Florida Senate considers bill to protect Confederate monuments

A second committee in the Florida Senate approved a bill that could end efforts to move or re-design Confederate monuments and other markers of war in Southwest Florida.

The bill’s sponsor is Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin of Lee County. Martin may be new to Tallahassee, but his mission is to preserve what’s old.

“Regardless of who a memorial represents, we need to understand that there’s a lot to our history, there’s a lot to individuals—nobody’s perfect,” Martin said.

Senate Bill 1096, dubbed the “Historical Monuments and Memorials Protection Act,” says anyone who damages, defaces, destroys or removes a monument or memorial can be sued if someone believes they have “lost history” because of it.

“If the standard for keeping a memorial in a city park or somewhere else was going to be whether or not that person was perfect, we’d have no memorials,” Martin said.

Jane Schletweg, chairwoman of the Collier County Democratic Party, says memorials of those who fought to preserve the institution of slavery, like Robert E. Lee, have no place in public.

“They’re not history; they are a reminder that there were a certain group of people in this country that decided that some men were better than others,” Schletweg said.

“Whether it’s good or whether it’s bad, or whether you have a strong opinion about it or no opinion, we shouldn’t be preventing other people from learning about our history,” Martin said.

Schletweg feels there are better ways for history to be taught.

“I think that it’s important that they’re not seen as, you know, we’re glorifying these men, and they’re intent on destroying what the Founding Fathers had intended when they wrote the Constitution,” Schletweg said.

For clarification: In previous reporting, it was stated that, “According to the Florida Times-Union, 30 different confederate memorials in Florida have been removed or renamed since 2015. Martin told me that’s 30 too many.”

Senator Martin said, “I think that regardless of who a memorial represents, we need to understand that there’s a lot to our history, there’s a lot to individuals, nobody’s perfect. And if the standard for keeping a memorial, in, in a city park, or somewhere, somewhere else was going to be whether or not that person was perfect, we’d have no memorials. And as a result, we’d have no history that would be available to those who didn’t have a degree in history or didn’t have the ability to go and research for themselves. So I think that having memorials is a good thing. We shouldn’t worship them. We shouldn’t worship the people that they have. But we should understand that they represent an individual period of time in our nation’s history. And whether it’s good or whether it’s bad, or whether you have a strong opinion about it or no opinion. We shouldn’t be preventing other people from learning about our history.”