Removing Two Robert E. Lee Plaques in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn


Wednesday August 16, 2017



Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee was opposed to Confederate monuments Business Insider - August 16, 2017

Religious leaders remove plaques in Brooklyn commemorating visit from Robert E. Lee   New York Daily News- August 16, 2017
Ripples from the violent protests in Charlottesville have reached Brooklyn, where religious leaders had a plaque removed today marking Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's stay in the Brooklyn. Leaders of the New York Episcopal Diocese announced Tuesday that they will be removing two plaques that have been standing outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge since 1912.

Robert E. Lee is said to have planted several trees outside the church around the corner from my home in Bay Ridge Brooklyn during his stay at Fort Hamilton in the 1840s - about 20 years before he was named General of the Confederate Army. There are many landmark monuments in this area once traversed by people like George Washington.




In the wake of the Charleston church shooting in June 2015, several municipalities in the United States removed monuments and memorials on public property dedicated to the Confederate States of America. The momentum accelerated in August 2017 after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The removals were driven by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy and memorialize a government whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery. Many of those who object to the removals claim that the artifacts are part of the cultural heritage of the United States.

The vast majority of these Confederate monuments were built during the era of Jim Crow (1877-1954) and the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968) as a means of intimidating African Americans and reaffirming white supremacy. The monuments have thus become highly politicized; according to Eleanor Harvey, a senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a scholar of Civil War history: "If white nationalists and neo-Nazis are now claiming this as part of their heritage, they have essentially co-opted those images and those statues beyond any capacity to neutralize them again".

In some Southern states, state law restricts the removal or alteration of public Confederate monuments. According to Stan Deaton, senior historian at the Georgia Historical Society, "These laws are the Old South imposing its moral and its political views on us forever more. This is what led to the Civil War, and it still divides us as a country. We have competing visions not only about the future but about the past."




Why the fuss over Confederate statues?   BBC - August 17, 2017
Its been over 150 years since the last shots were fired in the US Civil War, but a debate still rages over how history will remember the losing side. Hundreds of statues dedicated to the Confederacy - the southern states which revolted against the US government - exist all throughout the United States, and often serve as an offensive reminder of America's history of slavery and racial oppression. Recent decisions by local governments to remove those memorials has triggered a backlash from a vocal group of Americans who see their removal as an attempt to subvert US history and southern culture. President Donald Trump waded into the debate on Thursday, tweeting that the controversial monuments are "beautiful" and bemoaning that their beauty would be "greatly missed" from cities.




Monuments

For many people - monuments - no the matter where they are found across the planet - are messages set in stone to honor someone or something and to be remembered by those who would follow and create a new day (experience). In ancient alien theory monuments signify the presence of extraterrestrials in Earth's history who may have created humans and may or may not return one day.


Present day

It all started last weekend with the 2017 Protest in Charlottesville, Virginia - well planned and staged - to oppose the removal of the Robert Edward Lee Sculpture in the city. The protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and militias. President's Trump's reaction is what really stirred Americans across the country into action and reaction. The backlash against Trump continues to grow ...


This morning I walked around the corner to St. John's Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge after reading about the removal of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's plaques, outside a local church, to make the video above.


Thoughts

Everything that's happening now is staged by those who control the world and beyond. It's all a diversion and staged as is reality. I still believe Trump's part in all of this is to bring the truth as the illusion of time ends. During the 2016 US presidential campaign I wrote that no one can fix the problems that face us and are escalating. Corruption abounds in almost every facet of life as is programmed. It's the nature of the algorithm of this reality which moves in cycles and is accelerating exponentially. It's unstoppable. It's all going somewhere. Everything we experience in physical reality is built on dramas and conspiracies symbolically seen through the "lens of time" or the "eye of the camera" projecting images into this reality for us to experience. Watch the Video - skip to 48:00 minutes

Whatever is going on behind the scenes seems to be uniting us as a country fighting for human rights and equality all while dealing with the abhorrent behavior of current president Donald Trump who seems to side with racist groups. He Went Rogue: President Trump's Staff Stunned After Latest Charlottesville Remarks


Total Solar Eclipse

Emotions have been heating up the past few days as we approach the Total Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017. Please watch your emotions.


Tuesday August 15, 2017

Buckle up. The fallout from Trump's remarks today is going to be truly massive. People make mistakes - we all do - but Trump never stops. We used to chalk it up to inexperience or ego - but he has taken things too far. This is a man who is pursuing his own agenda - defending himself and his own personal views at a time when national leadership is required. What's going on this week is a collision between his extreme personalization of everything and what we normally view as the role of president.


Sunday August 13, 2017 - Reality Check

Today was a gorgeous summer day here in NYC especially if one was to stroll along 5th Avenue ... And then there it was ... emotions signaling fear and anger as you got closer to Trump Tower .... not quite sure if chaos would erupt following the Incident in Charlottesville, Virginia the day before, continuing into Sunday.

