Statement from the Jefferson Parish School Teachers—with whom Take Em Down NOLA Stands in Solidarity—Organizing to Change their Racist School Names

"As social studies teachers in Jefferson Parish Schools, we stand against the school board’s most recent vote against forming a committee to reevaluate school names, mascots and emblems that have associations with racism. Choosing to uphold symbols which reflect the darkest and cruelest part of this country’s history enforces the false ideology of white supremacy and works against creating more equitable schools.

As social studies teachers, we intimately understand our nation’s history and recognize the irreparable harm that racism has caused generations of families and students in Jefferson Parish. The names and symbols of these schools are indicative of the larger systemic causes of generational poverty, crime, and scarcity of opportunity for young people in our parish. The majority of Jefferson Parish students already lack a curriculum in which they can see themselves represented, and school names and symbols such as the ones being challenged only serve to perpetuate this inequity. Now is the time for us to honor figures in our district that uplift our students and families, and share our values.

We advocate for the immediate change of all school names and mascots which have caused mental anguish for members of our community."

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Let's get organized, let's get free! Meet us on the streets on J20!

People like Trump are reared in households and taught by institutions all across the U.S. 

 For 70 years, Trump was groomed by society to become the current U.S. president. 

For 70 years, he was taught and rewarded by all who condoned him as a racist.

For 70 years, he was taught and rewarded by all who encouraged him or turned away as he assaulted women.

For 70 years, he was taught and rewarded by a capitalist system to exploit and oppress Black people.

For 70 years, he was taught and rewarded by fellow members of the rich ruling class to exploit and oppress working class people here and around the world. 

 People like Trump use racism and all forms of oppression to fan the flames of fascism. They do this not only because they are allowed to, but because in doing so, they are awarded the highest positions of political power in the United Snakes of America. 

Fascism exists under capitalism, as a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power. It rises as a forcible suppression of opposition to the working class in the facing of a system that exploits and oppresses. It rises as strong regimentation of society and of the economy, particularly when capitalism is struggling, crumbling and doing all it can to preserve itself. Fascism is the force that restricts workers from organizing and forming unions. But when we recognize it for what it is, we can defeat it. 

Even when it seems like fascism is rising, seemingly over night, we know this is not the case. 

Fascism is taught and perpetuated each time mainstream media provides a platform to racists. 

Fascism is taught and perpetuated each time Black people are gunned down by police with no consequence.

Fascism is taught and perpetuated each time people believe and declare the false narrative that the police are here to ‘protect and serve’ ordinary people, when their real function is to protect the rich, their profits and private property.

Fascism is taught and perpetuated when women, gender nonconforming people, people with disabilities, people of color, and undocumented people are assaulted and denied basic human rights. 

Fascism is taught and furthered when we tolerate that the US is the prison capital of the world, to include concentration camps that have been rebranded as “detention centers.”

Fascism is taught and tolerated each time religious leaders and the elected officials say, "we must pray about it," after terror has been waged upon the very people that offer their last to the collection plates and who look to them for leadership in times of suffering. 

To teach about prayer and not armed protection in the face of armed terror is dangerous. To teach about faith and not “works” that can materialize that faith hinders the people’s ability to progress in a spirit of self-determination and is ultimately hazardous to the people’s safety.

People like Trump exist in a SYSTEM created by and for the rich ruling class of this country—a system that brands itself as a democracy but is in fact just a capitalist state headed for fascism if the people don’t rise up. There is no democracy in a country where one must be a millionaire or billionaire to even afford the cost of running for elected positions in this country. This system wants us to believe that we are witnessing a fight between the Republicans and the Democrats. But that is an illusion. Rich white men use their bourgeois elected officials as puppets to dangle carrots and sprinkle crumbs above the masses of oppressed working people to temper our resistance and prevent us from rising up against a SYSTEM that exploits and oppresses us. This is the case whether those elected officials are Republican or Democrat. 

In fact, it was Democratic presidents like Clinton who helped inflate the prison industrial complex to the highest incarceration levels in all the world’s history. It was Democratic politicians like Obama who drone bombed ten times as many countries around the world in the name of capitalist imperialism than his racist conservative predecessor Bush. And it was Democratic presidents like Obama and Biden, who passed legislation to uphold the big banks and gave them big payouts with our tax dollars during this country’s last major economic recession caused by capitalist greed, while they left working class people of all so-called races to lose life savings and fend for self. 

It is this kind of capitalist neglect of the working class spearheaded by BOTH parties, that leaves working class whites easier to be puppet strung by the fascist propaganda of a Donald Trump. They fall for his racist propaganda because it is all they’ve ever known and historically, it’s what they’ve turned to every time the capitalist system failed them. This goes as far back as the Civil War and beyond. Trump employs racist trickery because like Hitler, he is using the last trick that capitalists always resort to when their system is on its last legs.

We are witnessing the crumbling of this system, and it is up to the working masses to ensure that it is socialism and not fascism that rises from the ashes of 402 years of white nationalism and capitalist exploitation of the people and the land. 

And while the owners of the system are trying to save themselves, we, the working masses are forced to suffer from the unbearable burden of unemployment, low wages, lack of housing, and inability to pay for food and healthcare, which are all human rights! 

These puppets want us to believe that all of our troubles will go away by electing another bourgeoisie politician, so that poor and working-class people can fight amongst ourselves while the rich continue to seize our land, steal the profits of our labor, disregard our dignity as they oppress our very existence, and criminalize us for resisting their exploitation and oppression.  

Yet the real thieves and criminals are the white rich ruling class who have always controlled the elected officials of this country. It is the ruling class who stole everything they used to build this country on land stolen from Indigenous people and turned it into private property to be extracted from, divided up, sold and profited from over and over again. The U.S. was built with the labor of Black enslaved people. It continues to be rebuilt by Black workers and Brown migrant workers that come to the U.S in pursuit of a dream only to find a nightmare! Some flee their homelands for the U.S., driven to this country by the hands of rich men’s wars that create refugees in the first place. 

We know this and understand our oppression clearly just like our revolutionary ancestors did. The blood and spirit of our revolutionary ancestors is rising in us with each moment, and we honor them by refusing to stand by and allow fascism to threaten our lives and existence one more time. Wherever we witness exploitation and oppression, we will rise up and revolt against the exploitation and oppression. 

Last week, we witnessed a collaboration between the democratic party and the republican party working hand in hand. We witnessed the white terrorist vigilante’s in collaboration with the police aka the pigs. Our communities have witnessed and experienced the heavy hand of state repression too many times to count. That hand was clearly held back last week and we know why. Therefore, we must build our own alternative to what we see. We welcome you to join us in that effort at our next action: J20NOLA.

E.D. White removal and Renaming Commission Statement

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. 

Statement of Solidarity for the St. Bernard Parish Community in their Fight to change the Name of Andrew Jackson Middle School

Take Em Down NOLA has always subscribed to the revolutionary belief that in the face of global racist oppression, any act of resistance is a win. So to that end, we would like to salute the parents, community members, organizers, and Shelton P. Smith, Sr. (the lone Black schoolboard member) of St. Bernard Parish, who waged a valiant struggle against their backwards, racist schoolboard this past Tuesday evening when they challenged them to change the name of Andrew Jackson Middle School. The schoolboard voted 10-1 to keep the name of the genocidal warmongering Andrew Jackson at a middle school comprised of over 60% students of color. This blatantly ignorant act shows the deep disregard the board has for Black lives in a moment of global reckoning, no less, with the world’s treatment of Black people. Despite this disrespect, and the fact that the racist coward schoolboard broke state law by sneaking the meeting in without announcing it on their website, the community still organized themselves enough to show up strong and push for the bureaucrats to come out of their racist past and stand on the right side of history. 

Andrew Jackson’s viciously racist track record is well known. His egregious anti-Blackness showed up in the fact that he died owning more than 140 enslaved Black people. He was also the architect of the Fort Negro Massacre that was said to have slaughtered some 200 Black people and 100 Seminole and Choctaw indigenous people in Florida in 1816. Most infamously, he was the author of the Trail of Tears, which displaced dozens of thousands of Creek and Cherokee indigenous people from their native lands killing at least 3,500 Creek and 5,000 Cherokee along the way. Lesser known is the fact that even in the Battle of 1812 which Andrew’s usually working-class white defenders praise him for, he was violently oppressive to even the white people of Louisiana that he worked with. Andrew Jackson left a legacy that no worker or person of color anywhere can take pride in. The only people that can possibly find pride in him, are other members of the rich ruling class—especially the most blatantly racist among them. No wonder Trump claims him as his favorite president. Which should tell us everything we need to know about how the preservation of horrific figures from our history negatively affects the character of our nation and makes way for those negative characteristics to reemerge. Our present occupant of the White House is a prime example of that. 

In preserving the foul legacy of Andrew Jackson at a school mostly comprised of children of color, whose ancestors Jackson would have killed or enslaved without a second thought, the St. Bernard Parish schoolboard displays their disgusting disregard for non-white lives, their shameful allegiance to the myth of white supremacy and their stubborn commitment to uphold it in the present. By standing up to this ignorance, the SBP community shows that like their ancestors that resisted this kind of oppression, we will not be silenced nor moved from our stance. The time of reckoning with the ghosts of our racist history is upon us. For the sake of our children and their right to be free of the shackles bestowed on our haunted past, we will continue to fight for their future until the battle is won. And if the so-called powers that be don’t want to hear us and adhere to our just demands, they’ll hear from us the day after that when we return. And the day after that. And the day after that. 

Take Em Down NOLA stands in solidarity with the righteous struggle of the St. Bernard Parish community. We encourage them to keep up the good fight and plug into the collective struggle that we continue to wage here in Orleans Parish, where a major street and square are still named after the racist bigot that was Jackson, and the most prominent statue remaining in the city is of his likeness. As we always say, “We can’t get no satisfaction! Till we take down Andrew Jackson!” And that remains true from parish to parish, till Jackson and all symbols of white supremacy are removed once and for all. Onward to the revolution!  

TAKE EM DOWN NOLA: PUBLIC STATEMENT | AUGUST 29, 2020

We don’t need a renaming commission; we need an entire restructuring of the system!

It's always a joy to see when people FINALLY conclude that symbols and systems to white supremacy no longer have a place in our public domains. For the last 5 years, Take Em Down NOLA has continued the long history of resistance work that precedes us, by long time community organizers, such as Reverend Avery Alexander and Dorothy Mae Taylor, who fought for progressive change, both symbolically and systemically. Rev. Avery Alexander was both put into a chokehold in 1993 by police for protesting against white supremacist David Duke at a ceremony in honor of the white supremacist monument that was deceptively named the Battle of Liberty Place Monument. In 1963, Rev. Alexander was also literally dragged by his heels up a flight of stairs out of the basement cafeteria of New Orleans City Hall for resisting the racists practices of segregated lunch counters and all other places here services were provided to Black people.

There would be no Take Em Down NOLA without people like Rev. Avery Alexander. And there would be no Renaming Commission without the grassroots work of a Take Em Down NOLA. 

However, after being publicly ignored by the City of New Orleans time and time again, but clearly having impact and agitating the City of New Orleans, we have finally been asked by the vice chair of the commission to meet as a way to settle us down and help us to be more “constructive.” Again, there would be no commission, if it were not for grassroots activism. But the patterns of the city, and this renaming commission demonstrate that this is not an opportunity for progress. It is really a hindrance to real progress. We have been clear about how the city can fight white supremacy with our list of demands. The City of New Orleans has demonstrated that it does not want to. It only wants to take the pathway of least resistance as it appeases the rich white supremacist ruling class. This is their function.

Therefore, there is nothing we would say in a meeting, that we would not say publicly, so our response to a meeting request is as follows, and can be taken back as our “constructive” engagement:

After the blood, sweat and tears of grassroots organizers in the streets, the City of New Orleans creates a “Renaming Commission”, with no FULL commitment to remove the 10 remaining monuments to white supremacy (which includes Andrew Jackson in the French Quarter) as a precedent to renaming or replacement of white supremacist symbols in this city. The City of New Orleans is simultaneously CONTINUING to compromise with white supremacy which puts the lives of Black people in danger, daily. A concrete example of this the fact that as soon as LaToya Cantrell was elected as mayor, she began secret meetings with the white supremacists who defended the monuments that had been taken down before she was elected mayor. Her eagerness to appease them was exposed by the local media who found and released the minutes from those meetings. Even today, after the people of the CITY, COUNTRY and WORLD have risen up, during a mass uprising for Black lives, to say defund and abolish the police AND remove the symbols to white supremacy, Mayor Cantrell is STILL trying to appease the white supremacist of this city, sitting silent while the defenders of these monuments work with the District Attorney’s office to use the injustice system to prosecute people who say NO to white supremacy. 

It is DISGUSTING to LITERALLY WATCH as the state and city police work directly with white supremacists to target protestors for fighting against white supremacy. This is what they have ALWAYS done, but unfortunately people continue to put their hope and trust in elected officials to lead the change, even when a Black woman Democrat mayor is elected for the first time, we see the same practices being used. What is Black representation good for when it chooses to uphold the white power structure that is causing harm and terrorizing Black lives?

