park or any other locations that honor
the Confederate slave republic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask that the city of Dallas to remove all Confederate monuments to storage or a
museum. We ask that the city of Dallas to eliminate Confederate place names
such as Robert E. Lee Park and Confederate Drive. We ask the city of Dallas to
not celebrate or promote the Confederacy with sculpture and art work at Fair
Park. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask the Dallas Independent School District rename all schools named after
Confederate leaders: William Cabell, William H. Gaston, John Ireland, Sidney
Lanier, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, John H. Reagan, and Oran M.
Roberts and to not give the schools dual names under the pretext of historical
preservation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
ask the city of Dallas, the Dallas Independent School District, Dallas cultural
institutions, and the people of Dallas to choose a path to a multiracial
democratic American society and away from the dark past of white supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Signed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr.
Michael Phillips<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Collin
College Department of History<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plano,
Texas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Author
of <i>White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and
Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Edward
Sebesta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dallas, Texas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Editor </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of <i>Neo-Confederacy:
A Critical Introduction</i> and <i>The Confederate and Neo-Confederate
Reader</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr.
Chad Pearson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Collin
College Department of History<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plano,
Texas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Author
of <i>Reform or Repression: Organizing
America’s Anti-Union Movement<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
UPDATES:<br />
<br />
We continue to get more co-signers.<br />
<br />
<br />
Dr. Michael W. Waters, Founder and Senior Pastor, Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church, Dallas, Texas, Author of <i>Stakes Is High: Race, Faith, and Hope for America.</i><br />
<br />
Imam Omar Suleiman Director of the Islamic Learning Foundation of Texas And Resident Scholar at the Valley Ranch Islamic Center Irving, Texas<br />
<br />
Ed Gray Master of Liberal Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas<br />
<br />
Dr. Ed Countryman Southern Methodist University Department of History Dallas, Texas Author of <i>Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era.</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br />
Keith Volanto, Collin College, Dept. of History, Plano, Texas, Author of <i>Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal</i>.<br />
<br />
Lisa Roy-Davis, Colin College Dept. of English, Plano, Texas<br />
<br />
Dr. Neil Foley, Professor, Robert and Nancy Dedman Chair in History, Co-Director, Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist Univ. Author of <i>The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture</i>.<br />
<br />
Rabbi Steve Fisch, Congregation Beth El Binah, Dallas, Texas</div>
Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-83280446547829580832017-06-12T04:14:00.001-07:002017-06-12T04:14:11.997-07:00Allison Wicks, "D Magazine," American Ideas Institute, "American Conservative" <i>American Conservative </i>has published another article defending Confederate monuments by Quentin B. Fairchild.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/confederate-history-is-american-history/">https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/confederate-history-is-american-history/</a><br />
<br />
Intellectually it is just so much thrashing but represents the type of arguments we will face.<br />
<br />
I think that what is important is to know which players are behind it.<br />
<br />
<i>American Conservative</i> is published by the American Ideas Institute. The masthead for the magazine and the board of directors for the American Ideas Institute are at this web page.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/">http://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/</a><br />
<br />
You will see that Allison Wicks is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and the publisher of <i>D Magazine</i>.<br />
<br />
This is the 2nd article <i>American Conservative</i> has published defending Confederate statues.<br />
<br />
This is an earlier blog on a previous article in <i>American Conservative</i> defending Confederate monuments by Rod Dreher.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://roberteleepark.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-local-dallas-opposition.html#.WT50ymjyuiM">http://roberteleepark.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-local-dallas-opposition.html#.WT50ymjyuiM</a><br />
<br />
I am not surprised that <i>American Conservative</i> is taking the lead to defend Confederate monuments. In their pages I have found many persons who contributed to <i>Southern Partisan</i> or <i>Chronicles</i> or otherwise are involved in neo-Confederate groups.<br />
<br />
