WHOSE COLUMBUS? WHOSE COLUMBUS DAY? - Part 4

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(4) CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AGAINST THE WORLD

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an ironic mash-up must be worth ten thousand —even if the masher gives Harrison more credit than he probably deserves.

When it comes to Columbus "backfiring", where do we begin? We can fast-forward to the shocking murder of George Floyd —an unarmed black man —by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020.

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What does George Floyd have to do with the Italian-American version of Christopher Columbus? A seeming non-question, but not in the current ideological climate.

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If we lived in another world, I would juxtapose two distinct sets of facts:

(1) The historical Cristoforo Colombo / Cristóbal Colón / Christopher Columbus was responsible (directly or indirectly) for unspeakable evils, some of which persist to the present day.

(2) The historical Cristoforo Colombo / Cristóbal Colón / Christopher Columbus has just about nothing to do with the one that was shoved into a wooden box in Piazza Marconi in Philadelphia in the early summer of 2020.

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Then I would venture a pair of personal observations:

(3) There were very fine (if sometimes misguided) people on both sides.

(4) There were essentially dreadful people on both sides too.

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Thousands of protestors rallied in Philadelphia over the course of several weeks (May 30-June 21, 2020). Violence was in the air, so the police turned out in record numbers. For some, the sight of massed uniforms was more than a little creepy, in the wake of the George Floyd murder.

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The ghost of a Philadelphia Mayor (also Police Commissioner) hovered over the mayhem —turning it into a tale of three men: George Floyd, Christopher Columbus and Frank Rizzo.

Or three men and two statues, we might say— with more than enough intersectionality to go around.

What would Philadelphians do without Francis Lazzaro Rizzo (1920-91) —now dead for nearly a quarter-century but still beloved in some circles, still a bounteous source of mind-blowing stories and only-in-Philly jokes?

A real neighborhood boy and then some, Frank Rizzo was born to a police family in a classic row-house just a few blocks from what would later be called Marconi Plaza.

He dropped out of the local high school, became a patrolman, became Police Commissioner, became Hizzoner the Mayor —all in the last rambunctious days of the old Democratic political machine.

Rizzo often seemed like a clownish neanderthal (he worked hard at it, in fact) but he was street-smart and knew how to get things done.

Racism, misogyny and homophobia were essential to his brand. He was also devoted to Christopher Columbus.

In 1976, on the cusp of the American Bicentennial, he brought this hero home— shifting the Columbus Monument from Fairmount Park to Marconi Plaza, right across the street from the Italian Fascist inventor.

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Frank Rizzo had a statue of his own—ten feet tall, in bronze, by the Philadelphia artist Zenos Frudakis. In 1999, it was installed in front of the Municipal Services Building, right acoss from City Hall.

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Not a lovable work of art, the Rizzo statue received its share of hostile attention. Then in the early days of the BLM+ protests, it emerged as a potent symbol —in everyone's face, right in the center of town.

Frank Rizzo was the poster boy for racialized violence, having based his career as Police Commissioner on exactly that.

During the turmoil of 2020, the Philadelphia Police (long post-Rizzo) still found themselves compelling targets —not least because of their perceived chumminess with counter-protesters on the anti-Black Lives Matter and pro-Columbus side.

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Mayor James Francis Kenney (born 1958) was another South Philly product and the son of a fireman—but unlike Frank Rizzo, he was nearly forty years younger and Irish too.

From 2016 to 2024, he presided over an evolving city and wanted as little as possible to do with outrages perpetrated on someone else's watch.

Kenney ran through a rapid series of whereases—sixteen of them, in fact:

WHEREAS, the Statue has become a painful symbol of racism, bigotry, and police brutality for members of the Black community, the LGBTQ community, and many others because of how their communities were treated by the Philadelphia Police Department under Mr. Rizzo’s leadership, and its presence on City property has negatively impacted police-community relations...

WHEREAS, many Philadelphians hold varying opinions on the Statue, but one of the things that all Philadelphians can agree upon in 2020 is that the Statue divides our great City...

WHEREAS, the continued display of the Statue, because of its infamy and association with racism, bigotry, and police brutality, has enraged persons protesting Mr.Floyd’s death and many others, and, once again, the Statue was subject to numerous attempts by enormous crowds to demolish, light on fire, excavate, smash, break, and topple it— risking severe injury and death to nearby persons and causing damage to other City property...

