ORLANDO, Fla. — About a hundred people protested Saturday against the Orlando mayor’s decision to move a 100-year-old Confederate statue from Lake Eola Park to a nearby cemetery.
Augustus Invictus, who organized the protest at Lake Eola park Saturday afternoon, objected to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s decision to move the monument to Greenwood Cemetery in mid-May.
“I do not appreciate some Black Lives Matter agitators coming down from New York to tell us what to do with our monuments,” he said during a speech.
“To remove everything seems to me to deny that there was this big conflict,” said Jim Ferrant, a spectator.
But passerby James Omorodion sees the decision to remove the statue differently.
“It’s taking a statue down. It’s not taking what you believe down,” he said.
A local blogger helped lead the effort to have statue taken down in Orlando.
More than 50 city and county streets, roads, lakes and neighborhoods still bare Confederate tributes.
Interactive Map: Confederate monuments in Florida
There are six Confederate monuments still standing across Central Florida.
The statue first stood on Magnolia Avenue before moving to Lake Eola a century ago.