Misguided "Indivisible" Group Lacks Originality, or Local Sensitivity, on Confederate Veteran Monuments

Our City's Confederate Monument Contextualization Committee is on the right track -- I have thanked them for their efforts, based on facts.

But I am appalled at the demagogic dupery demanding removal of two monuments to dead Confederate veterans in St. Augustine, Florida.

While fungible Confederate "statues" elsewhere are being removed, there are none here in St. Augustine.

The two veterans memorials or monuments in St. Augustine are of a different character.

One memorial/monument belongs to the City of St. Augustine and memorializes Confederate veterans; it was erected in 1873 and 1879.

The other memorial/monument belongs to the State of Florida, was erected in 1920, and will be the subject of an April 13, 2018 meeting of the board of University of Florida Historic St. Augustine.

I defer to no one in our town in being opposed to TRUMPISM, racism, flummery, dupery and nincompoopery. But I do not require orders from someone in Washington, D.C. with a yellow tie and a foundation grant.

I've lived in St. Augustine since November 5, 1999. I was honored to have worked for environmental, nuclear, judicial and trucking whistleblowers as their lawyer, to have worked as an investigative reporter and editor, and to have worked for three liberal U.S. Senators and two federal administrative law judges.

I don't cower to power. We've won some 70 public interest victories here since 2005. St. Augustine is blossoming into a cool hip place.

I don't defer to bullies -- that includes a phony perseverating peripatetic homophobic Gainesville minister, Rev. RONALD RAWLS, JR.

As legendary African-American civil rights litigator, Solicitor General and longtime United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said in 1991, before and after nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, "My dad told me way back that ... there's no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They'll both bite."

Rather than being based on facts, on the subject of Confederate veterans monuments, our "Indivisible" chapter in St. Augustine is simply following someone's playbook. Here it is -- check out the website of the 501c4 "Indivisible" movement here: https://www.indivisible.org/resource/standing-indivisible-white-supremacy/

Pity.

In St. Augustine, "Indivisible" could still become a force for good. Instead, unoriginal "Indivisible" impotently inveighs against monuments to dead veterans. How gauche, louche and divisive. What a waste of activist energy. Sad.

For example, its leaders could speak out on homelessness and the City's unconstitutional anti-panhandling ordinance, set for a vote on March 26, 2018 (Monday). They should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

As Robert Kennedy said, "It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."