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NOW, THEREFORE, I, James F. Kenney, by the power vested in me as the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia …do hereby declare as follows: The Managing Director shall immediately ...carry out the safe and secure removal of the Statue from the front of the Municipal Services Building, in whole or in parts …The Statue or its parts should be placed in secure storage by the Department of Public Property until such time as a plan is developed to donate, relocate, destroy, or otherwise dispose of the Statue... June 2, 2020.

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So, that was that for the Rizzo Statue...Four years later, it remains in storage (in whole, not parts).

The fate of the Marconi Park monument was more complex. Rizzo was a local phenomenon, while Columbus triggered reactions across the country and around the world.

Then there were the statues themselves. Unlike the Zenos Frudakis bronze, the Emanuele Caroni marble was 150 years old and could make a plausible case for being a work of art.

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First, a grand plywood box was erected around the Columbus Monument, protecting the statue and buying time, while creating an instagrammable meme for the ages.

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Controversy...

Concerns...

Appropriateness...

Deep divides...

No decision has been made...

During the summer of 2020, the city council eventually resolved to remove the statue... until such time as whatever... but no concrete steps were taken and it remained in its box.

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Columbus Day 2020 rolled around—a notably low-key occasion in Phildelphia that year.

Meanwhile, The Box held its grip on right-wing politicians with axes to grind.

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The Second Monday in October was the 12th that year—five months after the death of George Floyd and three weeks before the November 5 presidential election.

Donald J. Trump dispatched Rudy Giuliani, his highest profile Italian-American surrogate, to spin as much ethnic outrage as he could.

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Candidate Trump was with Giuliani in spirit, wringing every drop of rancor from The Columbus Thing.

2020 was the fourth time that he presided over that particular holiday, but never before had he taken any particular notice of the event.

In one regard at least, he remained utterly consistent—his perfect silence concerning Indigenous Peoples on what is now U.S. soil.

Three days earlier, on October 9, Trump set the stage with a bull-horn proclamation in full "American Carnage" mode (unlike his perfunctory announcements in past years).

He began with elementary school history ("Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed across the Atlantic Ocean on the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María"), then segued into amiable sterotyping ("the warmth and generosity of nearly 17 million Italian Americans, whose love of family and country strengthen the fabric of our Nation").

He evidently forgot the part about "science, medicine, entrepreneurship, education and the arts".

Finally, he got down to MAGA business, with the George Floyd convulsons still fresh in everyone's mind:

"Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy.  These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions.... We must teach future generations about our storied heritage, starting with the protection of monuments to our intrepid heroes like Columbus."  

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Trump continues:

"This June, I signed an Executive Order to ensure that any person or group destroying or vandalizing a Federal monument, memorial, or statue is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

June 3, 2020 was the date of his order. For the sake of our timeline, Frank Rizzo was being removed from his berth in Center CIty Philadelphia exactly then and Christopher Columbus was already in protective police custody in Marconi Plaza.

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Many say that we now live in a Post-Truth or Post-Factual Age.

That may or may not be so, but we certainly broke the back of what was formerly known as Irony.

Trump's supporters couldn't get enough of his campaign (electoral and otherwise) "to root out the ...type of revisionist history that is trying to erase Christopher Columbus".

What was there not to love in the Executive Order ensuring the "protection of monuments to our intrepid heroes like Columbus"?

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Then came Trump's electoral defeat and the protracted MAGA Afterparty.

The irate Ex-President unleashed a riot far more violent and destructive than anything he had ever decried on the other side.

Did the insurgents even know—or care—that they were breaking into the Capitol through the historic Columbus Doors, damaging them in the process?

This intriguing detail was largely overlooked by the media.

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The obsesson with Cancel Culture did not wane —but to each their own style.

Those on the conservative spectrum raged about beleaguered truth-tellers —usually individuals —banished from the public discourse for espousing politically incorrect views.

They also fixated on signs and symbols —monuments included —that told the story of a now contested past (ie. "Cancel Culture Comes for Christopher Columbus".)

The left took a maximalist view, casting themselves as champions of a broad swathe of suppressed but intersecting races and peoples— amorphous masses of the "the unseen" and "the unheard" (ie. "A Riot is the Language of the Unheard.")

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Both sides lobbed their own claims of victimization, obscuring basic facts and shutting down rational argument before it began.