We have said it before, and we will say it again, it has ONLY ever been the power of the people RISING up to DEMAND change that has brought actual change. Laws and change follows the mass resistance. Progress of any kind in the areas of social change, worker conditions, or worker pay has always come due to the rising up of the people. 

For the last 3 months we have seen the country rise up in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, while our local government continues to be silent about Modesto Reyes who survived the horrific collapse of the Hard Rock, only to be gunned down by the same Jefferson Parish police that gunned down Eric Harris in Orleans Parish just 4 years ago. How dare we accept crocodile tears from city officials at the result of unsafe conditions for workers in the city, while we have seen no action regarding the conditions necessary for Black people, nor any member of the working class to feel safe, healthy or whole in the City of New Orleans? 

Now, on the heels of Hurricane Laura, as we remember Hurricane Katrina 15 years later, the questions are: What’s truly better for Black people as a whole? Where is the LIVING wage? Where is the eviction ban for people impacted by economic hardship during a COVID-19 global pandemic? Where are the health services and healthcare for workers who have always been and continue to be essential? Where are the proactive sustainable services and programs to nurture the well-being and brilliance of our children and families? Where is the FULLY funded relocation for the all Black Residents of Gordon Plaza who have been demanding such since discovering that the City of New Orleans built their homes on a former landfill which is now the second highest cancer-causing neighborhood in the state of Louisiana? Where is the action oriented effort to #FlipTheBudget in New Orleans from investing 63% of the majority of the people’s money into cops, jails and reactive measures, while only investing 3% into children and families (who need it the most), and only investing a measly 1% into job development, when we are experiencing the largest unemployment rates seen since the Great Depression? Yet, that is the problem. Black people as a whole, have been contending with police terror (and white supremacist vigilantes who collaborate with the police to inflict violence) and capitalistic economic hardship since long before the Great Depression. 

So again, while the police murder, by unloading 10 bullets into Trayford Pellerin, of Lafayette, LA and then two days later unload 7 bullets into Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin who is still fighting for his life, and may be paralyzed or life, we bear witness to the complete cooperation of the state with the white supremacists who wreak havoc on the lives of people in the streets fighting for self-determination. 

We refuse to be silent. We refuse to go along to get along! We are demanding change. We have been peaceful, but clearly that approach does not work. Perhaps we have to completely defy the mindset of nonviolence, not because we are violent, but because the state continues to be violent toward our people and is showing no signs of stopping. What people would ever allow terror to be cast upon them and not defend themselves? When we say, no justice, no peace, we mean it! Why should we be peaceful, since there has been no justice?

In 2016, the New Orleans City legal team had enough sense to the write the following: “Time has not tempered the unrest and violence that began in Ferguson. In April, riots [what MLK called the “language of the unheard”] erupted amid demonstrations in Baltimore following the death of a black man in police custody. These protests injured police officers and shuttered sections of the City. In June, a white supremacist killed nine black worshipers in the basement of a Charleston church. Subsequently, fights broke out on the steps of the South Carolina state house over the continued display of the Confederate battle flag. And just last month, protests raged in Chicago over police shootings of a black youth. While plaintiffs [defenders of the symbols to white supremacy] are free to dismiss these events as the inevitable conflict that “can occur in a free society at almost any time,” public officials responsible for the safety of life and property are not unreasonable for taking them more seriously. The City Council need not wait for the City to burn before reasonably concluding that statues honoring Confederate leaders are a potential lightning rod for simmering civil unrest.”

So, with our leg of this resistance work, we have consistently expressed how important the removal of symbols to white supremacy is to the process of real truth and reconciliation. There can be no reconciliation without truth and there can be no truth when the so called elected powers that be are sleeping in the same bed with the members of the rich ruling class, and using the police to carry out their function to repress and protect property, profits and the status quo. State sanctioned commissions and committees that do not push for fundamental systemic change are the status quo. They are always touted as being the “constructive” ways to address issues. However, it’s evident that they are being used to compromise with white supremacy and hinder the work of revolutionaries dedicated to the obliteration of white supremacy as a tool of divisiveness used to engage in exploitation and oppression of our people. We don’t apologize for taking the most constructive route in this organizing work, which is anchored in a commitment to dismantle that which causes our people harm, while simultaneously building new systems that edify the minds, bodies and spirits of our people. If the City of New Orleans (and all of its projects) really wanted to be taken seriously in this regard, it would engage in the following: 

1. IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF THE REMAINING MONUMENTS TO WHITE SUPREMACY. THERE ARE 7 THAT HAVE BEEN REMOVED, AND NOW THE 10 THAT REMAIN MUST GO.

Even an empty pedestal (until replacement comes) sends a message to all that New Orleans would prefer an open space, rather than one filled with the honoring of racism, hate, exploitation and oppression. By making a CLEAR decision to NOT compromise with white supremacy and honor it in any form or fashion, New Orleans would be a leader in the removal of images of psychological terror upon Black lives. This would also show up in the way systems in New Orleans work. The many city workers (and hospitality workers and essential workers, who are essential 365 days a year, not just during COVID19) should be paid a LIVING wage, hazard pay, PTO and PPE, and city workers should be given the green light by the city to remove these statues/monuments. This could happen today if city officials were principled, rather than compromisers with the rich ruling class who put mediocrity and profits over people. If elected officials were principled against racism, exploitation and oppression, they would take ACTION NOW and remove all remaining symbols to white supremacy!!! When it comes to school names, each and every school community should have say and active involvement in the replacement of the school names, and with parks and street names, residents across the board can be provided the criteria below to support and guide replacement choices. However, by having a renaming commission that focuses on a few streets here and there, based on the comfort level of those that joyfully compromise with white supremacy, the renaming commission actually becomes more of an obstacle to progress than a conduit. 

2) REPLACEMENT CRITERIA:

Take Em Down NOLA not only has criteria for which symbols to remove, but we also have Build Em Up NOLA criteria. When removing symbols to white supremacy, exploitation and oppression, we need revolutionary criteria for replacements. Take Em Down NOLA uses the following criteria: (a) Images that honor, uplift and celebrate RESISTANCE to exploitation and oppression (b) Images of REVOLUTIONARIES and REVOLUTIONS – those people and movements that fought for the liberation of oppressed people (c) Images that edify, celebrate, honor and revere complete LIBERATION (d) NOT images that fetishize Black trauma, suffering, exploitation or oppression. Just because an image of a Black person or symbol goes up, does not make it about liberation. Some images further perpetuate exploitation and oppression, and we must discern between these clearly. We do NOT condone images of white supremacists, nor Black misleaders who comply with the white supremacists, neoliberals, nor those who placate to members of the rich ruling class. NOTE: If the white supremacist can look at it and find any joy, it’s got to go!!! If a revolutionary would find inspiration in it, to continue the fight to end systems of oppression, while building toward complete liberation of the Black working class (which ensures the entire working class’s liberation), room must be made for it!!!

