After over two years, Philadelphia decides the fate of city’s Christopher Columbus statue
Christopher Tremoglie
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Christopher Columbus is free again in Philadelphia after a judge’s ruling overturned a city order to box the statue. It had been hidden from the public since 2020 because of the radical beliefs of the city’s toxic Democratic leadership. Ultimately, it was yet another example of the totalitarian overreach Democrats use to suppress anything that runs counter to their beliefs and ideologies.
SEE IT: Judge orders removal of plywood box covering Christopher Columbus statue in Philadelphia
The whole ordeal began during the George Floyd riots in 2020. Anger and outrage over Floyd’s death in 2020 somehow turned into rage and resentment against the 15th century explorer Christopher Columbus. Despite his not having any connection to George Floyd, unhinged, radical leftists ransacked Columbus statues throughout the nation.
After rumors of Antifa targeting the statue in the summer of 2020, concerned citizens went to statue to guard it from any vandalism. After a couple of heated but mostly peaceful exchanges, Philadelphia’s renegade leftist mayor, Jim Kenney, took unprecedented (and it turns out illegal) action to cover up the Columbus statue with a large box made of plywood. Kenney claimed that the monument caused an unsafe environment. This was always a peculiar reason, given that the city was undergoing a violent crime surge and setting records for homicides, carjackings, and other violent crimes.
Last Friday, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt ruled that Kenney’s actions were illegal and Columbus must be unboxed. Philadelphia had designated the statue as a historic object in 2017, oddly enough also while Kenney was in office, and as such, had a duty to maintain the statue, the judge ruled.
“More to the point, the city accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876. It has a fiduciary duty to preserve that statue, which it designated an historic object in 2017,” Judge Leavitt wrote. “The Columbus statue is not City property as is, for example, a City snowblower. Whether the city agrees with the ‘message’ is simply irrelevant to its fiduciary duty to preserve and maintain public works of art that have been designated historic objects.”
Kenney expressed disappointment with the court’s decision. Today, he spoke on the issue with Philadelphia’s local media regarding the statue’s unboxing.
“When the box was put up two years ago, it was done to keep people safe,” Kenney said. “There was a lot of conflict going on down there, a lot of fights, and it seemed like it was escalating. We didn’t have the capacity at the time to remove the statue or the legal authority. We figured if we boxed it, we would put it out of sight, out of mind, which happened, and things calmed down. That’s been kind of the status quo ever since.”
If anything should have been placed in a plywood box, however, it was Philadelphia’s Democratic city leadership. Their decisions have been running the city into the ground. Philadelphia endured waves of riots and protests during the summer of 2020. City officials never took any action to prevent violence or implement any measures for “safety” in those instances.
They caved to the threat of left-wing political violent agitators.
Boxing the statue was an act of appeasement to the Left’s violent social justice mob. This was done solely to advance left-wing propaganda and political will, the true reason the statue was covered up.
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Thankfully, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt believes in the Constitution, not the disastrous doctrine of contemporary left-wing politics.