Bastrop County begins process of relocating Confederate monuments statesman.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from statesman.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The latest fundraising endeavor from the Bastrop County Monument Relocation Committee to generate the money needed to remove and relocate a pair of Confederate monuments on the grounds of the Bastrop County Courthouse will feature one of country music’s biggest acts.
The 13-time Grammy-winning Texas band The Chicks will be one of several local and national music acts performing during a live-streamed, virtual concert to raise funds to support the committee’s efforts.
The online concert, known as the “Move Forward Virtual Music Fest,” will take place at 6:30 p.m. Monday and will be streamed on the Monument Relocation Bastrop Facebook page and the YouTube channel of Grace Pettis, one of the performing artists.
Death Row, Texas: A lonely birthday for innocent Rodney Reed
By Gloria Rubac posted on December 24, 2020
Bastrop, Texas
Rodney Reed’s family and supporters had a press conference and rallied outside the Bastrop County Courthouse, with its Confederate monuments 25 yards away on the lawn. Reed was railroaded to death row inside the courthouse in 1998 by Bastrop County’s historically racist injustice system.
Rodrick Reed, speaking to the media.
On Dec. 19, three days before Reed’s 53rd birthday, a crowd gathered to wish him a Happy Birthday and to let him know that they are fighting for him until he is home with his family.
BASTROP With the morning rain cleared and sunshine and blue skies overhead, Rodrick Reed spent Saturday afternoon on the steps of the Bastrop County Courthouse rallying supporters ahead of death row inmate Rodney Reed s birthday and marking another year that his brother remains behind bars.
Rodney Reed, who in 1998 was convicted of capital murder in the strangulation death of Stacy Stites two years earlier, will turn 53 on Tuesday. It will be the 23rd birthday he’s spent on death row.
The years since Reed s conviction have been a legal labyrinth involving three post-conviction judges, several appeals and a stay of execution that spared Reed’s life just five days before he was scheduled to be killed in November 2019. Reed and his legal team have maintained that he is innocent.
The months-long process to remove and relocate two Confederate monuments from the Bastrop County Courthouse lawn reached a milestone Monday when representatives from the group tasked with finding a new home for the statues recommended several options to commissioners.
Sharah Johnson and Cheryl Lee, co-chairs of the county’s Monument Relocation Committee, also updated the Commissioners Court on the group s fundraising efforts and bids it received from contractors to remove and relocate the monuments.
The Commissioners Court now has recommendations to deliberate and proceed with the process of removing and relocating the monuments, which likely won’t begin until April.