WE DEMAND A PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS REMOVAL OF CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

There should be no place in Arizona for monuments of hate and racial violence.

The Black Lives Matter Arizona and multiple organizations that stand with us, believe that Confederate monuments on state property should be removed.

We ask that Governor Ducey, the Legislative Governmental Mall Commission and the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names hold a public meeting for Arizonans to decide if they want the Confederate memorial at the Capitol and the road name and marker for Confederate president, Jefferson Davis Highway removed and renamed.

The Governor has refused to remove these monuments and instead says he’s powerless to do anything about them. For Governor Ducey to try to push the buck to citizens or to push the buck to a board that he appoints is irresponsible.

There is a shocking total of six memorials to the Confederacy in Arizona. These are not monuments to history, as the state's oldest Confederate memorial was dedicated nearly 80 years after the Civil War ended, in 1943. The newest, appallingly, went up in 2010.

Black Americans and other individuals should not be required to use their taxpayer dollars to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of these memorials to hate and violence. To have a monument that honors that ideology is honoring the institution of slavery, which is what the Confederacy stood for.