3rd council committee vote against moving Confederate statue from Springfield Park sparks protest

3 years ago 218

Final Jacksonville City Council to ballot adjacent week

The Jacksonville City Council's Finance Committee volition conscionable to see spending 1 cardinal dollars to region a Confederate monument from Springfield Park. This is 1 of the past efforts to region the statue, aft 2 different committees voted down the plan.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 3rd Jacksonville City Council committee has voted implicit 2 days against spending $1.3 cardinal to determination a Confederate monument from Springfield Park, the determination coming aft activists chanting, “Take ‘em down; instrumentality ‘em down” were cleared from the room.

The Finance Committee voted 4-3 against the ordinance connected Tuesday morning. The Neighborhoods Committee voted 4-1 Monday greeting and the Transportation Committee defeated the measure by a ballot of 4-2 a fewer hours later.

The lone votes for the measure truthful acold came from Council members Matt Carlucci, Reggie Gaffney, Joyce Morgan and Ju’Coby Pittman. Because the spending would disagree from the city’s approved 2021-22 budget, the measurement would instrumentality astatine slightest 13 votes erstwhile it goes to a afloat City County vote, scheduled for adjacent Tuesday.

After the Finance Committee vote, Gaffney said that leaving the arguable “Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument successful spot volition nary uncertainty gully a caller circular of protests from the assemblage that was promised by Mayor Lenny Curry past summertime that each Confederate symbols would beryllium removed from nationalist property.

Those protests volition apt beryllium led by Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition and 1 of the loudest voices advocating removal of the monument.

“We person radical starring america backwards. We volition not basal for it,” Frazier said Tuesday. “We volition proceed to march, rally and show for radical justness successful this city. We volition proceed to stand. We’re going to fto cipher crook america around. We’re going to support connected walking; we’ll support connected talking; moving connected to freedomland.”

After Monday’s vote, Councilman Aaron Bowman said this monument is antithetic due to the fact that it features a pistillate alternatively than a Confederate worker oregon different aspects of the Civil War.

“Look, the Civil War was perfectly horrible. The information that we had slavery; the information that we had to combat implicit slavery. It (was) a unspeakable clip successful our history. Any monument retired determination that represents enactment of that, it perfectly has nary spot anywhere, particularly connected nationalist property,” Bowman said. “This monument is wholly different. It shows the warfare and the casualty of warfare to the full assemblage and the full family. This is not astir the Civil War astatine all, but it’s however we effort to resoluteness thing without conflict.”

Inscription:

1861-1865
In Memory of the Women of Our Southland

Let this mute but eloquent
structure talk to generations
to come, of a procreation of
the past. Let it repeat
perpetually the imperishable
story of our women of the 60's.
Those noble women who
sacrificed their all
upon their country's altar.

Unto their memory, the Florida Division
of the United Confederate Veterans
affectionately dedicates this monument.