3) SYMBOLS & SYSTEMS ARE CONNECTED:

Therefore, we are demanding that the City of New Orleans flip the budget and no longer continue to invest in that which further causes exploitation and oppression of the very people these symbols aim to deny, erase, and maintain oppression over. 65% of the current general budget goes to cops, jails and reactive measures, only 3% goes toward children and families, and a measly 1% toward job development. We are certain that as the names change, we need the conditions of our people to change. We need a complete end to police terror, which requires abolition of the police. 

Therefore, if the the street renaming commission wants to be constructive in their efforts, they don’t need to meet with Take Em Down NOLA. Instead, they (and anyone else who aligns with Black Lives Matter) need to make an all-out action oriented DEMAND that systemic change happens now, by both removing ALL symbols to white supremacy from the landscape of New Orleans, while flipping the budget as a means of proactively investing into the complete physical, mental, and emotional health and wholeness of children and families, and providing a LIVING wage, job development and equitable education. This is how you Take Em Down AND Build Em Up! 

FINISH THE JOB! Remove ALL Symbols to White Supremacy and Abolish the Police!

The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, the assault of Iyanna Dior, and the disproportionate deaths of Black people due to Covid-19 in the United States have highlighted the ways that Black lives have always been under attack in this country. In response, the masses have risen up around the world to decry both symbols and systems of white supremacist capitalist oppression. 

Working class people have taken the fight for justice into their own hands by occupying streets and in some cases literally removing the symbols of their own oppression. White supremacist monuments have been removed in at least 7 cities in the US as well as in Bristol, UK and Port of France Martinique with new removals or plans for them almost daily. In the international cases not only have the people taken it upon themselves to remove these vile statues, but they have not limited their definition of white supremacist statues to merely those that reflect the Confederacy, but rather, those that reflect, venerate or perpetuate genocide, enslavement or racism in any context. 

Here in New Orleans, the City Council and mayor, after three years of silence on the issue, have asked the city to be satisfied with a mere name change of one street. One street! After removing four monuments to white supremacy in 2017, New Orleans should be on the frontlines of the movement to remove ALL symbols to white supremacy. In a city marked by dozens of street names commemorating white supremacists, not to mention public spaces, and at least 13 remaining statues to white supremacy, it only makes sense to address this issue once and for all. With the overwhelming amount of racist symbolism in this city, not to mention the systemic racism to match, the city government should be ashamed of itself for tossing its citizens measly crumbs as penance for its consistent injustice.

In this moment of global reconciliation with age old truths around systemic racism, Take Em Down NOLA demands that the city government finally begin the real work of reckoning with the WHOLE truth of white supremacy in New Orleans. They can start with the immediate removal of ALL symbols to white supremacy, including those that represent figures both before and after the Civil War. And they can move further by taking steps towards the abolition of the NOPD by DEFUNDING them (as they currently expropriate some two-thirds of taxpayers’ money) and PROACTIVELY reallocating those funds to children and families and the development of jobs that pay a LIVING wage. Minimum wage has never been sufficient, and it certainly isn’t now. 

It is also important to note that: 

• While Richmond, Virginia has recently committed to removing a statue of Robert E. Lee, its biggest monument to white supremacy, and is planning to remove 5 other racist monuments shortly thereafter, New Orleans still allows its largest remaining monument to the slaver and genocidal warmonger Andrew Jackson to stand shamelessly in its most prominent square in the city. It and at least 12 other racist statues have only been vaguely whispered about being removed with no definite plans. The Council continues their thumb twiddling even in in the midst of a moment of global upheaval against racism where action is being taken all over the world. We say ACT NOW by enacting our ordinance demanding the immediate removal of ALL racist symbols remaining in the city!

• While the District of Columbia is boldly rejecting the occupant of the White House by renaming the very street that the White House is on “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and painting those words in huge yellow letters on a street that was once the site of police terror, New Orleans has not even contended with names like Claiborne Ave. or Carrolton St. or Lee Circle even though the Lee statue was removed three years ago. 

• While the city of Los Angeles has begun the process of defunding the police with a $150 million budget cut, New Orleans is silent as it is police force lies about tear gassing protestors. 

• While the city council of Minneapolis has pledged to abolish the city’s police department altogether and replace it with a new system of public safety that should be led and monitored by the people for the people, the city of New Orleans remains silent. 

The mass uprising against racism in the U.S. right now is not only a call to protest oppression, but also to invest in Black lives. While shifts are happening all around us, the city of New Orleans wants us to be satisfied with crumbs. We are no longer demanding a seat at the table. We are coming for the whole table because we built it and we want it back!

Although we fight for ALL symbols to white supremacy to be removed from the landscape of New Orleans, we do so as a necessary step in the direction of racial and economic justice. Just as we need the symbols of oppression to be removed in the form of street names and monuments, we simultaneously need the system to change by radically improving the material conditions of everyday life for Black children and families. We can start by removing ALL remaining symbols to white supremacy and moving towards police abolition as we flip the budget in order to defund the police and fund the people! 

BLACK LIVES MATTER, BLACK WORKERS LIVES MATTER, TO REBEL IS JUSTIFIED!

 After all the protests against racist police terror there has been no justice, but instead an escalation of racist violence encouraged by the white supremacist capitalist system against the Black community. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Modesto Reyes, Tony McDade and so many more unknown, gunned down for breathing while Black. The intensification of racism can be also seen by the number of Black lives lost to Covid 19 and the forcing of Black, brown and low paid workers back to work despite the threat to their lives. . In Minneapolis the Black community has said enough! They have risen up against the state machine, not be ignored any longer. To rebel is justified, and these heroic freedom fighters are now combating the police and national guard. Trump is calling for the rebels to be shot, and many have been arrested. The protests and police station stormings are also being joined by many white youth. We have to stand strongly by the uprising and raise the call “To Rebel Is Justified.” We call for the immediate arrest and conviction of all 4 killer cops, the immediate removal of the police and national guard in the Black community and to dismiss all charges against the freedom fighters. Join us to show your solidarity with Minneapolis!

