Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a meeting on Monday indicated she wouldn’t go along with her 30-member Monuments Committee if they introduce a recommendation to permanently sideline the city’s pair of uprooted Columbus statues, abc7 Chicago reports.

Lightfoot expects to receive the  committee’s recommendation in the coming days, which will likely also call for the removal of the city’s Balbo statue.

“I’ve been very clear. I do not believe in erasing history. I think you’ve got to put it in a proper context. I think you’ve got to honor the entirety of that history,” the mayor said Monday.

She continued: “[Columbus] didn’t discover America, right? The Native populations were here for centuries before Columbus sailed here. But I also know that Columbus is an incredibly important figure to many — not the least of which is the Italian American community in Chicago. So we’ve got to put that into the proper context.”

Read on: Pro-Columbus Battles Heat Up From Chicago to NYC

(In the 15th century, Europeans weren’t aware of North America’s existence, so it was correctly deemed a discovery when the Genovese explorer landed at the doorstep of the continent.)

Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans — who sued the city in the hopes of reinstalling the city’s statues — supported Lightfoot’s position to ignore the recommendation.

“That’s great news. [Columbus statues] very important to Italian-Americans. It’s our guy,” said Chicago Alderman Nick Sposato.

The pair of Columbus statues in question were removed in the middle of the night in July 2020 from Arrigo and Grant parks by city workers. In the days leading up to the removals, misguided reformists attacked police and rioted around the statues.

Lightfoot called the removals “temporary” after news broke that they had been uprooted and taken to storage.

 

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