Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — Controversy no more.
Or will there now be more controversy?
Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tony George issued a statement Thursday that the bee hive monument/display on Public Square has been removed.
Not just the controversial brick purchased by a KKK-affiliated organization — the entire monument.
City spokesperson Tyler Ryan said the monument was removed early Thursday morning by city DPW employees and taken to the DPW garage for storage in a secure area.
“Yesterday, I directed that the brick display on Public Square be removed,” the mayor said in his statement. “After careful consideration of all issues involved, and most importantly, the fact that the display was not going to survive the ongoing renovations on Public Square, I decided now was an appropriate time to remove the display in its entirety.”
George said before the monument was removed, he reached out to a former member of Celebrate Wilkes-Barre, Inc.
”I was informed that entity is now defunct and had no interest in retrieving the display,” George said. “In the near future, the city will be issuing a press release detailing how people who wish to retrieve a purchased brick can do so.”
Regarding the mayor’s comment that the Bee Hive was not going to survive the renovations to Public Square, Ryan said the plan had always been that the display would be removed as part of the renovations.
Last Friday, Harrisburg-based activist and city native Gene Stilp climbed a step ladder and tried to pry the brick loose with a small sledge hammer and chisel. When police stopped him he reached into the cardboard box he brought, climbed the ladder again and attempted to smear roofing cement on the brick so the city would have to remove the brick.
Stilp, who was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, attended city council’s work session Tuesday and said council’s remarks affirmed his act of protest last week. Stilp said Thursday that the city should drop the charges against him.
“Maybe they should give me a thank you for getting the process going,” Stilp said when learning of the monument being removed. “It’s a good thing they removed it.”
Stilp said he felt the city was “in a bind” and the decision to remove the entire monument was made to avoid being sued.
“The only way to make sure they were immune from litigation was to remove the entire pillar,” Stilp said. “Which I advised them to do and I made city council aware of that on Tuesday. I’m happy the city followed my advice.”
Stilp said he doesn’t know what will happen now that “the offending brick” — and all others that were purchased — are gone.
City councilwoman Beth Gilbert called for the removal of a Ku Klux Klan brick from a city-owned property, legally or illegally. Gilbert took it a step further than three of the five other council members during Tuesday night’s work session in calling for the brick bearing the name of the East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire to be taken off a column on Public Square.
“I hope that after further research we are able to confidently take the brick down and in the meantime, I hope that someone, quite honestly destroys it, “Gilbert said with a laugh. “I think that that could be the best thing that could happen in the city if that brick is destroyed.”
The city had stood firm in its position that the brick, purchased at a cost of $35 and attached to the column a few weeks ago, would stay and that the free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment apply to the group in this case.
City Attorney Tim Henry offered to review the legal cases councilman Tony Brooks cited that he said dealt with the free speech issue before the city.
Brooks, who also attended Stilp’s protest, recalled a speech President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave in 1941 on the four freedoms for which America stands. FDR spoke of the freedom of speech and the freedom from fear, Brooks said.
