NAACP, Black Lives Matter rip Ducey over stance on Confederate monuments

Community leaders on Tuesday called for Gov. Doug Ducey to meet with them and explain why he won’t take steps to remove Confederate monuments from state lands.

Those monuments, such as a memorial to Arizona Confederate troops erected in 1961, are symbols of terrorism and hate, said Roy Tatem, president of the East Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“Explain to us why government dollars, government funds, are used to house, facilitate and maintain symbols of a terrorist organization known as the confederacy. And they were a terrorist organization. They were a secessionist organization,” Tatem said at a press conference next to the Confederate troops monument at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza. “They did not stand for the United States of America. They did not stand for our constitution. They were supportive of slavery. They were supportive of segregation.”

Ducey told reporters Monday that “it’s important that people know our history. I don’t think we should try to hide our history.”

Officials in other parts of the country have sped up decisions on what to do with Confederate monuments, and in some cases whether to remove them, in the wake of a violent white supremacist rally over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. White nationalists had been granted a permit to rally at a park where city officials planned to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Rev. Brian Kemp-Schlemmer, pastor at City Square Church in Phoenix, said the presence of those monuments in Arizona send the wrong message.

“We know that symbols like this communicate a safety to an ideology that should not feel safe in Arizona,” he said. “They should not feel as though they can speak in openly divisive ways, and they certainly should not feel as though they are allowed to Christianity and use that as an excuse to drive people apart.”

The governor had tweeted Sunday night that he “categorically 100 (percent) condemn neo-nazi, KKK, Klan, race/white supremacy groups+the violence and hate they preach. No place for it in Arizona.”

Rev. Reginald D. Walton, the outgoing chair of Arizona Black Lives Matter, said the governor’s subsequent decision to allow Confederate monuments in the state to remain undercut that message.

“Gov. Ducey, you cannot have it both ways. He spoke that racism and hatred have no place in this country, and in particular in Arizona. He sent out a tweet that said the same,” Walton said. “But then to cower down and to say that he has no interest in removing these very monuments that just a few moments prior he said have no place in this country. Gov. Ducey, you cannot have it both ways.”

Tatem said the governor could “take the lead” on starting a conversation about removing Confederate memorials, which Tatem and others at the press conference acknowledged involves the work of boards and commissions like the Legislative Governmental Mall Commission and the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names.

Instead, Ducey’s response to calls for the removal of Confederate monuments Trump-like, Tatem said.

“We want to make sure that Gov. Ducey does not take a Donald Trump approach in his un-response to the hatred, because that’s how Gov. Ducey’s sounding. He’s sounding a lot like Donald Trump when (Trump) halfway condemned white supremacy and white supremacists on Saturday, and then later on he came down to call it out by name,” Tatem said. “Gov. Ducey’s taking the same stance, and this is not the time to play those kind of politics.

A spokesman for the governor did not immediately return calls for comment.

Capitol Media Services contributed to this report.