On New Year’s Eve, as part of the America 250 celebration, Christopher Columbus’s three ships were projected onto the Washington Monument; a federally sanctioned acknowledgment that Columbus remains inseparable from the American story. In Chicago, however, city officials have decided he is too offensive for Italian Americans even to be allowed to vote on.
Yet the City of Chicago and its Park District insist they are “listening” to Italian Americans. They claim to be engaging in “community dialogue,” weighing perspectives, and thoughtfully deliberating what should replace Christopher Columbus at Arrigo Park.
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That claim collapsed during last week’s Chicago Park District Zoom meeting. Here are the facts:
The Park District recently polled the community about what should replace the Columbus statue at Arrigo Park. Columbus himself was not an option. His return was explicitly “off the table.”
And yet, when the results came back, later obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Columbus dominated the responses anyway. Despite being excluded and treated as unacceptable, a clear majority of respondents wrote Columbus in. Not Mother Cabrini. Not Florence Scala. Columbus.
That detail matters.
This wasn’t nostalgia choosing from a list. This was a community going out of its way to say, “You got this wrong.” When people override the choices they’re given and converge on the same forbidden answer, that isn’t confusion. It’s clarity.
That should have ended the process. Instead, the Park District and City Hall did what they’ve done throughout this saga: they ignored the result and stood firm.
That contempt was on full display during the Zoom meeting. Community members who submitted presentations in support of Columbus were blocked from presenting. Not debated. Not rebutted. Blocked. Public comment was then disabled entirely, ensuring officials wouldn’t have to hear from the pro-Columbus majority.
Let’s call that what it is. When a government body excludes an option from a poll, watches it win anyway, and then silences the people who supported it, that isn’t engagement. It’s suppression.
And yet officials still describe this process as “inclusive.”
The city now claims this is about finding a “better” or more “appropriate” Italian-American symbol. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini is the preferred alternative, presented as though Italian Americans need to be educated out of their own history.
Mother Cabrini deserves monuments in the neighborhoods she served. But the argument that she replaces Columbus at Arrigo Park collapses instantly. She named her hospital after Columbus. She did not view him as a moral embarrassment. She understood why Italian Americans rallied around him: because Italians were lynched, segregated, and treated as a subhuman race in America. Columbus became a symbol of dignity in a country that denied it.
Florence Scala would have recognized this moment immediately. She fought City Hall when it tried to erase Little Italy under the banner of “progress.” She didn’t accept symbolic concessions or polite dismissal. She wouldn’t have sat quietly while officials smiled and ignored overwhelming opposition from her own neighborhood.
Yet that is exactly what’s happening now and, disgustingly, with help from inside our own house.
The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans was founded to defend Italian-American interests, including Columbus Day and the Columbus statues. That was its purpose. Today, it appears more concerned with maintaining access to City Hall than standing with the people it claims to represent.
The JCCIA entered into an agreement with the city that surrendered the community’s strongest bargaining position: any realistic path to restoring the Columbus statues. In return, it received no binding commitments, no enforcement mechanism, and no guarantee of action. What was called a compromise turned out to be a permanent concession.
Call it a compromise if you want. But when leadership negotiates away the documented majority position of its own community to remain in good standing with power, it stops being leadership. History usually calls that betrayal. I call it cultural treason.
Columbus did not become a symbol by accident. The largest mass lynching in American history targeted Italians. Columbus Day and Columbus statues arose from real violence and real discrimination. They were demanded from below, not imposed from above.
Now the city tells us that honoring that history is offensive while erasing it against the expressed will of Italian Americans. That inversion tells you everything.
During Lori Lightfoot’s time as mayor, Chicago ran this same play. The Columbus statues were removed overnight with no warning or discussion, then falsely described as a temporary safety measure. A monuments commission followed. Its outcome was predictable: of all the controversial statues reviewed, only Columbus remains gone.
When a city sets up a sweeping process, and the only permanent punishment falls on one ethnic community, that’s not principled governance. It’s selective punishment.
Chicago does not get to claim it respects Italian Americans while silencing them. Additionally, organizations that enable this process do not get to claim they represent us.
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This was never about listening. It was about managing dissent until it could be ignored. Italian Americans saw through it. They wrote in Columbus anyway.
And that is exactly why the city is trying so hard not to hear us.