Washington D.C. — Today on a new episode of “Thinking CAP,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu sits down with co-hosts Michele Jawando and Igor Volsky to discuss his decision to remove four Confederate monuments from the public spaces in the city of New Orleans. The Center for American Progress recently hosted Landrieu to discuss this same topic before a capacity audience in Washington. Today, Mayor Landrieu will address the United States Conference of Mayors’ (USCM) annual meeting following his election as USCM’s president.
“Those monuments are a lie, not only about what the civil war was about, but it was a lie that those monuments represented who New Orleans was,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu on the podcast. “After Katrina destroyed New Orleans, we began to rebuild the city. One of the most amazing things that the people of New Orleans did, was to allow me to really push the city into a space of not putting the city back the way it was but actually doing a deep dive of who we were, what our history was, and how, if we were going to put the city back, we would put it back in a condition of what it should have been if we’d gotten it right the first time.”
In this week’s episode, Jawando and Volsky also speak with New York Times bestselling author and historian Ibram X. Kendi on his new book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which is about the function and history of racist thought in America.
“Thinking CAP” is a 25-minute weekly podcast hosted by Michele Jawando, vice president of the Legal Progress team at the CAP, and Igor Volsky, vice president at the CAP. Launched in May 2017, “Thinking CAP” is a weekly podcast about the ideas, issues, and solutions that lead us to march, chant, and raise our voices to participate in our democracy.
The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, and on CAP’s website.
For more information or for information on guest booking, please contact Sally Tucker at 202.481.8103 or [email protected].