Mitch Landrieu Speech Analysis

New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, gave a speech on May 19th, 2017 addressing the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Landrieu does this to show his full support and explain why they are removing the statue. He uses a heavy and empowering tone, as well as facts and references throughout his speech to rally others into seeing and agreeing with his views. Mayor Mitch Landrieu understood that when he gave this speech, there were some things that he had to emphasize by repeating. One of the major things he tries to emphasize is the fact that New Orleans is a melting pot of many cultures and that ¨Out of many, we are one¨. He does this to get the point of ¨we are all one and together we are strong¨ across; This is to help him bring everyone …show more content…
Mayor Landrieu however, seems to be familiar with the difference because he shows both in his speech. A lot of the details he brought up in the beginning were about how a lot of details were left out of history on purpose. He tells us this when he brings up that “the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom Riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp”. These are things that many people don't know. One of the other important details he brings up is how “The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy”. These simple details add a lot of power to his …show more content…
It helps make it so people can understand and keep up with what youre talking about, rather than being confused the whole time you're talking. Like most Rhetoric speeches, Landrieu arranges his speech to end with a call to action. His speech starts with telling people about New Orleans and it's “sad searing truth” about why the statues were put up in the first place, which leads him to the next part of his speech; why we need the statues gone. They are not something to be proud of because they were put up to intimidate people. He then goes on to say that “ Out of many we are one.”, and that we are a family, because “New Orleans is truly a city of many nations”. Lastly he ends his speech with a call to action. He goes in depth about why we need to stick together to help make everyone feel safe and to help future generations. We need to know our history and be able to accept and move past it. Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave an extremely well done rhetoric speech. He used facts, references, diction and more to get a crowd of people to understand why they were taking down these statues and why we needed to “fix” america. He empowered the crowd by ending his speech with a call to action saying “It is our acknowledgement that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history. Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul