A pair of protesters in St. Augustine marched for any removal of an obelisk honoring the Confederate cause.
The July 4 protest at the city’s bayfront also featured a trip towards the University of Florida during the protesters’ chants.
“An entire idea was disruption, and i believe someone who went to the theater would agree,” Rev. Ron Rawls, the 51-year-old leader of St. Paul AME Church, said. He led an audience around 25 people throughout the city’s bayfront with flyers and chants,?demanding removing the obelisk from the Plaza en Constitucion – a state-owned property controlled by the University of Florida’s Historic St. Augustine Board.
Thomas Bryant III has lived in the city for twenty five years.
“This trouble is around the Confederacy, additionally, the lack of compassion or contemplation on just what way to the black community and what it represents,” the 61-year-old Bryant said.
About a month ago, the board voted unanimously to keep the memorial, this includes the ashes of Confederate Gen. William Loring.
“The board believes it’s there to interpret history, not switch it,” UF spokeswoman Margot Winick said. “And for that reason, we wish to generate other groups that can help the familiarity with our history, for our children and grandchildren.”
St. Augustine Tea Party media chairman David Heimbold said Rawls wanted to awaken trouble.
“Ron Rawls is actually a race baiter, OK? A race baiter, and then he is stirring up loads of poop that has a small amount of people,” Heimbold, 78, said.
Victoria Gerry, 41, the local woman waiting around for the annual fireworks show, said,?“I am aware the protests are for the black community, and that’s fine, and so i respect it, but with me honestly it comes down to all of us – of all color, of most races – we must add up.”
Protester Nicole Sparrow, 31, brought her 6-year-old daughter over to march. She said she believes her very?existence is due to jeoprady, and it’s really not quite as simple as anyone joining together.
“It is crucial which show my kids what are the issues are that we are suffering from, because in the near future, they will have to accomplish this same form of organization and also this same form of marching to find the same type of justices served for his or her communities,” she said.
Some people cheered them and asked questions and accepted the flyers demanding metropolis and UF board reconsider their decision allowing the marker to stay.
“UF is one means in Gainesville. In Gainesville, they take monuments down,” Rawls said, speaking about the removing of Old Joe 11 months ago external the Alachua County government building. UF didn’t have any role in this, nor during the subsequent renaming from the Alachua County School District office. “In Gainesville, they rename buildings that are named after Confederate soldiers simply because they know that we were holding traitors. But over here, UF is not going to use the same mantra.”
Other people around the bayfront aimed to remove flyers from protesters’ hands, others yelled insults, and several followed them around. Rawls said will have them back again
“We’ll do this about on a monthly basis perhaps while in the tourists’ district – simply to disrupt – so disruption can be ordinary in St. Augustine until they can turn into bit more human.”