Reactionary Dallas appears to be mobilizing to defend Confederate monuments.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-16089966730016791012017-06-11T16:56:00.001-07:002017-06-11T16:57:20.484-07:00Article in "The Atlantic," The True History of the South Is Not Being Erased.Garrett Epps has this article, "The True History of the South Is Not Being Erased," in The Atlantic.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-true-history-of-the-south-is-not-being-erased/529818/">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-true-history-of-the-south-is-not-being-erased/529818/</a><br />
<br />
The subtitle is, "Taking down Confederate monuments helps confront the past, not obscure it."<br />
<br />
He has a reference to an earlier article, "The Motionless Ghosts That Haunt the South," in <i>The</i> <i>Atlantic</i> also. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-motionless-ghosts-that-haunt-the-south/526668/">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-motionless-ghosts-that-haunt-the-south/526668/</a> In that article he says it is time to take the statues down.<br />
<br />
He is mentioned as a "Richmond native."<br />
<br />
The article "True History" is in response to the reaction he got from his "Ghosts" article.<br />
<br />
Epps rejects the ridiculous claim that removing monuments is erasing history.<br />
<br />
I post these two articles as a resource for when we start acting to bring down the Robert E. Lee monument and other Confederate monuments and face the usual excuses and rationalizations for them.<br />
<br />
I plan on blogging these articles so that when have a full resource when we start our effort.<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-75244484582954930012017-06-04T11:59:00.000-07:002017-06-04T12:12:12.050-07:00The Myth of the Kindly General Lee<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/</a><br />
<br />
<br />
In short as the article states:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.<br />
....<br />
The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.</blockquote>
<br />
The author, Adam Stevens, goes on to demolish these myths.<br />
<br />
Share this article on Facebook and by email with as many people you can.Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-7918609883392991952017-06-04T07:35:00.000-07:002017-06-04T08:12:16.361-07:00Dallas City Councilman calls for the removal of the Robert E. Lee statueThe discussion of Confederate monuments has started in Dallas, Texas. The following is one article.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Confederate-Landmarks-at-Center-of-Controversy-in-Dallas-425785934.html">http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Confederate-Landmarks-at-Center-of-Controversy-in-Dallas-425785934.html</a><br />
<br />
This is the <i>Dallas Morning News</i> editorial on the topic.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2017/05/25/wait-another-hate-warped-gun-rampage-force-action-confederate-memorials">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2017/05/25/wait-another-hate-warped-gun-rampage-force-action-confederate-memorials</a><br />
<br />
I am thinking that the Dallas business community is deciding that Confederate monuments are negative contributions to the image of the city.<br />
<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-91537013142670414492017-05-21T06:03:00.000-07:002017-05-21T06:05:44.735-07:00John Sims symbolically burns Confederate flags in Detroit on Memorial Day<a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2017/05/artist_to_burn_confederate_fla.html">http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2017/05/artist_to_burn_confederate_fla.html</a><br />
<br />
This is an article about John Sims symbolically burning a Confederate flag in Detroit.<br />
<br />
It will be at the N'Namdi Center art gallery.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://nnamdicenter.org/event/burn-and-bury-memorial-detroit-2017-a-john-sims-project/?instance_id=769">http://nnamdicenter.org/event/burn-and-bury-memorial-detroit-2017-a-john-sims-project/?instance_id=769</a><br />
<br />
We need to do this in Dallas.<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-9531659641952479332017-05-20T10:43:00.000-07:002017-05-21T05:56:52.933-07:00"Confederate monument supporters say the darnedest things" <a href="http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/05/confederate_monument_removal.html">http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/05/confederate_monument_removal.html</a><br />
<br />
The above is the link to the article. It is a take down of various half-witted things Confederate monument supporters say.<br />
<br />
We will hear in Dallas many if not all of the nonsensical arguments that Confederate monument defenders make. So I think this is a good primer to study.Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-62230087963726456132017-05-20T06:07:00.001-07:002017-05-20T06:33:14.256-07:00The local Dallas opposition <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/new-orleans-robert-e-lee-old-dixie-down/">https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/new-orleans-robert-e-lee-old-dixie-down/</a><br />
<br />
The title is "The Day They Took Old Dixie Down."<br />
<br />
The author, Rod Dreher, was formerly an editor at the <i>Dallas Morning News</i>.<br />
<br />
Dreher is currently asking Christians to withdraw from American life and live in separatist communities. Jim Schutze has this article about Dreher and his "Benedict Option."<br />
<a href="http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/former-dmn-writer-urges-christians-to-desert-america-maybe-hell-go-first-7359332">http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/former-dmn-writer-urges-christians-to-desert-america-maybe-hell-go-first-7359332</a><br />
<br />