JOIN US FOR 7 DAYS OF ACTION

• Saturday, May 30 - Emergency Solidarity Rally & March - Duncan Plaza at NOON

• Sunday, May 31 - Join in the Workers Group Forum 6PM

• Monday, June 1 - Join us at Duncan Plaza at 6PM

• Tuesday, June 2 - Join us at Duncan Plaza at 6PM

• Wednesday, June 3 - Join us at Duncan Plaza at 6PM

• Thursday, June 4 - Join us at Duncan Plaza at 6PM

• Friday, June 5 - Jackson Square at 6PM

WHITE SUPREMACIST CAPITALISM IS THE PANDEMIC: COVID 19’S DISPROPORTIONATE KILLING OF BLACK PEOPLE IS THE SYMPTOM

In light of the recent news that around the country, Black people are disproportionately dying to Covid 19 (40% of the deaths with only 13% of the population), corporate media and politicians like Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards reacted in shock and claimed he “needed to study this more” to understand how or why. Despite the fact that all signs of long-standing institutional racism in the U.S., which have been studied by social scientists for decades, clearly show where this problem is stemming from, the so-called powers that be just can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong or don’t care to acknowledge the facts and truth behind it all. Because doing so would require them to indict the entire system that they represent. 

By the numbers, the symptoms of systemic racism speak for themselves. In Chicago, where Black people make up only 30% of the population, they constitute 70% of the deaths. In Michigan, where Black people constitute only 14% of the population, they account for 33% of the Covid 19 cases and 40% of the deaths. In New York City, Latinx people lead the death rate with 34% while only representing 29% of the population, and Black people come in second with 28% of the deaths though only 22% of the population. From city to city, state to state, we see that the darker the skin of the people, the more likely they are to die from Corona Virus. 

Nothing screams more loudly of systemic racism than this! These statistics are symptoms of the original pandemic of white supremacist capitalism that has ravaged this country since its beginning. And the best example is right here in Louisiana, the fastest growing state for Covid 19 cases and deaths per capita in the nation. Here, where Black people make up only 32% of the population, they account for 70% of the 702 deaths. The same death rate rings true in Orleans Parish, once the top slavery port in the country, and now the number one site for Covid deaths per capita in the nation with over 400 deaths in less than a month. That’s enough to eliminate the entire NBA!  

But this should come as no surprise in a city where 53% of its mostly Black population lives in poverty, which leads to us also having the number one incarceration rate in the entire world’s history. Due to our exploitative economy that loots $8 Billion of wealth from its workers who are forced to subsist on slave wages, New Orleans consistently ranks highest in all measures of inequity from our education system to the very life span of Black people versus white people, which differs by at least 2 decades in some neighborhoods. All of this is a product of low-paying jobs for Black people, who often can’t afford good healthcare either. Add to that the fact that those low paying jobs are somehow also the ones deemed “essential,” without essential hazard pay, without essential comprehensive healthcare, without essential paid time off for sick leave, and without essential protective equipment needed for workers. This creates the perfect storm of racism and classism where Black workers are the most exposed to the virus and the least protected.

This is only further compounded by the fact that the medical rationing mandated by most Federal grant programs forces hospitals to prioritize patients with preexisting conditions under those without them. This often leads to Black and Brown folks being screened out while white folks are accepted. The nastiest thing about this is that the preexisting conditions of poverty (detailed above) are of course the reason for the preexisting health conditions of many Black and Brown people.  This type of medical discrimination builds on a long ugly legacy in this country that includes the Tuskegee experiments, the evil work of Dr. J Marion Sims (for whom a monument stood in New York City up until 2018) and the infamous theft of Henrietta Lacks’ genes. This horrific history coupled with the disparities of the present contribute greatly to why Black people are less inclined to heed admonitions from the medical industry or the government.

It’s the same wretched capitalist government, after all, who awarded private contracts to Gilead pharmacy to develop an antiviral drug all because one of their former employees sits on Trump’s cabinet. The same government who rejected tests from the World Health Organization so that a profit-making company could get paid off them instead. The same government that took weeks to demand its corporations like GE make ventilators. And yet, it was the workers who pushed the company to do this when the government would have had them continue to make fighter jets instead, while the company preferred to cut workers rather than maximize their knowledge, skill and desire to produce a dire need for ventilators that exists across the country. 

But amidst all the racist capitalist chaos, there are countries out there with more planned economies showing us a better way.  Cuba has deployed its doctors all over the world to help other countries (though the US government rejected them). Venezuela suspended mortgage and rent payments for 6 months and deployed thousands of doctors to make house calls to their citizens (right before the US government trumped up a drug war against their president so they could steal Venezuelan oil in the middle of a pandemic!). China sold the US 1,000 ventilators only for the US to turn around and sell them to Israel for profit. 

Since it’s clear no level of the government will provide what we need, we the people of Louisiana must fight to get the fair medical treatment we’re owed. We can start by demanding that our local governments provide healthcare to ALL workers. At the same time, we must keep spreading the word that the disproportionate amount of Black death due to systemic racism is unacceptable, both during this pandemic and EVER! Measures must be ramped up now! Healthcare for ALL workers NOW! Get involved by supporting the two petitions below: 

• Sign here to demand health insurance companies prioritize the health of black people. 

• Send a letter to Governor Edwards and demand protective gear and hazard pay for New Orleans hospitality workers NOW! 

In Solidarity, 

Take Em Down NOLA

Take Em Down NOLA Confronts Zulu Club’s Use of Blackface

Take Em Down NOLA (TEDN) exists for the purpose of removing ALL symbols to white supremacy from the landscape of New Orleans as a very necessary part of the struggle toward racial and economic justice. This has been our consistent stance since we began this leg of the long historical journey to remove symbols that honor, celebrate, and perpetuate white supremacy. These symbols support a white economic power structure—a SYSTEM—designed to exploit and oppress Black working class people.

TEDN has continued this work by taking a clear stance against blackface. On Thursday, February 21, during a press conference outside ZULU headquarters, we issued an appeal to their members to end this practice, which originates in the degrading caricature of Black people.

ZULU has completely lied about its Blackface tradition claiming that there is a difference between black face and black makeup. This explanation is a disrespectful dismissal of the actual history and an exploitation of those who don’t know it. ZULU also pretends that their wearing of blackface, grass skirts and tightly curled afro wigs pays tribute to the proud ZULU nation in South Africa. Actual South Africans and other people from Africa have called the practice offensive and confusing.

The sad truth is that ZULU’s use of blackface has its origins in the minstrel tradition, which was created to mock, degrade and stereotype Black people as lazy, oversexed and of low intelligence. No pride can be generated from a tradition with such white supremacist symbolism as its beginning.

Many have expressed confusion about our agenda or tactics since our confrontation of ZULU. Below we address some of those questions and concerns:

“TEDN is mostly comprised of transplants.”

