in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Wednesday August 16, 2017
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, and made the video above.
There are many landmark monuments in this area once traversed by famous men like George Washington and Robert E. Lee. 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).
The world is changing but first we have to clean up our old messes if only symbolically and remember the nature of reality. 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
Americans have fought for freedom in many wars continuing on today with bigger weapons - from nuclear or cyber. Always there is the hope that we have become a civilized species tolerant of our differences in the algorithm of human design.
Emotions have been heating up the past few days as we approach the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. It all started last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. 2017 Incident in Charlottesville, Virginia
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
Donald Trump did not accidentally praise neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and pro-confederate demonstrators who killed a young woman last weekend and injured 20 others, last weekend. He is building back something that was a long-standing force for political power and terrorism in this country for generations. He's now doing what he can to resurrect it.
Here's something interested reported last night by Rachel Maddow (with written proof) and covered in Wikipedia
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On Memorial Day in 1927, the Ku Klux Klan marched in Queens to protest that "Native-born Protestant Americans" were being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City". Fred Trump, Donald trump's father, was one of seven men who were arrested that day "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so." In 2016, Vice magazine reported on their investigation of earlier newspaper clippings and found that Trump was the only person arrested who was not charged with any crime, leading them to conclude that he could have been a bystander; they also speculated that Trump may have been a member of the KKK, which had gone through a revival in urban areas after 1915. When asked about the issue in September 2015 by The New York Times, Donald Trump, then a candidate for presidency of the United States, denied that his father had been arrested, or that he had been in the KKK. Read more
Religious leaders to 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.
"I think it is the responsible thing for us to do," Bishop Lawrence Provenzano told Newsday. "People for whom the Civil War is such a critical moment - and particularly the descendants of former slaves shouldn't walk past what they believe is a church building and see a monument to a Confederate general." The United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned the plaques to mark the spot where Lee planted a tree outside the Fort Hamilton Parkway house of worship near 99th St. - just outside of the Fort Hamilton Army Base.
"This Tree Was Planted By General Robert Edward Lee while Stationed At Fort Hamilton from 1842 to 1847," one of the two plaques read. "The Tree Has Been Restored And This Tablet Placed Upon It By the New York Chapter United Daughters of The Confederacy. April 1912."
Lee is said to have planted several trees outside the church - which is currently being sold - during his stay at Fort Hamilton in the 1840s, about 20 years before he was named general of the Confederate Army. The tree the plaque stands before is a 'descendant' of the original tree Lee planted.
After white supremacists brought death and mob violence to Charlottesville on Saturday, Provenzano directed all of the churches in the diocese to remember the people of Charlottesville, especially those targeted by the protests. The marchers in Virginia do not represent who we are as God's people or citizens of this nation. In the face of such evil and ignorance, the church must stand in prayer and witness to the all inclusive love of Jesus Christ, he said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army shot down demands to rename two streets inside the Fort named after Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who also served at the base two decades before the Civil War.
