The effort to remove New Orleans’ Confederate monuments has gone absolutely nowhere since City Council OK’d their removal way back in December. Frustrated by this delay, The Advocate reports a New Orleans activist group wants to take down what is perhaps the city’s most iconic statue, the Andrew Jackson figure in the French Quarter, themselves.
Now, Andrew Jackson isn’t among the monuments on City Council’s list to remove, but at least one person has argued it should come down if the others do—and the group Take 'Em Down NOLA agrees, citing the seventh president's history as a slave owner and his role in the Trail of Tears.
Discussing an upcoming demonstration scheduled for Sept. 24, attendees at the group’s meeting this week said, "We're going to go to Jackson Square. We're going to put ropes around Andrew Jackson and we're going to take him down off his pedestal" and that attempting to remove such an iconic statue would serve as a "shot heard round the world."
If these activists are successful in removing the statue through ropes and sheer force, that might solve the problem of not being able to find contractors to remove the other monuments.