Landrieu Defends Tearing Down Confederate Monuments: ‘We Want Statues to Reflect the City of New Orleans’

EXCERPT:

LANDRIEU: "In the city of New Orleans we only have a couple of prominent circles and in all of those circles we have statues that are not just remembering the confederacy, but are revering the confederacy and those statues were put up specifically to send a message to other folks that, 'Look, we’re still in charge down here even though we lost what they call the war of the states,' which of course was a war to tear apart the United States of America. By the way, just as a matter of historical perspective, the city of new Orleans is 300 years old and there were folks 1,000 years before that. The city doesn’t really reflect that whole history. The second part is that Robert E. Lee never stepped a foot in the city of New Orleans. He is not from New Orleans, he is not of. So, as a mayor of the city, as we recreate this beautiful city that everybody loves, what we're beginning to say is we want our public monuments to reflect who we are as people. That's really what this is about.”