JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry celebrated the planned demolition of 'a 13-year eyesore' on Twitter this week, saying tearing down the Berkman II tower is in keeping with his promise to “transform” downtown.
However, some believe the pledge falls short when it comes to Confederate monuments.
Last June, standing in front of City Hall before a crowd of hundreds at a Black Lives Matter protest, Curry promised to take down all monuments to the Confederacy. Hours earlier, he had ordered the Confederate soldier statue that stood at the center of the adjacent park for 122 years removed.
“Yesterday there was a Confederate monument in that park,” Curry said gesturing at the empty granite column. “It’s gone, and the others in this city will be removed as well. We hear your voices. We have heard your voices.”
This week, an unofficial “Working Group” of six people selected by the mayor to examine the issue released a report. The report offers a series of recommendations, including that the city not allow outside groups to remove and appropriate monuments, or in any way subsidize that process.
The report also emphasizes: “These monuments must no longer stand as they have, in celebration of the Confederacy.”
The report focuses on ways to accommodate and “contextualize” statues, rather than remove them. In a statement, the Mayor’s Office said the group was created to help Curry:
“...determine a course of action” and no decisions have been made.
“The group was an ad hoc working group that assembled information to present to the Mayor for review and to help him determine on a course of action regarding these monuments,” spokesperson Nikki Kimbleton said in an email. “The Mayor is still reviewing the information that was presented to him by the working group and has made no final decisions on further actions at this time.”
However, civil rights activist Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition, calls the Working Group’s process “secretive.” He said it excluded community voices and was focused on the wrong goal.
He points to the group’s mission statement, which according to the report was "to suggest possible resolutions to forestall any acts of vandalism and destruction” of the monuments.
“That's a bogus mission to begin with,” Frazier explained. “The mayor said he was going to remove these monuments. I think a more appropriate mission statement would have been: How do we remove Confederate monuments, names and symbols from public property spaces and places? And how do we pay for that?”
“The work of this blue-ribbon panel is tainted and stained with political corruption," Frazier continued. "Its mission, its formation, its method of operation do not pass the smell test.”
Frazier plans to hold a press conference at 10 a.m. Monday calling for the Working Group to start its work over, this time in a public setting.