Yes, Columbus and his ilk did terrible things (by the standards of our time, but often by the standards of their own too).

However, the ancestors of today's Italian-Americans had been nowhere near the scene of the crimes in 1492, 1592, 1692, 1792 and even after.

Instead, many were living as colonized people themselves, in the lands most of them eventually left in the South of Italy.

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On Columbus Day, most Italian-Americans want to have fun and feel good about being who they are. So nostalgia leavened with amiable silliness is the prevailing mode.

In 2021, it was a bittersweet occasion. As of January 27 —by way of more mayoral wherases— Columbus Day no longer existed in Philadelphia.

Not as an official holiday, at least:

WHEREAS, the story of Christopher Columbus is deeply complicated. For centuries he has been venerated with stories of his traversing the Atlanltic and "discovering" the "New World". The true history of his contact is in fact infamous. Mistakenly believing that he had discovered a new route to India, Columbus enslaved indigenous people, and punished individuals who failed to meet his expected service through violence and, in some cases, murder;

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NOW, THEREFORE, I, MAYOR JAMES F. KENNEY, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, by the powers vested in me by the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, do hereby ORDER as follows:

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The City holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October, formerly known as COLUMBUS DAY, shall now be designated as INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY.

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At the national level, President  Biden went for a Salomonic solution— issuing two parallel proclamations on October 8, 2021, effectively splitting the holiday down the middle.

Henceforth, the  Second Monday in October would be Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day —all at once. So choose either, both or neither and call them what you will.

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Italian-Americans in Philadelphia were not going to stop celebrating Columbus Day and Frank Rizzo was not going away any time soon. For many, both were victims of the same cancelation and/or decolonization campaign.

In the lead-up to the October 10, 2022 holiday, City Councilman Mark Squilla (whose district included Marconi  Plaza), induced the city to beautify The Box.‍

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According to a prevalent tale, the official order was simply to paint it Park Service Green.

But then...in the light of the new day...eccolà!

Philadelphia had a down-home monument to the local resistance.

"Don't Re-think the Name of Columbus Day"???

In fact, there was no end of rethinking going on.

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A deeply-felt appeal... The author traces Columbus Day to 1937 (with Roosevelt), not 1892 (with Harrison) and introduces the long-lost theme of the New Orleans lynchings.

After more than a hundred years, people are once again focusing on the 1891 Italian massacre— although it remains to be proven that the tragic event had a substantive impact on the 1892 holiday. (Documents might yet emerge from the Italian or American diplomatic correspondence. Has anyone looked?)

It also remains to be proven that the forty year-old Italian massacre influenced the American Congress or Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934-37. (The issue does not seem to have been in the air at that time.)

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A (rather good) movie was released in 1999, focusing on the New Orleans lynchings. In the screen notes before the closing credits, there is no mention of the imminent 1892 holiday—exactly the sort of wrap-up that film-makers love.

Today, it is still not clear when these tragic events were fully absorbed into the Columbus Day narrative. Maybe not until Columbus and Columbus Day came under increasing fire in recent years?

In any case, Italian-Americans were not going to leave their own sufferings out of the story.

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Jumping back to the long hot summer of 2020, Candidate Biden had to come up with something after Candidate Trump's June 3, 2020 Executive Order against "destroying or vandalizing a Federal monument, memorial, or statue". ‍

Trump was mostly blowing hot air, since few of the works in question were Federal property (including the Marconi Plaza statue). But still, this was a visceral issue for many voters.

Joseph Biden called a news conference on June 30, 2020, his first since emerging from COVID quarantine. A reporter asked:

"[T]he nation is in this moment of reckoning when it comes to race, we’re seeing the removal of statues, also the removal of names from institutions and schools, do you think that this is the right approach to come to terms with our nation’s history and its leaders? What do you think when you see the removal of some of these statues?"

The president replied (with less than crystal clarity):

"I think with regard to those statues that are in monuments like the Jefferson Memorial or whatever, I think there’s an obligation that the government protect those monuments because they’re different than that’s a remembrance. It is not a dealing with, revering somebody who had that view. They had much broader views. They may have things in their past that are now and then distasteful, but that’s a judgment for the … For example, taking down, toppling Christopher Columbus statue, George Washington’s statue, or et cetera, I think that is something that is, the government has an opportunity and a responsibility to protect from happening."

