CNA Staff, Jul 23, 2020 / 02:16 pm (CNA).- The statue of Christopher Columbus outside of Worcester’s Union Station will remain, the city council decided Tuesday, citing the need to respect the local Italian community despite a spate of vandal attacks on statutes of historic figures and a wave of critical commentary on American monuments.
The Worcester City Council voted 8-2 on July 21 to shelve a proposal that would have ordered the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue and its replacement with a different statue or memorial to honor the Italian community.
Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson, who claims Italian ancestry, moved to shelve the proposal. She cited the recent razing of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and the closing of the cultural center there, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports.
“As someone who is Italian, that statue does represent our heritage,” said Mero-Carlson. “The Italian community has been through hell and back the last couple of years having lost their church and cultural center.”
“We don’t get the right to tell the Italian community what they should think about a statue,” she said. “Italians are proud people. We don’t get the right to tell them what to do with their statue; it should be up to the Italian community to decide. We get to make those decisions on who we are.”
The statue was donated to the city by Italian-American attorney Nunziato Fursaro in memory of his wife and erected in 1978.
Columbus has long been an American Catholic and Italian-American folk hero. They have seen his pioneering voyage from Europe as a way of validating their presence in a sometimes hostile majority-Protestant country and as the means by which Christianity reached the New World.
Columbus was long depicted as a symbol of exploration and discovery, critical for launching the encounter between Europe and the Americas. He was also a symbol of immigrants, and honors for Columbus drew opposition from nativist and anti-Catholic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
While Columbus never set foot in North America, the District of Columbia bears his name and he is the namesake of the Knights of Columbus, now the largest Catholic men’s fraternal organization in the world.
In recent decades, Columbus has drawn critical coverage. Some blame him for the launch of the transatlantic slave trade, and fault him for the enslavement and other mistreatment of some Native Americans under his command. Some critics blame him for the subsequent sufferings of Native Americans under Spanish rule, or under the rule of European colonists generally.
Councilor Sarai Rivera had introduced the failed proposal. She said the statue should be removed because of atrocities and devastation caused for indigenous people in the Caribbean, Central America, and North America.
Rivera identifies as Afro Taina and claims descent from the Taino indigenous people of Puerto Rico. She said she never participated in Worcester’s annual Columbus Day Parade.
“I could never go to celebrate someone who committed genocide on my ancestors,” she said, according to the Worcester Gazette & Telegram.
“Columbus is not about heritage. Columbus is about hate,” Rivera said to the council meeting, according to the Boston Globe. “And when you think about the amazing contributions the Italian community has done, even within our own community … that’s who we should be honoring. That’s who we should be talking about.”
The explorer had good relations with a Native American leader on Hispaniola. There, a Taino chief named Guacanagari aided Columbus after the wreck of his main ship the Santa Maria. Columbus adopted one of his sons. That son took the name of Columbus’ natural son, Diego, and accompanied Columbus on his final three voyages
In June the Worcester Columbus statue was vandalized with red paint, with the word “genocide” written on it. A Columbus statue in Boston’s historically Italian North End was beheaded.
This followed protests originally launched in response to the death of Minnesotan George Floyd, a black man, while he was being detained by Minneapolis police. Violence and vandalism, rejected by protest organizers, have caused massive damage to American cities.
Vandals particularly targeted statues of Confederate leaders, but also moved against statues of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and Spanish missionary St. Junipero Serra, a major figure of early Californian history. Catholic churches and statues have also come under attack.
In Worcester the Columbus statue’s location at Union Station is owned and operated by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority, but the statue itself belongs to the city.
Councilor Kathleen M. Toomey also spoke against removing the statue.
“I feel very strongly that we need to respect each other and not tear each other down,” she said. “And when you start taking away other peoples’ symbols without having conversation, without trying to understand what things mean, I think that’s a problem.”
The proposal cannot be brought again for 90 days unless the city council agrees to to reconsider it.
The Italian American Alliance welcomed the shelving of the proposal, and voiced hope the city would “take special care to protect the statue against vandals.”
Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty recused himself from voting.
[…]
Honor to this President for standing up for Palestinian rights and for warning our nation against the inordinate influence of Israel.
May God grant salvation to President Jimmy Carter.
Yes, let’s pray for his soul. But let’s not forget that Carter—in addition to being pro-abortion, pro-“gay marriage”, and slanderous towards pro-lifers—praised Castro and Cuba, China, Tito (“a man who believes in human rights”), Kim Il Sung, Yasser Arafat, and the PLO, Mengistu, Cédras, Assad, and Hamas. Jimmy was most inept (whereas Joe is mostly corrupt), but he was also a sanctimonious embarrassment far more often than his hagiographers (that is, the legacy media) will ever admit. For more, see my July 2009 post at Insight Scoop.
Upon Carter’s election, the astute and long-time Singapore President Lee Qwan Yew wrote (of world leaders) in his own autobiography, “we knew we would just have to put up with him for four years.”
And, on the domestic scene, we recall that it was President Carter who gave us the cabinet-level position U.S. Department of Education, surely as a reward to the teachers’ unions that helped him get elected (formed on May 4, 1980, as a result of the Department of Education Organization Act–Public Law 96-88–of October 1979; President Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law.) The gift that keeps on giving.
Educationally speaking, Shakespeare gives us a clue: “The fault is not in our ‘stars,’ but in ourselves” (“Julius Caesar”). That is, the fault is not in those who are elected but in those who elect them. The corporate Peter Principle transferred to the gummint.
Yes, the establishment of the Department of Education was foolish. Yet, who kept it going, despite, as I recall, promises to the contrary? Oh, yeah, his successor, that “great conservative” Ronald Reagan.
Bravo! Sick to death of the hagiographies popping up everywhere.
Not that Pres. Carter endorsed this policy, but something to keep in mind from the late, great Huey Long:
“I don’t know much about Hitler. Except that last thing, about the Jews. There has never been a country that put its heel down on the Jews that ever lived afterwards.”
— Huey Long
For all his faults, Huey had some wise insights. May he & Jimmy Carter rest in peace.
Palestine must earn nationhood. Terrorism must never be rewarded. For over three quarters of a century, the only thing that Palestinians have excelled in is their ability to inflict incalculable suffering on a global scale, not only on others, but also on themselves.
It will only be by a direct intervention from God Himself that the hearts and minds of radical Islam will be converted.
It is for this we must pray.
Aside from rationalizing numerous acts of Islamic terrorism, possibly to downplay and make his years of cowardice not seem so bad while president, the post-president, “great humanitarian,” Carter met with leaders of the terrorist group Hamas. He embraced Nasser al-Shaer, the man who ran the Palestinian education system, brainwashing children into believing Jews are the descendants of pigs and dogs. He laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, the most notorious terrorist thug of the 20th century.
Oh I forgot. Francis seems to indicate the Islamic world can’t do much that is morally wrong. He once reminded us that beheading children was the equivalent of domestic abuse, which he assumed was done by Catholic men since he read it in an Italian newspaper.
Freemasons defend the reputation of fellow members. Not suggesting that is what Bergoglio is doing at all, what so ever.
Thanks for your counter-witness, Carl. I confess my (naive) views of Carter have hitherto been based on the so-called mainstream media.
If Carter was mainly inept, what does that make Francis with his (supposed) assessment of him?
I volunteered in Jimmy Carter’s campaign & he was the first president I ever voted for . (And the last Democrat.) He really was a decent & faithful man in many ways but a very incompetent president.
In the beginning we believed he was a solid Christian believer but over time he veered off in some strange directions. God rest his soul.
Good question. I think there are a few factors involved. First, Pope Francis had to say something nice; it would be uncharitable to do otherwise. Secondly, Francis (I’m guessing) knows very little about Carter’s faith, life, policies, etc. Some of that is to be expected, as the Pope isn’t supposed to be an expert on all previous and current world leaders. But, thirdly, his remarks (praising “the deep faith” of Carter) just follow the standard, mainstream line, which is par for this pope and his inner circle. Fourth, I think that Francis is so keen on politics and political gestures that he probably believes Carter was a good president of deep faith. After all, that’s what the media legacy is trying to feed us here, even though the record says otherwise. Fifth, I think both men, in real ways, are 1970s liberals who have “evolved” on certain stances. Carter (as noted already) ended up embracing a hazy form of liberal Protestantism—or, better, of Protestantized liberalism—and jettisoned core moral beliefs, which in turn meant dismissing any sort of traditional, biblical Christian anthropology.
The bottom line, for me, is that Carter was mostly a disaster as POTUS and while he did some good things afterwards, he was a pro-tyrannical, pro-abortion, pro-“gay marriage”, post-1970s liberal whose Christianity was thin at best.
Carter’s was a failed presidency and American voters rejected him and his policies. I find it amusing and laughable how the leftists (inclusing Bergoglio) are tripping over themselves to canonize this man. Some of us are not fooled by the posturing. The guy was book smart but had the leadership skills of an idiot.
Carter was not a good President. I voted against him twice. He let the Iranian Shiite fanatics push him around, that said, he did become a decent ex President with the Habitat for Humanity business. I recall seeing a picture of him years ago, after he left the White House, wearing a tool belt and hammering nails at a construction site. I thought that was nice that he found some task that he can accomplish.
🤭
Agreed on his presidency. It was, overall, a train wreck. Carter was a nice guy, and that meant that he did some nice and good things. But “nice” isn’t the same as principled or strong, and Carter (in my estimation) was neither of those.
Jimmy Carter’s single greatest accomplishment was in giving the United States of America eight years of Reagan.
👍
I took your recommendation, Carl, and read your 2009 article. I believe I am now sufficiently inocculated against the current media and papal hagiography.
I do think Habitat for Humanity does good work.
Respectful farewell to Jimmy Carter. RIP.