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Nikki Haley announced. Since then, at least 60 public Confederate symbols have been removed since the 2015 church shooting, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most recently, the city of St. Louis, Mo., removed a Confedearte monument -- a 32-foot-tall granite column with a bronze sculpture -- from a park. Complicating the debate for those opposed to these moves is the involvement of hate groups like the KKK. The group is planning a rally for July 8 following a decision by the city council in Charlottesville, Va., to remove a statue of Gen. Lee Park and rename Lee Park. Meanwhile, in April, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu ordered the removal of multiple Confederate statutes. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu received brutal backlash and was forced to have heavy police presence in place when the nighttime removals began. Despite threats that people would boycott New Orleans, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu did not back down. These statues are not just stone and metal, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a highly lauded speech after the last Confederate statue had been taken down. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy ; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement and the terror that it actually stood for. But to others, like Kenneth Nail Nail, it’s not about oppression. To us, it’s not a hate thing. It’s a heritage thing and what we like to do is celebrate everyone's struggles : the blacks, the whites, the north and south.