Southern Republicans defending the Confederacy are back in the news this week, because America has to keep up the fiction that the Civil War wasn't about enslaving others or people might start asking questions like "Are black people human beings with rights and stuff"? First, Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey reminds the world that Alabama is still quite happy to redo Pickett's Charge anytime you'd like, thank you.
Alabama doesn't need "folks in Washington" or "out-of-state liberals" instructing the state on what it should do with Confederate monuments, Gov. Kay Ivey said Tuesday.
Ivey, during a campaign appearance in Foley, defended a new campaign ad released earlier in the day that touted the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, which she signed into law less than 11 months ago.
"I believe the people agreed with that decision and support in protecting our historical monuments," Ivey said after speaking at a Baldwin County Young Republicans function. Her appearance also occurred one day before the Reckon by AL.com GOP governor's debate at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Lyric Fine Arts Theatre in Birmingham. Ivey said she does not plan to attend.
"We can't and shouldn't even try to charge or erase or tear down our history. We must learn from our history," Ivey said.
The law requires local governments to obtain state permission before altering or renaming historically significant buildings and monuments that date back to 40 years or longer. The law also creates a 11-member commission which is charged with determining whether historic buildings or monuments can be moved or renamed.
Ivey, in her campaign ad, criticized Alabama outsiders for pushing an agenda on the state.
The lesson we have to learn, according to Gov. Ivey, is that black folk in Alabama have to be constantly reminded that racist traitors to the country who fought the Union in order to preserve slavery get their own monuments that will last forever.
Next door in Tennessee, Memphis found out the hard way that those who question the status quo by removing these monuments will be punished by
The Republican-dominated House in Tennessee voted Tuesday to punish the city of Memphis for removing Confederate monuments by taking $250,000 away from the city that would have been used for a bicentennial celebration next year.
The retaliation came in the form of passage of a last-minute amendment attached to the House appropriations bill that triggered heated debate on the House floor and stinging rebukes from lawmakers from Memphis.
Rep. Antonio Parkinson began to call the amendment vile and racist before being cut off by boos from fellow lawmakers.
“You can boo all you want but let’s call it for what it is,” the Memphis representative said.
Last year the city of Memphis, which is majority black, was able to find a legal loophole to get rid of two Confederate statues and a bust by selling city parks to a nonprofit, which swiftly removed the monuments. Taken away under cover of darkness were statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a general in the confederacy, a slave owner and a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. A bust of a Confederate soldier was also removed.
Parkinson, who is African-American, said he was sick of how fellow lawmakers revered Forrest “as if he was God, as if he was an idol.”
“You remove money from a city because we removed your God from our grounds,” Parkinson said.
Well, Tennessee Republicans didn't take kindly to that truth at all.
The amendment that stripped the money away from Memphis was sponsored by Matthew Hill, a Republican from Jonesborough.
Another Republican lawmaker said removing the monuments was erasing history, he said “that’s what ISIS does” and it was a bad action that deserved punishment.
“Today is a demonstration that bad actions have bad consequences, and my only regret about this is it’s not in the tune of millions of dollars,” Rep. Andy Holt, of Dresden, said of the punishment.
If the law allowed them to shoot us, we'd be dead. Hell, the law basically does allow them to shoot us, and we die because of it.
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