This is false. Half of our leadership is natives to New Orleans. Two who were born elsewhere, have lived here for a collective 50 plus years, one of whom has direct family ties that go back 8 generations. Even if we were transplants, that shouldn’t matter. The legendary Civil Rights Activist Rev. Avery Alexander wasn’t born in Orleans either, yet it didn’t stop him from fighting on behalf of his people. Nor did it stop the people from benefiting from his fight; holding both white and Black people accountable. Charles Deslondes was a Haitian transplant after the Haitian Revolution, and he helped lead the 1811 Enslaved People’s Revolt in New Orleans. If Black working class people around the world are to ever achieve collective liberation, we must learn to think, act and build with one another beyond the mental and physical limitations of colonial borders and parish lines. We must be as united as the white supremacist force that oppresses us.

“The issue is petty. Why does it even matter?”

Symbols reflect systems. They are a way of telling us what our roles are supposed to be in daily life in New Orleans. White supremacist monuments hover over us to tell us who’s still in charge. Blackface tells us that we are still minstrel servants of the rich white ruling class, as we entertain them joyfully. If the symbols didn’t matter, why would the rich white ruling class spend millions to build and maintain them in the first place? Why would they fight so hard to keep them up?

Think: what your oppressor proactively supports is 9 times out of 10 not good for you.

“TEDN doesn’t tend to anything but statues and symbols.”

False. TEDN is mostly comprised of black educators who have taught black students for a collective 4 to 5 decades in New Orleans. TEDN organizers actively work in support of many issues. TEDN organizers fight for hospitality workers’ rights, jobs for youth, education equity, protection against police terror, and the long-overdue fully-funded relocation of the Residents of Gordon Plaza off toxic soil. TEDN fights against environmental racism, militarism, and the dysfunction of the Sewerage and Water Board, supporting the moratorium on water shut offs, and much more.

“Why didn’t TEDN go after Rex?”

We did. Our 2016 campaign “Racism at Mardi Gras” was a direct shot at ALL the racist symbolism reflected at Mardi Gras every year, from Rex’s KKK-like regalia to Zulu’s blackface. Also, when we took on the monuments, we were confronting the real life version of Rex. The people that put those monuments up generations ago are the ancestors of the rich white ruling class that masks as Rex every year and controls our city’s economy to this day. And it is that same class that fought so viciously to keep the monuments up.

“Why take to the streets like that?”

We wrote a letter to Zulu requesting a meeting. When no response came, we called the leadership. All was ignored, as these types of requests usually are by the petty bourgeois class. So we were forced to take to the streets as we always do when those in power ignore us. The history of organizing shows that only direct action will bring direct social change. Now that the global and national consciousness has risen to contend with the issue of blackface—as they should—the city of New Orleans can finally confront our own symbolic and systemic value of Black lives.

A GREAT VICTORY YESTERDAY

Dear friends,

-- VETERAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS AT FRONT OF THE MARCH

Yesterday, more than 1200 strong, Take Em Down NOLA’s second line celebration echoed through the streets of the French Quarter and Lee Circle. Well organized, with impressive unity of purpose, 1200 folks, Black, white and Latinx renewed a pledge to rid New Orleans of all symbols to white supremacy. All along the march route people cheered us on and many joined in! 

The day before the Second Line we were called by the police chief asking us to cancel our event.  We immediately, with full confidence, said NO!

We want to share our love and respect for all those who stood up to the threats which were meant to intimidate folks from attending.  

 What did this reveal?  First, it showed the power of we the people to silence the fear mongers and racist terrorists when we collectively stand up to them. Most of their acts of violence are done when we are isolated or outnumbered. But when we rise together, oh what a mighty, unstoppable force we are! 

Secondly, our action took the mask off Mayor Landrieu’s excuses for not proceeding rapidly, in daylight, with a public celebration to take down the monuments because of threats.

Take Em Down NOLA has always said that this was nonsense. That in fact it was the opposition of the racist white capitalist establishment in New Orleans, seeking to preserve white supremacy now who opposed this.  They are afraid of a mass outpouring of the people in a new civil rights struggle.

The full-page ads taken out by Frank Stewart, largest funeral home owner in the US, in both The Advocate and Times Picayune was further proof of this as he chastised Landrieu. Landrieu immediately apologized to his conservative pal.  

Take Em Down NOLA has always said our effort is a necessary part of the struggle for economic and social justice.  That racist symbols are more about racism today, mass incarceration, poverty, unemployment, gentrification and low wages than past “lost causes.” We can only achieve our goal of collective liberation if we all support the efforts. 

Take Em Down NOLA asks you to please donate generously so that we can continue and grow.

Stay tuned to the next steps

PRESS ALERT/RELEASE: #J20NOLA ANTI-TRUMP INAUGURATION RALLY & MARCH

Contacts: Malcom Suber: (504) 931-7614
New Orleans Workers Group: (504) 657-3171

New Orleans—Take ‘Em Down NOLA and the New Orleans Workers Group are holding a #J20NOLA Anti-Trump Inauguration Rally & March, January 20, 2017, at 3 PM at beginning on the steps of City Hall, 1300 Perdido Street, to Duncan Plaza, across from City Hall, and into the streets of downtown New Orleans.

The purpose of the Rally & March is to “Inaugurate Unity & Resistance” and say “No to Fascism,” “No to White Supremacy,” “No to the Rule of Billionaires.”

On January 20, Trump becomes President and starts to unleash a campaign of impoverishment, war, extreme racism, sexism, and homophobia. The plan to exploit and neglect the environment, imprison, deport and discriminate against immigrants and Muslims is dangerous and real. Pretending to be for “the people” his billionaire cabinet is filling with white supremacists, environment destroyers, war crazy generals, and opponents of any social benefit we have won. We will see an increased curtailment of constitutional rights, more prisons, and less education. His cabinet is also a who’s who of Wall St. banks, hedge funds, fast food moguls, and opponents of higher wages.

A broader #J20NOLA Coalition has formed and is inviting everyone opposed to the Trump Agenda, to join in and represent their own self-interests, e.g. higher wages, affordable housing & medical care, anti-police brutality, union preservation, joblessness, etc.

For more information call (504) 931-7614 or 504-657- 3171 or email info@takeemdownnola.org.

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Take ‘Em Down NOLA Take Em Down Action Public Statement

Today’s Take Em Down Action has come as a result of a long struggle to remove symbols to white supremacy from the landscape of New Orleans. We don’t want to erase history. We want to promote accurate history. We believe that symbols that honor, celebrate, and promote those who oppress others during the course of history have no place in public space. 

Take Em Down NOLA is committed to the removal of ALL symbols to white supremacy in New Orleans as a necessary part of the struggle toward racial and economic justice. We believe that systems of oppression must be dismantled, while systems that promote the over-all well being of humanity must be built. It is not one or the other, it is BOTH.

Having symbols of genocidal murderers, rapists, and colonizers all over New Orleans is dangerous. It promotes murder, rape and colonization/displacement. The racist monuments of New Orleans promote exactly what white supremacists want, so they can have an excuse to keep investing in reactive measures that fill the pockets of current day oppressors. 

