A better idea for statue’s spot

This past Tuesday evening, the majority of Bridgeport City Council members voted in favor of the recommendation to have the statue of Christopher Columbus returned to Seaside Park.

Mayor Joseph Ganim had previously directed the removal of the statue based on the recent protests, which included the demand that statues and symbols rooted in white supremacy be removed. While the debate over symbols may not carry the same priority as education, housing and public health, the mere fact that the Council took time, energy and political calculation in voting to return the statue of Columbus speaks to the recognition and importance of symbols in Bridgeport.

To be sure, greater weight should be given to the educational issues that organizations such as Faith Acts and other grassroots networks have brought to City Hall on behalf of children’s welfare. And yet a part of their educational experience must include the reporting of accurate historical accounts. These symbols, whether on school buildings, in governmental agencies or lined in our city’s parks, represent ideas that attribute to framing particular beliefs. It is our responsibility to ensure that these historical accounts are based in a factual depiction.

There are those who desire to see Christopher Columbus from the lens of admiration, however an accurate historical investigation into his public leadership reveals his participation and complicity in slavery and genocide of Indigenous people.

There is a difference between celebrating a historic figure who has personal failures and one who is responsible for the killing of entire groups of people. Columbus’ efforts to slaughter people for economic gain is the reality we must tell our children. The doctrine of discovery issued one year after his arrival to the Americas was a means to legitimize the theft of land occupied by an estimated 100 million Indigenous people. We must be clear that because of colonization and land acquisition, Indigenous people were deemed not a people at all. This created a system by which millions were murdered, their land stolen and thus began the revision of historical facts. To this cause, we have retained historical monuments, named schools and erected symbols perpetuating a false narrative.

Perhaps there are ways in which members of the Italian community will choose to remember Christopher Columbus. Yet the community at large has a right to reject this notion of public admiration, especially in public erections of his image.

Over the past several weeks, tens of thousands of people from a variety of ages, stages and backgrounds have marched around this country to bring attention to police brutality, white supremacy and a subsequent demand to tear down historically intimidating images. These protesters realize the impact these images will have on present and future generations.

Specifically, the younger generations have led most of these efforts seeking to right the wrong of anti- Black and brown racism. From what we have observed, they will not be distracted.

For those who have voted to return the statue and have offered to erect a statue of Martin Luther King Jr., we suggest erecting statues of persons more connected to the era of Christopher Columbus and the transatlantic slave trade. We suggest Nat Turner who during his time of enslavement used physical force to seek his and other’s freedom. He is a figure who facilitated a slave rebellion that is etched in American history. In addition to Nat Turner, consider erecting a statue of an Indigenous person who fought against the colonization imposed upon them by white occupiers.

If the Christopher Columbus statue returns, it should only be placed beside statues of men and women who resisted his brutal sense of progress. It is only when those statues stand together that they began to share a more truthful story of Americas birth.