Joseph Biden seems to have threaded the needle, for a while at least—when it came to Christopher Columbus and two slave-owning presidents. But after winning the 2020 election, concrete action was hard to avoid.

On Friday October 8, 2021, he issued two separate proclamations declaring Monday October 11 —both at once—Columbus Day (per usual) and Indigenous Peoples Day (brand new).

As the Associated Press reported on October 9: ‍

"While Native Americans have campaigned for years for local and national days in recognition of the country's indigenous peoples, Biden's announcement appeared to catch many by surprise."

There was a less gratifying surprise for Italian-Americans—as the New York Post signaled on that same date:

‍"Biden also marked Columbus Day on Friday, but—in an unusual move—included a lengthy carve out for his [Columbus'] detractors in his statement."

In fact, the vehement 135-word denunciation of "the wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities" overwhelmed any grudging acknowledgement of the man whose holiday the president was allegedly proclaiming.

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This egregious insult to Italian-Americans was entirely unnecessary. President Biden had already made his "historic apology" in the appropriate place —the Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation. Now he had a year to put this fiasco behind him and rebuild the Federal Holiday from scratch.

Monday October 10, 2022 was the next Columbus Day. In his announcement on the Friday before, he stripped away the anti-Indigenous "wrongs and attrocities", then swapped in anti-Italian ones instead: ‍

"Things have not always been easy; prejudice and violence often stalled the promise of equal opportunity. In fact, Columbus Day was created by President Harrison in 1892 in response to the anti-Italian motivated lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891. During World War II, Italian Americans were even targeted as enemy aliens."

Was this the first time that the Federal Government officially —or even unofficially —paired Columbus Day with the New Orleans lynchings? What about Benjamin Harrison's once-and-done celebration in 1892? Does it really connect to the present day?

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Maybe the Executive Branch knows things we don't—historical facts, that is to say?

Or maybe they just watch the same movies and visit the same web sites as everyone else?

Then came Columbus Day 2023 (October 9).  In that year's proclamation, Biden shifted the New Orleans lynching and Benjamin Harrison to the top of the page.

Then he went Full Christopher—inducting the Great Navigator into every Italian-American family:

"In 1891, 11 Italian Americans were murdered in one of the largest mass lynchings in our Nation’s history.  In the wake of this horrific attack, President Benjamin Harrison established Columbus Day in 1892.  

For so many people across our country, that first Columbus Day was a way to honor the lives that had been lost and to celebrate the hope, possibilities, and ingenuity Italian Americans have contributed to our country since before the birth of our republic...

For many Italian Americans, the story of Christopher Columbus’ voyage... remains a source of pride. It reflects the stories of trips across the Atlantic that so many Italian Americans grew up hearing at the dinner table...

Today, we honor those stories told around the dinner table and celebrate what these hopeful Italian American newcomers brought to our Nation. "

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Meanwhile in Philadelphia, the pro-Navigator forces had been fighting an uphill battle to keep their statue in place.

On August 18, 2021 —less than two months before the president's grim "wrongs and atrocities" proclamation —a Pennsylvania judge intervened, ordering the city to back off.

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Not just a local story, the Daily Mail—a UK tabloid—devoted a long article to this intriguing development:

‍Judge rules 144-year-old Christopher Columbus statue in Philadelphia can remain after city voted to remove it last July 'without any legal basis'"

● Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ruled that Philadelphia’s decision to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus was ‘without any legal basis’

● The city’s arts commission, historical commission and city council decided to remove the statue following last year’s protests against police brutality

● Attorney George Bochetto, representing the friends of Marconi Plaza, said his clients were ‘ecstatic’ – they now seek to remove the box obscuring the statue

● 'While we are very disappointed with the ruling, we’re…exploring all potential options…including an appeal’ said Mayor Jim Kenney’s Office.

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Sixteen months  later—on December 9, 2022—the Friends of Marconi Plaza scored another big win. On that day, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court (an intermediate appellate body) blew away the plywood box.

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The Friends lost no time in returning their hero to the public gaze, after two-and-a-half years of internal exile.

"Fate of the Columbus Statue uncertain!" were the words on many lips. So maybe time will tell?

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As of now, the Great Navigator is still right there —under the watchful eye of an entire neighborhood.

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And under the watchful eye of someone else— back in the White House.

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As for Columbus Day 2025 ...stay tuned!

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But meanwhile, a preview of coming attractions?

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