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.
But passerby James Omorodion sees the decision to remove the statue differently.
“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.
“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.