He is giving up on America because of same-sex marriage. Being a separatist it is perhaps not surprising that he wants to see monuments to Confederate separatists remain.<br />
<br />
<i>The American Conservative</i> is published by the American Ideas Institute. I recognize many authors from those that write for Chronicles magazine published by the Rockford Institute.<br />
<a href="http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/about/the-rockford-institute/">http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/about/the-rockford-institute/</a><br />
<br />
And persons who wrote for <i>Southern Partisan</i> magazine.<br />
<br />
The chairman of the board is Allison Wicks. He publishes <i>D Magazine</i>, the monthly magazine of Dallas, Texas.<br />
<a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/">http://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/</a><br />
<br />
In New Orleans the real power supporting the Confederate monuments was the rich. However, Mitch Landrieu was willing to call them out by name. Using front groups wasn't going to work as a vehicle to allow rich white people to defend Confederate monuments without being associated with the Confederacy. Frank Stewart was outed as a defender of the Confederate monuments in New Orleans and was very unhappy about it. This is my blog on it.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/frank-stewart-is-outed-as-defender-of.html#.WSA-3mgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/frank-stewart-is-outed-as-defender-of.html#.WSA-3mgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
So I think we can expect in Dallas various front groups to defend the Robert E. Lee monument and they will be backed by various rich white factions. They will probably have African American spokespersons.<br />
<br />
The New Orleans take down of the Robert E. Lee monument is a great example for the nation and I think locally in Dallas it will inspire people to work to take down the Robert E. Lee monument in Dallas, Texas.<br />
<br />
However, we should expect that we will face much more than the opposition of <i>American Conservative</i> magazine, we will face powerful white elites and we will face a phalanx of African American apologists for the Robert E. Lee monument.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-91123522312700755982017-05-19T03:57:00.000-07:002017-05-19T19:11:03.870-07:00We need to do this in Dallas, Texas <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-orleans-to-take-down-robert-e-lee-statue-on-friday/">http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-orleans-to-take-down-robert-e-lee-statue-on-friday/</a><br />
<br />
New Orleans is taking down the Robert E. Lee statue today, May 19, 2017.<br />
<br />
When will Dallas, Texas take down its Robert E. Lee statue.<br />
<br />
Pictures of the Robert E. Lee statue being taken down in New Orleans.<br />
<a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/confederate_monuments_lee_come.html#incart_big-photo">http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/confederate_monuments_lee_come.html#incart_big-photo</a>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-82655245423535268042017-05-16T15:41:00.000-07:002017-05-16T15:41:02.355-07:00Kevin M. Levin talks down to Sarah Jones of the "New Republic" magazine. Kevin M. Levin attempts to patronize Sarah Jones of the "New Republic." You can read the exchange here on Twitter if you are a member. I printed it out for my records.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_968094385"><br /></a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/KevinLevin/status/864241228333940737">https://twitter.com/KevinLevin/status/864241228333940737</a><br />
<br />
In this conversation he is the expert talking down to Sarah Jones. He also uses his usual tactic avoiding debate on the issues by either questioning the competency of the individual or their right to debate the issue.<br />
<br />
You really have to read the entire series this is one example. Not the capitalization of "WHY" and the expression "you would do well to consider."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG78qxYuxPoDP1Qo0yccsshLBY_BAXdA0LgSD9mZo56_bwUyXFOEBF4_sacujrmp3X6kbGzXU4z8hPjL6iAmOJR3nit7z5XoQRNmyx7LnXM7gISN3TN_aLt3oPY7a3w5v5abSoTT-fqmYN/s1600/TwitterLevin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG78qxYuxPoDP1Qo0yccsshLBY_BAXdA0LgSD9mZo56_bwUyXFOEBF4_sacujrmp3X6kbGzXU4z8hPjL6iAmOJR3nit7z5XoQRNmyx7LnXM7gISN3TN_aLt3oPY7a3w5v5abSoTT-fqmYN/s1600/TwitterLevin.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Levin pulls out what he thinks will flatten Jones by asking whether she has been to Richmond. If Jones hasn't then she is some type of outside agitator. This is the theme of "Sweet Home Alabama" that Jones is an outsider.<br />
<br />
Turns out that Sarah Jones is from Virginia and has been to Richmond many times.<br />
<br />
Then it is more patronizing stuff.<br />
<br />
Levin's patronizing of Sarah Jones is this article by Jones in <i>New Republic</i>.<br />
<a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/142710/yes-tear-confederate-monuments">https://newrepublic.com/minutes/142710/yes-tear-confederate-monuments</a><br />
<br />
Levin blogs on this encounter.<br />
<a href="http://cwmemory.com/2017/05/15/is-richmond-next/">http://cwmemory.com/2017/05/15/is-richmond-next/</a><br />
<br />
Levin is bent out of shape that Sarah Jones doesn't think much of the efforts of the local historical societies and what cliques they make up and of which he is in good standing.<br />
<br />
