The Night Dallas Aired Its Confederate Statue Grievances
STEPHEN YOUNG | OCTOBER 26, 2017 | 12:44PM
Robert E. Lee's statue is gone, but it's not forgotten. That much was clear Wednesday night as a long line of North Texas residents made their way to Dallas City Hall to tell the City Council they want the city's other Confederate monuments left intact and, most of all, they don't want any of the city's street names changed.
At the meeting, opponents of the potential changes outnumbered those in support of the recommendations by at least 5-to-1, which made sense considering those who support the Confederate relics were on the losing side of the task force's recommendations ...
"We have to remember the history; we have to learn from it," Brodsky said. "But monuments to the Confederacy are not remembering — they're honoring. As a country, we have have never really dealt with our legacy of slavery. We have never dealt with the fact, at least in the south, that the Confederacy as a nation was formed in order to perpetuate that system. That was the cause of the Civil War. When we erect a statue of Robert E. Lee, we are saying that he held values that we hold."
On Monday, the City Council's Quality of Life Committee reviewed the recommendations from the task force but declined to consider the matter further until after Wednesday's meeting. Now that the public has spoken, the issue will go back to the committee, which will give its opinion to the full City Council. A vote from the council on whether to accept the task force's recommendations to remove the monument and change the street names will come later this year.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-residents-do-their-best-to-keep-citys-confederate-monuments-10011271