Tuesday, January 16, 2018
A DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT VIEW OF DAVIS MONUMENT
(One of our faithful readers had his creative juices working over the weekend and sent us this distinctly different viewpoint of the Jefferson Davis Memorial and the Parks and Recreation advisory board. At a recent city commission meeting, some of the members were chastised for flirting with Neo-nazi propaganda. Where will the rock be moved, if at all? Stay tuned.)
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13 comments:
They cannot remove the Jefferson Davis Memorial without removing Cesar Deleon from his seat, Armando Magallanes from the PUB seat and everyone else who sat there and listened to Cesars rant and said nothing. They also need to remove ALL who supported him after the taping was released. To remove one and not all is hypocritical and disgusting. All or none, which is it going to be?
On a side note, seriously you want to claim white power here in play? Take a look at the demographics next time you want to play with that term.
Demographics support that when we take class, income and education into account. Structural racism has cascading effects that touch multiple generations. If we withheld education, literacy and equal access to three polls to people of color as a nation, then it's very obvious what that rock was intended to do. See also; "The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire" by United Daughters of the Confederacy's SEF Rose and "The Ku Klux Klan" by another UDC member, Annie Cooper Burton.
what if there was no cesar de leon to bargain with? what other conditions would you come up with in order to remove that Confederate Rock? the rock goes at it alone just like cesar already went at it alone. but if you want to bring cesar back then let's remove all traces of slave-owning Brownsville founder charles stillman while we're at it.
White power? You gotta be kidding. White people are the least powerful, neutered people in Brownsvile. The racism against them is very obvious and they are hardly tolerated in Brownsville.
Hello! Artist of the piece here. Jefferson Davis' personal beliefs were that white people were the superior race. This is why I feel the term "white power" was appropriate, regardless of whether or not the neo-Confederate groups supporting the monument's maintenance would publicly admit to that fact.
Also, I do agree de León should have been removed. I'm still disappointed he was allowed to stay.
Jefferson Davis, the individual memorialized by the plaque on this rock, believed that white people were the superior race and that African-Americans were "fitted expressly for servitude."
It would be an insult to people of color, especially black individuals, for the city to even consider keeping a monument that attempts to present a white supremacist in a positive light.
Without connecting the monument situation to the de León situation, I would say that city officials must focus on educating people on the effects people and their actions have had on our society.
Whether it was a white supremacist rebel leader fighting for the right to own others or a frustrated city official feeling safe enough to use racial slurs among their trusted friends, we must be ready to say when a person's actions are inappropriate and hold them accountable for the negative consequences that affect the community. Yes, that would include mentioning the fact that Stillman partook in this terrible practice and discouraging people from thinking it was okay for him to do so.
As we point out the negative, we will also encourage people to act in ways that affect the community positively, regardless of race, gender, economic status, physical ability, etc.
"Hardly tolerated" as in given additional privileges that you perceive they are entitled to? This town has been steeped in white superiority since its inception and the time we've come around to reclaiming our autonomy has been short in comparison to some paranoid claim by a bitter apologist on the internet.
This graphic is pure bullshit. Hispanics control all local government in the RGV. Parks and Recreation is supervised and managed by a city of Hispanic officials. The "rock" would not even be on the city's radar had it not been painted. Most citizens don't even know the rock is there, and the ones that do don't know who Jefferson Davis was or what war he might have fought in. This poor illustration misses a major point....that of having a real, live racist making policy for this city....Cesar de Leon. To hell with the rock...this city and the illustrator who drew this trash, should focus on moving Cesar de Leon. But, of course, since this community thinks that only whites can be racist....a racist, Cesar de Leon seems to be getting a "free pass", while a rock is being punished. This city is fucked up.
Maybe BISD should re-name Juliet Garcia Middle School because the schools name sake screwed over the tax payers of Brownsville and was more loyal to U.T. System and to herself than to the citizens of Brownsville and Cameron County. The city and county policy should be not to name a facility for a living person....just in case they fuck up before they die.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155841505607754&id=618867753
I also feel Cesar should have been removed from the city commission. In fact, you can see me on Televisa, stating that I did not agree with those who tried to brush off his use of language, if you click the link I provided. I still hope he is removed.
If you can't watch the video for whatever reason, friend me.
People should know of the monument's existence, and of Jefferson Davis, the man to whom it is dedicated. The city should make an effort to educate its residents on his terrible beliefs and the lengths he went to keep other people enslaved. We must be aware of it all to avoid living that same way, with the desire to further oppress the oppressed as Davis did or to speak inappropriately as de León did.
Slightly off-topic, but yeah, it's strange to see buildings named after people of interest, especially when the laborers are not mentioned at all for the hours they put into its construction.
T H E T R O T T E R R E V I E W
The Brownsville, Texas,
Disturbance of 1906 and the
Politics of Justice
Garna L. Christian
An acrimonious civilian-military conflict reached into the halls
of Congress and the White House when residents of Brownsville, Texas
accused the First Battalion, 25th Infantry, of attacking the town from
Fort Brown around midnight on August 12, 1906, claiming the life of one
townsman and injuring two others.
The disputed episode took place against the background
of deteriorating racial relations in the state and region, an enhanced selfconfidence
of black soldiers following heroic achievements in the SpanishAmerican
War and the Philippine insurrection, and the economic decline
of the South Texas town bordering the Rio Grande. Texas, like other
southern states, was tightening segregation at the turn of the century.
Brownsville, bypassed when rail joined San Antonio to Laredo, Texas in
the late nineteenth century, failed to recover the prosperity the Civil War
had inspired.
Companies B, C, and D, previously stationed at Fort Niobrara,
Nebraska, drew the wrath of some Brownsvillians even before their
arrival on July 28, replacing the white 26th Infantry. Complainants wired
Washington of their disapproval of black troops as had other Texas
garrison towns in previous years. Since 1899, expressed hostility had
led to physical confrontations at Laredo, Rio Grande City, and El Paso.
Threats from white Texas National Guardsmen prompted the military
command to cancel the participation of the regiment in maneuvers at
Camp Mabry, Austin. Federal officials, ironically, exacerbated matters
President Richard
Nixon, acting in 1972 on a proposal by Congressman August Hawkins,
an African-American Democrat from California, granted honorable
discharges and a pension of $25,000 to each of the unredeemed 153 men
of the First Battalion, without placing blame for the disturbance. The decision
followed the publication of a history of the incident, The Brownsville
Raid, by John D. Weaver, who blamed outside raiders or townsmen. Only
one survivor, former private Dorsey Wills, benefited from the measure.
He maintained his insistence on the innocence of the battalion until his
death five years later.
Read: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1022&context=trotter_review
Racism has been a part of life here in this town since the whites took over and continues with...
Read about another raid in this town The Cortina Raid and why it happened.
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