He can't comprehend that some figures in the larger national establishment are just coming out and saying these statues need to go and really don't care what rationalizations or excuses or clever strategems the local historical cliques have come up with.<br />
<br />
I wonder how long it is going to be before <i>The Atlantic</i> decides that Levin is retrograde.<br />
<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-1009144634996233682017-05-16T09:45:00.000-07:002017-05-16T09:45:21.826-07:00I wonder if Texas legislators will have the gumption to stand up against white supremacy. These are some links to stories about African American legislators walking out of the Louisiana House after it voted to protect Confederate monuments. Another is an article denouncing the legislation as part of white supremacy.<br />
<br />
I wonder if Texas legislators would stand against Confederate monuments so strongly?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/louisiana_black_caucus_confede.html">http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/louisiana_black_caucus_confede.html</a><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1787543871"><br /></a>
<a href="http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/2017/05/16/black-caucus-white-supremacy-behind-monuments-bill/101740970/">http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/2017/05/16/black-caucus-white-supremacy-behind-monuments-bill/101740970/</a><br />
<br />
<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-18087026802842577442017-05-14T12:22:00.000-07:002017-05-14T12:28:38.252-07:00"Atlantic" magazine has article that it is time for the Confederate monuments to come down<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-motionless-ghosts-that-haunt-the-south/526668/">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-motionless-ghosts-that-haunt-the-south/526668/</a><br />
<br />
What is interesting about this article is that the liberal establishment and neo-liberal establishment is deciding that the Confederate monuments need to go and are providing the space for voices against Confederate monuments to be heard. This is an important change from the past where these type of publications mostly didn't discuss Confederate monuments.<br />
<br />
The old story was the Confederate flag hurt feelings of African Americans, but if the flag was gone, then everything was okay. You had to be a radical to be against Confederate monuments.<br />
<br />
As one major journal of public opinion follows the next it will develop that they all will adopt a position that they are for the removal of Confederate monuments. Support for Confederate monuments will be confined to reactionary magazines and websites and support for Confederate monuments identified with reactionary opinion.<br />
<br />
Arguments for contextualization will be seen for what they are, an excuse to retain monuments or just plan oddball.<br />
<br />
Dallas is the city of boosterism and real estate development is its highest moral value. So as Confederate monuments start being removed elsewhere Dallas will increasingly look backward for having Confederate monuments in prominent locations.<br />
<br />
Here is a quote from the article.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lyon text" , "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 18px;">Those monuments, that reverence for the Lost Cause and its leaders, do lasting damage to all who live in their shadows. It’s no coincidence that Richmond was the ideological powerhouse of “massive resistance”—defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in </span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: "Lyon Text", Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 18px;">Brown v. Board of Education—</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lyon text" , "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 18px;">during the 1950s. That constitutional monstrosity flowed directly from neo-Confederate ideology.</span>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-83096926712151822952017-05-14T09:42:00.000-07:002017-05-14T09:50:32.139-07:00Confederate monuments are going down elsewhere. Confederate monuments are going down elsewhere. Most notably in New Orleans. However, activity is ongoing in Charlottesville, Virginia and in Shreveport, Louisiana to remove monuments.<br />
<br />
So far 2 out of 4 monuments in New Orleans have come down. My other blog has been covering the developments closely. The other blog if you are not aware of it is <a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/">http://newtknight.blogspot.com</a>/.<br />
<br />
As soon as the 4th monument comes down, I think that an example will be set for the entire nation that these monuments need to go and they can be removed with a focused effort. As monuments are removed elsewhere, the idea that it can be done will have more and more credibility. Also, the cities which still have Confederate monuments will be seen as retrograde.<br />
<br />
So these are the link to my blogging.<br />
<br />
White supremacists march for the Robert E. Statue in Charlottesville, VA.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/white-supremacist-protest-in.html#.WRiHeGgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/white-supremacist-protest-in.html#.WRiHeGgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
<i>Washington Post</i> column arguing for Confederate monument removal and rejecting excuses to retain them.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/hell-has-frozen-over1-washington-post.html#.WRiHs2grKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/hell-has-frozen-over1-washington-post.html#.WRiHs2grKiM</a><br />
<br />