As if in a movie, the scene opened to at least 1,000 demonstrators swarming Trump Tower, yelling "no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA" as the president returned to his New York City home. Activists had planned protests as soon as the White House announced Trump's return, the demonstrations supercharged by his Saturday refusal to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville.

This was Trump's first visit to Trump Tower since he was inaugurated. How lucky he is, I thought, to feel safe in his home, sleep in his own bed, which seemed so important to him before he moved to the White House, while much of the country remains threatened moreso since he took office and violence increases. Will tensions alleviate after Steve Bannon is gone? I don't think Americans will be happy until Donald Trump joins the long list of people who have left the White House this year.

As local reporters offered protesters the opportunity to condemn white supremacy, it made me wonder how far we've come as a species. With all of our healing and awareness and feeling superior to humans of the past, how much have we actually evolved, or were allowed to evolve based on human design? Some suggested people were hired to stage the protest, but isn't all of reality a staged conspiracy?

We are still caught up in the age-old algorithm of power and control of one group over another. What part of the human experiment actually evolved since the beginning? We are different today because of science and technology making our lives easier in many ways and yet we exist in a hologram where the evolution of emotions can still revert to primitive levels.


For today we remain a nation divided, tensions growing within and without, the greatest threat as yet unknown. To discover the truth is to understand how we will find freedom the ultimate goal of humanity's journey. We will probably not find that answer until the end of the illusion of time in which we immerse our thoughts and actions.




Meeting in the Park in Bay Ridge


Wednesday August 23, 2017

The park across the street from my house has suddenly become very busy. Monday, the day of the eclipse, I saw a group of people sitting under a shade tree. I assumed they gathered there to view the eclipse, so I decided to join them. Once in the park, the energies of the people felt very unstable. I noted two women and about 20 men. I quietly sat down on the far end of a bench noticing that a man dressed in a red shirt was addressing the group. I couldn't hear him over the noise of the traffic so I quietly whispered to the man sitting next to me, "What's going on?" He explained it was a support group but he didn't say why they were meeting. His expression told me that I didn't belong, so I slowly walked away. Back upstairs I assumed I would watch the eclipse from my terrace, but as the time grew near I decided to go downstairs, eclipse glasses in hand. I stopped to talk to my neighbors waiting in the air condition lobby ... then walked out into the street. The energies were very different as I met the people described below. The support group had dispersed and everything felt comfortable and in balance ... The Great American Solar Eclipse Experience Text and Videos


Tuesday, I looked out over the park and saw another group of people meeting for what I assumed was a therapy session -> I was correct. They disbanded as other things started happening in the park. Entering the scene, as I watched from my terrace, were major media and police officers, their cars extending down the block to Fort Hamilton. I even noted a State Trooper parked just outside the park. I never see them in this area. Once again I took my cell phone and ventured out into the 92° heat and humidity to see what was going on. The object of the media and law-enforcement presence centered around the removal of civil war monuments, several of which are in my neighborhood. This was a throwback from last week when they removed the two plaques in front of the church around the corner. A cameraman from NBC told me that I missed a very short rally but it was peaceful ... so far ... hey you never know. He and I looked at each other as if anticipating something greater is on the horizon though each of us said nothing. As I walked back upstairs I wondered if this was going to become a regular meeting place for support groups and others.

Cuomo Seeks To Remove Confederate Names From Streets In Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn
In Brooklyn, a rally was held Tuesday as protesters fight for the renaming of General Lee Avenue and Stonewall Jackson Drive in Fort Hamilton. Both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Congresswoman Yvette Clark have called the Secretary of the Army to request the change, but he has said he believes the issue is too divisive.




Name Changes and Statue Removals

Tuesday March 27, 2018

Before I moved to Bay Ridge, I lived on Corbin Place for 20 years, a predominantly Jewish Community on a street sandwiched between Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach. Councilman takes notorious anti-Semite's name off street named Corbin Place   NY Post - March 27, 2018

A Brooklyn councilman has backed the renaming of a borough street honoring a notorious anti-Semite and rechristening it with a more deserving namesake. Corbin Place in Brighton Beach was named after 19th-century robber baron Austin Corbin, father of the Long Island Rail Road and an open anti-Semite. The onetime secretary of the American Society for the Suppression of Jews often used the word ÒexterminateÓ in relation to Jewish Americans. The half-mile-long street will still be called Corbin Place - but now after early patriot Margaret Corbin, who fought in the Battle of Fort Washington, in 1776, said City Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Sheepshead Bay). The only cost will be the posting of a smaller street sign for "Margaret Corbin Place" under one of the current "Corbin Place" markers. A ceremony is set for next month. Today Corbin Place has become home to many in the Russian community who are drawn to live by the water.





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