#147 How to Remove a Confederate Monument w/ Adam Swensek
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2019
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2015, the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four Confederate monuments from the city. Immediately following that vote, the monuments' defenders sought to use the courts to prevent their removal. In the end, the city prevailed, and the last of the monuments came down in May of 2017. In this episode, Ben and guest co-host Tanya Marsh speak with lawyer Adam Swensek, who led the New Orleans City Council's legal team as they defended the city's right to remove these public monuments. The conversation covers the history of the monuments, the arguments that both sides used in court, and what monuments can (and can't) tell us about the history.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, |
| 0:17.0 | music and culture of the South, with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights |
| 0:22.4 | into how all of it fits together. I'm your host, Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore |
| 0:27.9 | the music of the South and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories. I'm Ben Sawyer, and this is the road to now. |
| 0:47.6 | Today's guest is Adam Swinzik. |
| 0:50.3 | Adam is a lawyer who represented the city of New Orleans following their 2015 decision to take down four Confederate monuments. |
| 0:59.9 | The conversation is fascinating. It starts off with the history of the monuments, kind of their origins, their meaning. |
| 1:07.4 | We get into the story of how the New Orleans City Council voted to get rid of these. |
| 1:13.0 | And then the legal process and the arguments, the for and against, and kind of that whole process. |
| 1:18.7 | So it's really a great episode. |
| 1:20.8 | We cover the history. |
| 1:22.4 | But we also talk about what this means in light of today's events. |
| 1:27.0 | And I really loved having him on |
| 1:29.2 | as you'll hear I was fortunate enough to listen to him on an ABA panel talking |
| 1:33.6 | about this but the moderator for that and my co-host for this and I think the |
| 1:40.0 | next episode as well is Tanya Marsh who you you guys know, a great friend of the podcast. |
| 1:45.3 | She was in episode number 76 talking about cemeteries. |
| 1:49.6 | And so we were fortunate enough to have her while Bob is out working to promote the new album, |
| 1:55.4 | which I should say, the Ava Brothers new album. |
| 1:57.8 | Again, I can save this because Bob isn't here. |
| 1:59.7 | It's fantastic. |
| 2:01.1 | If you haven't listened to it, go check it out. Always amazed by how great they are. Speaking of |
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