Behind the neo-Confederate groups are influential rich white people pushing to keep the Confederate monuments. In Dallas we very likely have the same.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/frank-stewart-is-outed-as-defender-of.html#.WRiIEGgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/frank-stewart-is-outed-as-defender-of.html#.WRiIEGgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
Efforts to remove Confederate monuments are starting elsewhere.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/effort-to-remove-confederate-monument.html#.WRiIZWgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/effort-to-remove-confederate-monument.html#.WRiIZWgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
Discussion that a revolution against Confederate monuments is starting in New Orleans.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-revolution-against-confederate.html#.WRiImWgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-revolution-against-confederate.html#.WRiImWgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
Sons of Confederate Veterans declares a boycott of New Orleans. I doubt this is of any consequence to New Orleans perhaps a benefit to the city.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/04/new-orleans-gets-better-sons-of.html#.WRiJo2grKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/04/new-orleans-gets-better-sons-of.html#.WRiJo2grKiM</a><br />
<br />
As Confederate monuments are removed from one city people in other cities will ask their leaders why there are still Confederate monuments in their city.<br />
<a href="http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/04/when-one-prominent-monument-is-removed.html#.WRiKcmgrKiM">http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2017/04/when-one-prominent-monument-is-removed.html#.WRiKcmgrKiM</a><br />
<br />
<br />
I will likely have more blogs postings at the other blog about monuments going down.<br />
<br />
You can sign up for email notification at all my blogs.Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-45660917820440399492017-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:002017-01-21T04:39:45.290-08:00Comedy Central on Plantation weddings<a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/8qcrzr/the-nightly-show-with-larry-wilmore-planning-a-plantation-wedding">http://www.cc.com/video-clips/8qcrzr/the-nightly-show-with-larry-wilmore-planning-a-plantation-wedding</a><br />
<br />
I think it raises issues. However, I think that it ends up excusing plantation weddings.<br />
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Click on image to see it all. You will have to wait through a commercial.<br />
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</span>Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-77531771084031481822017-01-21T03:49:00.000-08:002017-01-21T04:58:21.867-08:00Article about plantation weddings The article is about the disturbing trend to have plantation weddings ignoring slavery.<br />
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<a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/01/05/disturbing_wedding_trend_getting_married_at_a_plantation/">http://www.salon.com/2014/01/05/disturbing_wedding_trend_getting_married_at_a_plantation/</a><br />
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This is another article commenting on "creepy" plantation weddings.<br />
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<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10562901/Creepy-wedding-trend-Plantation-Weddings-Lets-get-married-at-a-former-slave-plantation.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10562901/Creepy-wedding-trend-Plantation-Weddings-Lets-get-married-at-a-former-slave-plantation.html</a><br />
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This one is fairly interesting where a couple doesn't get it why an African American wedding planner wouldn't want to do a plantation wedding.<br />
<a href="http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/01/08/dear-white-people-plantations-should-not-be-romanticized-nor-white-washed/">http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/01/08/dear-white-people-plantations-should-not-be-romanticized-nor-white-washed/</a><br />
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The Arlington Hall at Robert E. Lee Park was given a Vendi Award by the American Association of Certified Wedding Planners.<br />
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<a href="http://dweddings.com/2017/01/18/congrats-to-the-aacwp-vendi-awards-nominees/">http://dweddings.com/2017/01/18/congrats-to-the-aacwp-vendi-awards-nominees/</a><br />
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<br />
Maybe they should change their name to the Confederate Association of Certified Wedding Planners.<br />
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<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-934384822805238843.post-91179941992315804662017-01-19T14:49:00.001-08:002017-01-28T03:19:18.206-08:00Facebook pulled the Reject Racist Robert E. Lee Event page. UPDATE: Letter delivered 1/24/2017A certified letter has been sent to Mark Zuckerberg about the Reject Racist Robert E. Lee Event page.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/241643326251832">https://www.facebook.com/events/241643326251832</a><br />
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I would suggest that persons who put up Facebook Event pages print them out as content is added so if Facebook pulls it, you will have some record. Also, it needs to be considered whether any anti-Racist events should be planned or promoted on Facebook if racists can get the Event page pulled.<br />
