A day after Jacksonville’s City Council President called for removing Confederate monuments, Mayor Lenny Curry said white supremacists are already talking about protesting.
The groups who marched in Virginia over the weekend aren’t welcome in the his city, Curry said Tuesday.
He said Sheriff Mike Williams told him that chatter suggests neo-Nazis and white supremacists could protest Council President Anna Lopez-Brosche’s decision. She’s calling for an inventory of Confederate memorials before they’re moved to museums.
At a political event with Florida Gov. Rick Scott in Jacksonville Tuesday, Curry said he’s reserving judgement on moving Confederate statues, monuments and placards, and he cautioned city officials to tread lightly.
“These outside groups that were in Charlottesville are already talking about coming to Jacksonville. We want to keep those groups out of our city, and we want to work together with our community to have a civil discourse,” he said.
Scott, who signed a bill removing Florida’s Confederate general statue from the U.S. Capitol last year, also won’t say whether he supports Lopez-Brosche’s call.
“Issues like the monuments — they need to be discussed, they need to be reviewed. At the local level, they can make a decision. At the state level, we get to make a decision. At the federal level, they get to make a decision,” he said. “But we need to go through a process.”
After Scott signed off on the Confederate-statue replacement, state lawmakers have not yet decided who should go in his place. In a tweet Tuesday morning, South Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called for a special session to be convened this fall to make that decision. The next regular state lawmaking session starts in January.
It's time for Florida lawmakers to call a special session to replace Florida's Confederate statue in our nation's Capitol.
— Debbie Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) August 15, 2017
Meanwhile, white supremacist leader Richard Spencer this week was issued a permit to speak at the University of Florida. Scott has pledged state help in keeping violence at bay on the Gainesville campus.
Photo used under Creative Commons license.
Ryan Benk can be reached at rbenk@wjct.org, 904-358-6319 or on Twitter at@RyanMichaelBenk.
