Mayor Donna Deegan removed part of Jacksonville’s history in stealthy fashion, just like her predecessor.
It isn’t clear what authority she had to make that move. Eye on Jacksonville asked the city’s communications office, and it supplied a memorandum from the Office of General Counsel saying that the mayor did not need City Council approval because she is not spending city funds. The removal was financed by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and a liberal organization called 904ward.
Lenny Curry, previous mayor, had a Civil War statue removed from Johnson Park downtown in the dead of night. Deegan promised to continue revising history but the City Council balked, which caused her to act unilaterally.
Having the monument in Springfield Park taken down, hauled away and put in storage is making national news headlines.
It was a monument to recognize the suffering of widows and children of soldiers who died in the Civil War. That war was fought, and thousands of lives were lost, to end the practice of slavery, which was supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.
After the war, Democrats used segregation and Jim Crow laws to keep Americans with black skin under their control.
In the 1960s, Democrats supported laws that destroyed millions of black families. Today it claims to represent people regardless of their skin color but continues to oppose policies such as school choice that benefits people with black skin.
Apparently, the current Democrat Party members think that revising history will erase the deeds of their party.
Deegan issued this word salad: “Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity. That we are all created equal. The same flesh and bones. The same blood running through our veins. The same heart and soul. This is not in any way an attempt to erase history but to show that we’ve learned from it. That when we know better, we do better by and for each other. My prayer today is for our beautiful city to continue embracing unity and bending the arc of history towards justice. Let’s keep lifting as we climb.”
Dean Black, chairman of the local Republican Party, told Eye on Jacksonville, “With her actions today, Mayor Donna Deegan has officially joined her party’s woke mob. I call upon City Council President Ron Salem, and the City Council as a whole to move to protect their powers and prerogatives as a coequal branch of government. This lies with the City Council, who the mayor has chosen to defy. As City Councilman Nick Howland stated, “The mayor is not our monarch.” Our duty is to defend the history that belongs to all Floridians. We should add to our history, not subtract from it.”
In a cart before the horse move, the mayor says she will now hold conversations to see how the public feels about the issue.
