In a revealing article about the removal of veterans monuments in Memphis, Tennessee, The Memphis Commercial Appeal cites Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, a leader in the grassroots #TakeEmDown901 campaign, who said, 

“I’m glad they made sure to protect Shelby County by having the statues removed completely from Shelby County,” she said. “But the fact of the matter is as long as statues like these remain in existence and are given to private (entities), we’re going to continue to fight into the next generation and next generation after that to where statutes aren’t on private property lining highways and standing adjacent to cities that don’t want them anymore.” The statues, she said, are symbols of white supremacy and white supremacist ideologies.

As we previously predicted, the desecration and removal of veterans monuments in public spaces comprise the first stage in the well-orchestrated campaign of cultural and historic cleansing designed to deprive Americans of their basic and most fundamental constitutionally-guaranteed rights, in this case, the rights of freedom of speech and private property.