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Click on the image to see it in its entirety.<br />
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This is the letter.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> January
14, 2017</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mr. Mark
Zuckerberg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Chief
Executive Officer of Facebook<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">1 Hacker
Way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Menlo
Park, California 94025<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had an
event page, <b>Reject Racist Robert E. Lee</b>,
on Facebook. Professor Phillips and I
were doing an item on the Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas, Texas. It was basically
an item about race, space, and place where we are practicing using social media
and creating media. We do a lot of articles, but I have thought that we need to
move to producing other media. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Michael
Phillips is the author of, “White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in
Dallas, 1841-2001,” Univ. of Texas Press. I am a co-editor of “Neo-Confederacy:
A Critical Introduction,” by the Univ. of Texas Press and “The Confederate and
Neo-Confederate Reader,” by the University Press of Mississippi. My resume is
online at http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/curriculum-vitae.html. In 2015 I was awarded the Spirit of Freedom
Medal by the African American Civil War Museum in Washington D.C. for my life’s
achievements.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Imagine
my surprise to find after the event that the page was pulled down by Facebook. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This was
the URL. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://www.facebook.com/events/241643326251832/permalink/241733749576123/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Additionally
I was the recipient of a rather opaque email stating that I had violated the “Terms
of Use” and slandered me saying I had engaged in abuse. The email had no
information as to which posting or activity violated the “Terms of Use.” I
replied to the email making inquiries about which posting or activity of mine
might be considered a breach of the terms of service and have not gotten a
reply. I also note that the email doesn’t provide any link for which a person
might make an inquiry. Copy of email and my reply enclosed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Further,
supposing only for the purpose of argument, that a specific posting was in
violation of the terms of service, why would the whole event page have to be
pulled down rather than the specific offending post? Further if there was a
desire to improve participation in Facebook I would think that indicating what
was in violation of “Terms of Use” would be helpful. It would be instructive of
what behavior to avoid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
pulling of the Reject Racist Robert E. Lee Facebook event page raises important
questions. If someone is having a Facebook event page as part of an anti-racist
event, could it be deleted by Facebook upon complaints being made by racists to
Facebook? In particular if the event was against institutional racism, could an
institution get Facebook to pull the page?
More generally for anyone is whether their page or event be pulled
capriciously after an investment of time and energy into it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It also
seems that a page can be pulled without a means of the person who had their
page pulled knowing why or having any redress. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am writing
this letter to inquire as to what happened. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">1 1. What </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">specifically was in violation of your “Terms
of Use” on the event page? Please provide the entire material which you decided
was in violation of the “Terms of Use” in its entirety. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. What “Terms of Use” did it violate? Please be
specific as possible not only in regards to the item in your “Terms of Use” for
which you felt it violated, but also why you felt the item violated those terms.
If it is in reference to your “Community Standards” please be specific which
standard it violated and how you felt it violated this standard. These are the
terms I see online. https://www.facebook.com/terms. These are the community
standards I see online. https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">3. What was the complaint or complaints made about
the item that you then decided was in violation of your “Terms of Use?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">4. Why was the entire event page pulled down rather
the specific offending item?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">5. Why doesn’t your email notification of a violation
of the “Terms of Use” provide any information what the item violating your
“Terms of Use” was and what term it violated.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I look
forward to your reply.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Sincerely
Yours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Edward
H. Sebesta<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This is the return receipt of the certified letter. You can see that it was delivered 1/24/2017. Click on it to view it. </span><br />
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<br />Edward H. Sebestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16768790561259522555noreply@blogger.com0