Mayor Zohran Mamdani … Little Italy will never disappear. Neither will the historic Irish, Greek, or Jewish neighborhoods that helped build New York. Italian Americans are not a footnote in New York’s story. Neither are Irish Americans. Neither are Jewish Americans. Yet, these communities were omitted from your discussion of New York’s ethnic neighborhoods. New Yorkers are entitled to ask a simple question: Why?
This is not about Italian Americans alone. It is about whether the mayor of New York believes every community that built this city deserves equal recognition, or whether history should be selectively curated to advance a political narrative.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating today’s immigrant communities. Every generation has enriched New York with new cultures, new traditions, new businesses, and new dreams. They deserve to be welcomed, celebrated, and embraced.
But celebrating today’s immigrants has never required erasing those who came before them. A city secure in its identity honors every chapter of its history. However, a divided city teaches that recognition is a zero-sum exercise — that one community’s heritage must fade before another can be celebrated. That is not unity. It is division.
The mayor is more than the chief executive of the city. He is also its chief steward. That stewardship carries a solemn obligation to preserve the complete history of New York — not merely the portions that conform to the politics or ideology of the moment. Each community arrived in the face of prejudice. None more so than Italian Americans. Each built neighborhoods, churches, schools, businesses, hospitals, charitable institutions, and civic organizations. None more so than Italian Americans. Each helped construct the New York we know today. None more so than Italian Americans.
The history of New York is cumulative. Every generation added another chapter. No generation has the right to tear pages from that book. No mayor has that right.
The Italian American Civil Rights League was founded in 1970 because Italian Americans refused to accept being stereotyped, marginalized, or erased from the American story. More than 50 years later, that mission remains unchanged.
We recognize the warning signs shown in your map because our community has lived them. We know that a people’s identity is not erased in a single dramatic act. It disappears gradually — when its history is ignored, its symbols disappear, its neighborhoods lose their significance, and its contributions are quietly omitted from the public memory.
We will gladly celebrate every new generation that comes to New York, just as generations before welcomed our families. We will celebrate every culture that contributes to this extraordinary city. But we reject the false choice that honoring today’s communities requires forgetting those that came before. New York’s greatness has never come from replacing one people with another. It has come from recognizing that every community added something indispensable to the city we all share. If the history of one community can be quietly omitted today, another community’s history can be omitted tomorrow.
Every New Yorker, regardless of heritage or politics, has a stake in preserving the integrity of our shared history. Because once we accept selective memory, as your map has promoted, we begin to lose our collective memory.
If Little Italy and the historic Irish and Jewish neighborhoods were omitted inadvertently, then correct the record. If they were omitted because they no longer fit your vision of New York, then say so openly and allow the people of this city to judge that vision for themselves.
MAMDANI’S MAP OF NYC IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOODS OUTRAGES ITALIAN COMMUNITY
History belongs to all New Yorkers. It is not yours to edit.
Respectfully,
Anthony Colombo Jr. is chairman of The Italian American Civil Rights League. Mike Crispi is president of The Italian American Civil Rights League. Gerard Marrone is vice president of The Italian American Civil Rights League.