By Basil M. Russo, ISDA National President
Let’s be honest: Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey’s unilateral move to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day is more about political posturing and less about solving social issues.
Several local leaders believe renaming the holiday or uprooting Columbus statues will help pave the way to winning an election, but in reality, such ill-fated decisions are becoming a cautionary tale.
Just take a look at what’s happening in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where voters are more concerned with present day problems, i.e., crime rates and economic woes — not historical monuments and parades.
The Pittsburgh dilemma
Last year, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto approved the removal of the city’s Columbus statue. Like Janey, Peduto is a Democrat who sought to curry favor with the city’s reformists. It turned out that his stand on Columbus didn’t help him at the ballot box during the city’s Primary, where he lost by more than 7 percentage points this past May.
According to local insiders, Peduto expected to coast to a third term; instead, he found himself offering a concession speech.
Italian Sons and Daughters of America (ISDA) sued Peduto to block the removal of the statue, and the two sides are now involved in a mediation process in an attempt to find common ground, but more on that in a moment.
A losing battle in Philly
Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney, in a surprise move, abruptly changed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day earlier this year, and he also ordered the removal of the Columbus statue from Marconi Plaza as rioters raged over police brutality in 2020.
In response, he was met with two separate lawsuits: one that sought to block the statue’s removal, and a federal lawsuit that seeks to reverse the name change and declare Italian Americans as a protected class (a legal argument that could set a powerful precedent and help shield the Columbus holiday and statues across the country).
Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick this past August slammed Kenney’s decision to remove the statue, and in early October, she ordered the city to remove the plywood box that had been concealing the statue.
“It is baffling to this court as to how the City of Philadelphia wants to remove the Statue without any legal basis. The city’s entire argument and case is devoid of any legal foundation,” Judge Patrick wrote.
Kenney is appealing the rulings, and the federal lawsuit is still ongoing.
(Refer to the next page and view a letter sent by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations to President Joe Biden, after he proclaimed that Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day would be celebrated on the same day.)
A better way
It’s a fallacy to say that Pro-Columbus supporters are automatically anti-Indigenous. The truth is: we support the creation of an Indigenous holiday, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of our Italian American heritage.
The Columbus holidays and statues were created to fight back against brutal discrimination (there are more than 40 documented lynchings of Italian Americans) and fuel assimilation. It was our ancestors’ way of establishing their place on a continent that was discovered by the Genovese explorer.
Today, the parades and monuments are conflated with slavery and discrimination, which, when you know the history, is preposterous.
So, getting back to the Pittsburgh lawsuit against Peduto, here’s our proposal: if the Columbus statue stays in place, ISDA is willing to fund the construction of an inter-cultural space where folks can come together, show documentaries, and discuss their respective histories and cultures.
And that’s the real solution: let’s widen and deepen the conversation, pay homage to all sides, build more statues and resist the urge to erase history.
Then, we can all get back to addressing the real issues that plague our cities: gun violence, murder rates, poverty, a lack of quality education — all the things that voters really want to focus on.
Make a pledge and become a member of Italian Sons and Daughters of America today!
