While Mayor Landrieu was charged with the challenging decision of removing the Confederate monuments from public spaces in New Orleans, he showed good leadership skills that helped him achieve the task. According to Kruse (2012), leadership is doing what one thinks is right, for they will be criticized anyway. Mayor Landrieu’s actions seemed to have resonated with this definition. According to the mayor, the statues were not justified to be standing in the middle of the city. He believed that the soldiers whose monuments stood in the city did not fight for the country but instead fought against it. They may have been worriers but should not be viewed as patriots to deserve such an honor. As he remarked, the statues are not materialistic as they seem. Neither do they resemble the innocence of the benign history.
Even though a faction may believe that the celebration of the said soldiers was justified through the monuments, the major purposively chose the right thing to remove them across the street. According to the mayor, it was high time the city forgot about the statues and their history. In the wake of the civil war, the monuments became part of terrorism. They were established to mainly signify about who was still in charge of the city.
Another definition that resonated with the mayor’s action is an ability of the leaders to spot a problem before escalating to an emergency. According to the mayor, putting the confederacy on the pedestal in the most iconic places of honor is an inappropriate recounting of the past. History is unchangeable and cannot be moved like a statue. The civil war ceased, and the confederacy lost. It is high time to remove the dark time to recognize that the cause of the confederacy was unjustified. The standing of the statues seems to constantly remind people of the past hence a problem. The problem could exacerbate by the persistence of the monuments. Hence the need to remove them.
It is critical for every leader to identify a problem and take appropriate steps to restore sanity and peace to the people. The statues may bring indivisibility in the future that may not be easy to root out in society. As a successful leader, part of soliciting other people’s ideas for solving a problem, having amicable solutions to relate to other people’s views is fundamental for a successful step.
Lastly, the mayor’s actions also coincide the leadership art, which is to say no and not say yes as yes is said more easily. He said no to the erection of the monuments, and he desired to bring down the turmoil brought by the monuments. As he states, taking down the monument could be tough, he believed he was elected to do the right thing. While some believed the monuments meant good for the people. The mayor said no to this illusion and did the right thing of taking it down. According to him, moving the monuments is not about politics and any retaliation but showing the whole world that the city acknowledges, understands, reconciles, and chooses a pleasant future for ourselves, making straight anything crooked and making right every wrong.
References
The New York Times. (2017). Opinion | Mitch Landrieu’s Speech on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans (Published 2017). Nytimes.com. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-landrieus-speech-transcript.html?auth=-google1tap.
Kruse, K. (2012). 100 Best Quotes On Leadership. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/10/16/quotes-on-leadership/?sh=6e0f87fb2feb.
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