Take Em Down NOLA exists for the purpose of removing ALL symbols to white toxicity from the public landscape in New Orleans as a part of the greater push for racial and economic justice in our city. We understand that symbols reflect systems, so while the removal of racist symbols addresses the cultural oppression of Black and Brown people in New Orleans, in order to address the system, we must address the economic injustice and its impact on our corrupt, backwards political infrastructure in this city. That said, we are pleased to see that the power of the people's resistance to symbols of white toxicity and violence has forced the Louisiana Supreme Court to recognize our demands to remove E.D. White from its front steps. However, we are not at all satisfied that they deemed it appropriate to take this vile vestige of antebellum and put him inside the court building. The mere fact that they thought he should be removed from his former perch is an admission of guilt as to how problematic his representation is. So, if this racist once member of the KKK and the Crescent City White League (murderer of hundreds of Black people) wasn’t worthy of being represented outside the courts, how could it possibly be any better that he’s on the inside?
On the contrary, relocating the statue inside only proves exactly what we mean when we say that symbols reflect systems. Historically, the rich ruling class of capitalist white “supremacists” that govern this state, this nation and this world, have acquiesced to the demands of the people when our power proved too strong for them to subdue. But they never give us all of what we have demanded. Instead, they offer us piecemeal crumbs and then reassert their same old oppressive tactics in more subtle and less visible ways. This was done with the Civil Rights movement of the 60s when the rich ruling class of corporations and politicians coopted the movement with shallow cultural representation by doling out political seats to many of the movement’s leaders and access to social and economic mobility for the Black middle class. Meanwhile, the impoverished masses of Black folks remained poor and oppressed. Similar tactics were used by the European countries that were forced to buckle to the power of African revolutions in the 60s. They disappeared from the front lines of visibility in their colonial subjugation of Africa and faded behind the scenes to continue the domination through political and economic manipulation, while allowing the people to feel a limited sense of freedom through returning to their African cultural norms.
This same type of cosmetic fix of symbolic representation without actually changing the system is still played out to this day globally and certainly here in New Orleans. When the city can assemble a Renaming Commission to change the names of problematic racist street names in the city, for example, without even reaching out to the grassroots organizers that sparked that conversation in the first place, they show how serious they are NOT about being in solidarity with the demands of the people. When that same commission can go on to change the street names yet leave the remaining monuments to white toxicity standing, they show how limited their reach towards full liberation is. Most importantly, when the city assembles commissions like this, their real aim is to curb the deeper conversation around systemic justice that Take Em Down NOLA has really been pushing for since we started this conversation. Those who hold state power are well aware that we didn’t just come for the crumbs of symbolic change as we’ve been very clear about that since day one. What they aim to do by inserting themselves in the conversation with a commission, is to coopt the conversation and steer it away from the larger goals of systemic change we aim for. That way, they can continue their oppression of the working class hidden behind the veil of cultural representation with streets newly named after figures that represent African American history.
Similarly, when the Louisiana Supreme Court decided to relocate the E.D. White statue, they simply repeated the age-old trick of hiding the hand of oppression behind closed doors so that the ruling class may continue its manipulation unseen. But the people have risen up and see quite clearly through all of the system’s tricks. We see clearly that we live in a city that generates $9 Billion off of tourism while not offering its citizens a living wage as they languish in 53% poverty. We see clearly that instead of offering resources to its hard-working citizens, this city would rather loot all of their tax dollars to police them, with 63% of the budget going to prisons, cops, jails and reactive measures and only a measly 3% going to children and families, and 1% to job development. We see clearly that rather than offer equitable education options, our city instead enforces modern day school segregation via a charter system that makes private profit off of public tax dollars in public schools where the approximately 39,000 Black students attend the majority of the failing schools and the few successful schools are predominantly occupied by the approximately 5,000 white students.
We see clearly that this sort of racism extends itself to housing and environmental issues as well when the all Black residents of Gordon Plaza have suffered through more than 30 years and 5 mayoral administrations of living on toxic soil in the second highest cancer-causing community in Louisiana, and still have not received the fully funded relocation that they deserve, though the city has no problem finding $40 million for surveillance cameras and millions to restore “historical” homes mostly occupied by moneyed white folks. We see clearly that once this racist hording of resources and starving out of the people leads to “crime,” the state’s only answer is to lock our people up leading to New Orleans being the prison capital of all the world’s history for much of its existence. Then institutions like the Supreme Court uphold this oppression with laws that penalize the poor and answer all of the ills of society created by the ruling class’s manipulation by locking up the members of the working class that it oppresses.
As long as the Louisiana Supreme Court is a part of such a system, there is no statue removal that is ever going to reflect the systemic change that we ultimately seek as Take Em Down NOLA. But the fact that they won’t even get rid of the statue in the first place, in a period of global uprising when even the White House is removing racist statues from its halls, simply shows how pathetically stuck in the past muck of racist ignorance the rulers of this state still are. The people will not accept this state’s piecemeal offerings of watered-down justice. We demand ALL of what we’re entitled to: a landscape free of ALL symbols of racist violent oppression—one that uplifts the most liberated and healthy models of humanity that our history has to offer us and honors the revolutionary freedom fighters that helped us get there.