To residents of New Orleans and the state, Mayor Mitch Landrieu is responsible for the purging of history which will soon take place in the Big Easy, just as the New Orleans City Council approved Landrieu’s plan last week to remove four historical monuments.

Landrieu, though, acts more as a prop it seems when it comes to removing all symbols related to the South and the Confederacy.

During the vote to remove the monuments, New Orleans City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell said the movement to remove monuments did not come from the ground up, rather it came directly from Landrieu’s office. The monuments were pre-picked by Landrieu and it entirely unclear how the mayor actually chose which monuments should go.

Sources close to the Hayride say Landrieu’s call for monuments to be removed was not simply a reaction to the Charleston AME Church shooting, but rather a well-planned and well-organized demand.

Back in June, when Landrieu called for the monuments to be removed, immediately following was a protest rally at Robert E. Lee Circle where protesters burned the Confederate flag.

Coincidentally, members of the Trilateral Commission of New Orleans, which is made up of multiple social justice advocacy groups, spoke at the flag-burning rally.

Besides the NAACP, one of the groups involved with the Trilateral Commission of New Orleans and the protest was the National Action Network, which was founded in 1991 Rev. Al Sharpton, the notorious race-baiting liberal.

Sharpton has become known for perpetually running to the scenes of racial tensions across the country and drumming up controversy among local residents.

Of course, this probably sounds familiar, because in true Sharpton spirit, that is exactly what occurred in New Orleans following Landrieu’s monument removal demand.

Sharpton’s National Action Network, however, is certainly not the only national, elite organization involved in Landrieu’s monument removal.

The global bastion-of-liberal-thought organization, the Trilateral Commission, has been wildly pushing the narrative that New Orleans must remove monuments to shed its racist history. (The Trilateral Commission of New Orleans seems to be a smaller sect of the global Trilateral Commission.)

Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson is a member of the Trilateral Commission. Oddly enough, so is New York Times writer David Brooks.

And oddly enough, both Isaacson and Brooks wrote pieces explaining why it was extremely important for monuments to be removed in New Orleans. Isaacson actually wrote a few pieces, which the Times Picayune and New Orleans Advocate published.

Brooks’ piece on New Orleans monuments appeared in the New York Times shortly after Landrieu’s call for monument removal.

Brooks and Isaacson’s pro-monument removal op-ed pieces ran on the same exact day in the New York Times and the Times Picayune.

Isaacson also has very close ties to Landrieu. The former Time magazine editor was hand-picked by Landrieu to serve on the city’s Tricentennial Committee.

Most recently, Landrieu said he wanted to create a commission dedicated to reviewing all historical monuments and street names in the city based on criteria established by Brooks and Isaacson. It is unclear what that criteria entails, but it is telling that he is pulling directly from Brooks and Isaacson’s playbook.

Why would Landrieu be following a “pathway” for monument removal outlined by Brooks and Isaacson if this issue came from the grassroots like Democrats have continued to claim in the debate?

Besides Isaacson and Brooks, other very prominent liberals who sit on the Trilateral Commission, include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell.

What’s to say the entire Trilateral Commission has not had influence on Landrieu’s monument removal decision?

Whitney Plantation Owner, New Orleans attorney and Democratic-funder John Cummings is also an influential voice in any decision, especially monument removal, that Landrieu makes.

As the Hayride reported, a source said Cummings was asked by Landrieu to be the anonymous donor to pay for the removal of the monuments. Following that report, Cummings said he was not the donor and said he had no involvement with the issue.

Back in September, Cummings touted an idea where all Confederate-related monuments and symbols would be placed in one area of the city with interpretive plaques to be an “educational conclusion to a terrible racial issue.”

Now it seems Landrieu is taking Cummings advice, saying that he is looking into creating some kind of park to place all Confederate monuments and symbols, the exact idea Cummings had months before.

Interestingly enough, a plan to create and build an entire Civil War park in New Orleans could benefit Cummings since he would be a likely pick for the architect of a potential park being that he is responsible for transforming the Whitney Plantation into a slave museum, which Landrieu praised a few years ago.

Cummings was apparently in Virginia last week, sources told the Hayride. Ironically, the Fairfax, Virginia school district just announced that they will look into renaming a number of schools named after historical figures.

The purpose of Sharpton, Isaacson, Brooks and Cummings all pushing the ‘Confederate monuments invoke racism’ narrative is to ultimately sweep the South of symbols from the past that they claim to be offensive to black Americans, even though a number of blacks do not support removing history.

Meanwhile, the New Orleans media has made the removal of monuments seem like an issue that came from the residents up to Landrieu’s office. When, in actuality, it came down directly from the Landrieu administration with the help of powerful liberal voices driving the narrative as well.

The first step was going directly through Landrieu to get Lee Circle, PGT Beauregard, Jefferson Davis and the Liberty Monument removed. Tomorrow, the elites will move onto the next pieces: Andrew Jackson’s famous statue in the French Quarter.

Down the road, they’ll move onto the historical Southern street names (because they’re racist). Then, Landrieu and Company will turn their attention to Catholic street names (because they promote one religion over another).

Eventually, New Orleans will be unrecognizable.

And it will be solely a result of well-connected, liberal elites who foisted their politically correct worldview onto the residents of a historically-rich city without checking with the voters first.