If the mayor and city council of New Orleans will not publically denounces symbols that honor white supremacy AND REMOVE them, to include those in the French Quarter (a major tourist destination), then we will continue to publically denounce and protest white supremacy in New Orleans. We are fully prepared to start an all out boycott of the French Quarter in New Orleans, if need be.

New Orleans acquires at least $7 billion in revenue from tourism. This is possible because of the nearly 70,000 mostly low wage workers that keep the city operating. However, in New Orleans, there are also at least 52% of unemployed Black males, nearly 50% of children living in poverty, and the city profiles poor Black lives to fill jails and prisons, making Louisiana the state with the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. Louisiana has more people in jail and prison than entire countries. Police and white people are not held to the same standard of accountability for committing crimes, even violence crimes.

In New Orleans, we are experiencing a state of emergency!!! Today’s action proves that the system protects monuments, but has no regard for proactively, consistently protecting Black lives … in a predominately Black city. Under these circumstances, it is a slap in the face of all people who believe in equity and justice that Andrew Jackson exists elevated and celebrated in the heart of the French Quarter. Until removed, Andrew Jackson in Jackson square will be the focus of ongoing public protests. 

Protesting injustice in New Orleans in 2016 becomes even more critical because current day white supremacists are allowed to continue making threats to peaceful protestors. It is the white supremacists who hold New Orleans hostage from growth and progress. Take Em Down NOLA focused on equity, toward racial and economic justice in spite of the mayor’s hesitation and city council’s compliance with the desires of wealthy racists who refuse to allow progress to occur. Take Em Down NOLA has two simple demands:

1)      We demand that the city of New Orleans do what it said it was going to do, and remove the monuments to Robert E. Lee, Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and The so-called Liberty Monument to White Supremacy (along with ALL other monuments to white supremacy in the French Quarter, including Andrew Jackson).

2)      We demand that the city of New Orleans reallocate (or use their influence to raise) $5 million dollars per year to Take Em Down NOLA’s Build Em Up NOLA initiative which consists of two components:

a)      An educational mentorship youth program to create jobs for local Black youth, local Black historians, and local Black artists to research their own history, write their own narratives, and create their own artistic images that reflect freedom, equity, and resistance to oppression. These efforts will support and compliment part (b) below.

b)      The funds will also support the “markers project”, which will erect historical markers that accurately inform the public of New Orleans history, whether pertaining to the economic slave trade, acts of resistance to oppression, or great achievement by people of African ancestry.

The reason that Take Em Down NOLA demands these resources, is because most monuments to white supremacy in New Orleans were erected by white supremacist who had/have generational wealth built on the backs of people of African people who were forced to provided free labor. We need this effort to help combat and reverse the consequences of internalize racism that has been and still is pervasive in New Orleans, as a result of systemic racism and oppression. 

We are calling on the city of New Orleans to divest the needed funds from the city budget, and or the community development fund to proactively support community based programs and services that can build up the Black community. 

Monuments Legal Update - September 21, 2016

On December 17, 2015, the New Orleans City Council voted 6-1 to remove four Confederate monuments. Most thought this was the final say in getting these monuments to white supremacy removed but the struggle was far from over. Here's a brief update on what's been happening:

Community Forum - September 15, 2016

FOX8 News covered our recent Community Forum held at Christian Unity Baptist Church. The Take 'Em Down NOLA Leadership and Legal team gave updates on the pending court case on monument removal. The hearing will take place on September 26th at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court will decide whether or not to remove the injunction currently preventing the city from taking down four white supremacist monuments.

If the injunction is removed, the city can resume taking bids to bring down the monuments. If the injunction is approved, the monuments will have to remain in place until the case for removal can be heard at the district level.

Open letter to our Essence visitors from the Take 'Em Down NOLA Coalition. (TEDN)

New Orleans is riddled with over 100 statues, street names and public schools named to honor slaveholders and confederate officers. These white supremacist monuments were erected in the Jim Crow era to remind Black New Orleanians that the rich whites, the descendants of the slave holders and slave traders, were still in charge. Take 'Em Down NOLA has been leading the struggle to remove them.

Greetings Sisters and Brothers!

The TEDN Coalition welcomes you to New Orleans. We hope that you have a fabulous and memorable weekend enjoying our food, music and culture, We urgently need to also inform you of a significant struggle against white supremacy that TEDN and other anti-racist forces are waging in New Orleans.

Last July, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, in reaction to the Charleston massacre, proposed removing 4 white supremacist monuments. For six months TEDN mobilized hundreds of people to council meetings and rallies to pass an ordinance to remove them. In December, 2015 the New Orleans city council passed the ordinance in accordance with the will of New Orleans residents to put these racist monuments in the past of our city.

In May, 2016 the rich white defenders of all things confederate filed lawsuits. After being denied an injunction from three courts they finally got an injunction against removal by reaching out to 3 pro-confederate white Judges on the U.S. 5 th Circuit Court of Appeals. In an unprecedented action the court granted the injunction in secret without public oral argument.

TEDN views this stay as a victory for white supremacy. This same obstruction was used over and again during the civil rights movement.

We demand that the Mayor and City Council go forth immediately with preparations to remove these monuments as this is just an application of the democratic right of New Orleans to home rule with the rights to decide what monuments and names should occupy our public spaces.

We ask you, our guests, to lend a hand and join us in demanding removal of all white supremacist monuments from public spaces in New Orleans. Let the Mayor and City council know that you support removal and would prefer that Essence not continue coming to a city that venerates white supremacy. New Orleans is a global tourist destination. Is this what we want the world to see?

You can:

• Attend the Take Down Andrew Jackson Rally at 1 pm on Saturday, July 2 at Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
• Sign the Petition
• Raise this issue in all your workshops and events. Contact us about speaking engagements and classroom visits.
• Send funds to support the work of TEDN. (Donation instructions coming soon) Down with White Supremacy!

Remove all monuments to white supremacy in New Orleans!

Our Petition is going strong and needs YOUR signature!

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Thank you to our first 944 supporters! We know that with your help and commitment we can make this movement bring real change into being. Share far and wide — we're going strong!

We demand the removal of ALL symbols of White Supremacy in New Orleans, and the struggle is far from over. Thanks to national media attention, the general public heard news of a "victory" on December 17, 2015, when New Orleans' city council voted to remove FOUR monuments to the Confederacy/White Supremacy (Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, and The Liberty Monument).

This is NOT the end of the struggle. Several non-profit groups, private organizations and individuals retaliated in the courts. The monuments have not been moved. Louisiana federal courts recently granted the opposition an injunction that allows them to appeal the city's decision to remove the four monuments indefinitely and places a hold on the city's actions until the matter is resolved in court.

We must fight back relentlessly and passionately. History is on our side. We must hold our elected officials accountable for enacting the will of the people, as they promised when they took their oaths of office, and as they promised on December 17, 2015.

Share this petition with your networks and on social media. And most importantly, call Mayor Mitch Landrieu at 658-4900 and City Council at 658-1000 today and join us in demanding the immediate removal of these abominable symbols.

Love & Solidarity,
Take Em Down NOLA

Take 'Em Down NOLA Buttons for Sale!

Fresh off the press! 2.5" wide, $2 each.

Take 'Em Down NOLA will be tabling on FRIDAY, JULY 1 from 9am-6pm with Amnesty International at the New Orleans Convention Center. Buttons will be available.

You can also find TEDN coalition members around the city & at Essence Festival selling these buttons!

Post your photos on social media with the hashtag #TakeEmDownNOLA

Stay tuned to purchase/donate online. Want to help us sell and distribute? Email info@takeemdownnola.org

Take ‘Em Down NOLA Public Statement on Mass Murder at Pulse Orlando

Take Em Down NOLA stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ and Latinx community, and the loved ones of those murdered, injured and traumatized at Pulse Orlando. This hate crime happens only a few days after the murder of Goddess Diamond, our 5 th trans woman of color to be killed this year, right here in New Orleans. We still carry heavy in our hearts the victims of a hate crime that took 32 lives in the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans in 1973.

As our work is centered on the vanquishing of ALL symbols of White Supremacy, we are also clear that state sanctioned symbols REPRESENT state sanctioned SYSTEMS that perpetuate racism, violence against oppressed people, and terror against those who do not comply with the status quo.

We will not be fooled to sit in silence nor perpetuate media that focuses on headlines and stories intended to pit various communities of oppressed people against each other. We condemn homophobia and islamophobia. We recognize that the mass shooting at Pulse Orlando is being used as an exploitation tool to heighten Islamophobia in our country, and intensify racist stereotyping and profiling of our comrades in the Muslim community. We want an end to ALL oppression, which calls into question the rule of the racist billionaire ruling class. Pulse Orlando should have been a safe space. However, ALL areas of society should be safe, and will become safe when we UNITE and have a successful social revolution. The rulers shed crocodile tears for the Orlando victims while killing as many civilians in the middle east on a daily basis. This act is a clarion call for the unity of the oppressed to end the rule of capital and its divide and conquer tactics. The “rulers” will use this massacre to call for even more surveillance, pretending that it is for our safety, taking away our privacy rights.

Let us not be fooled. Let us not sit in silence. Let us not perpetuate stories of fear, division and hate. Let us UNITE, and WORK for liberation, against a ruling class SYSTEM of white cis-gendered male elitist capitalism. It is this system that has used religion, gender, race, class and sexual orientation to divide and devalue us based on any deviation from the Christian white male cis-gendered heterosexual norm. This is why right winged Christian leaning legislatures like the ones in North Carolina and Alabama have ruled against bathroom access for transgender people. In these former states of the Confederacy, members of marginalized communities are still at the mercy of ideologies that foster policy and laws that create a hostile environment for us.

We understand that the same system that devalues and exploits Black lives does so to Queer lives, inclusive of Black and Latinx folk. This SAME system exploits the resources of the Muslim world while vilifying Muslim people, inclusive of Black and Latinx folk. Instead of participating in the divide and conquer game, we are identifying the true culprit as the SYSTEM that created room for all of this hate to be operative in the first place.

Yet, we will not succumb to this madness. We will transform our frustration into work for progress. We choose not to perpetuate this system. We unite, and we organize for liberation.

In the spirit of resistance and liberation embodied by the very lives of the 49 slain in Orlando, along with all of the others killed and traumatized by a White Supremacist hetero-normative SYSTEM, we will continue our work to eradicate all vestiges of these symbols and systems from all spaces.

MEDIA ALERT: PRESS CONFERENCE AND PROTEST MARCH AGAINST DONALD J. TRUMP

Contact: Michael "Quess?" Moore
716-934- 8336

New Orleans-- The Take Em Down NOLA Coalition is hosting a Press Conference and Protest March against Donald J. Trump because of his alignment with white supremacist values and failure to strongly denounce

WHO: TAKE EM DOWN NOLA COALITION

WHAT: PROTEST MARCH AGAINST DONALD J. TRUMP

WHEN: 6 PM – FRIDAY, March 4, 2016

WHERE: New Orleans LAKEFRONT AIRPORT – 6001 STARS & STRIPES BOULEVARD, NEW ORLEANS, LA

WHY: Trump has reinvigorated the voting base of David Duke. The same demographic of people that support the maintenance of White Supremacist symbols in New Orleans and were recently responsible for committing terrorist acts (life threats and destruction of private property) to intimidate contractors and the city at large into keeping these symbols. Trump’s presence invites more violence and terrorism.

REASONS FOR THE PROTEST OF DONALD J. TRUMP

• We are an organization committed to the removal of ALL symbols of White Supremacy in New Orleans. Donald's campaign is the personification of these symbols and has no place in the city we call home
• Trump's alignment with white supremacist values fosters the very environment that TEDN is committed to undoing
• Trump's racist history (i.e., Daddy Fred Trump marched w/ KKK in 1927;
• Trump advocated for the execution of the Central Park 5 (even once they were found not guilty)
• The hostility that Trump's rallies have exemplified towards black people throughout the country is NOT WELCOME in New Orleans, a city built on the backs of blacks' free labor, and heavily formed by black cultural contributions 
• Trump has reinvigorated the voting base of David Duke. The same demographic of people that support the maintenance of White Supremacist symbols in New Orleans and were recently responsible for committing terrorist acts (life threats and destruction of private property) to intimidate contractors and the city at large to keeping these symbols. Trump's presence invites more violence and terrorism.

PRESS CONFERENCE ALERT: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 — TEDN, MONUMENT REMOVAL HEARING

Contact: Michael “Quess” Moore
716-934-8336
Malcolm Suber
504-931-7614 

PRESS CONFERENCE ALERT

New Orleans — TEDN will announce its upcoming plans for ensuring that the white supremacists’ monuments come down. TEDN’s volunteer legal team has filed an amicus brief in the case. Take Em Down NOLA will speak to the press briefly before and after attending the state court hearing on the preliminary injunction lawsuit filed by opponents of removing the monuments.

WHO: Take Em Down NOLA

WHAT: Press Conference

WHEN: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 9:00 AM 

WHERE: Steps of Civil District Court, 421 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA

WHY: Statement on current status of the monuments, TEDN Demands, Racism at Mardi Gras.

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