Panel eyes statue hate
MAYOR DE BLASIO on Friday unveiled his committee that will study how to deal with the sordid histories of statues, plaques and other memorials on city property.
Over the next 90 days, the 18-member group will recommend guidelines on how to “address monuments seen as oppressive and inconsistent with the values of New York City.”
The committee includes singer and civil rights leader Harry Belafonte, a longtime de Blasio supporter, and a host of artists, authors and college professors.
De Blasio appeared to have backed away from his initial proposal, tweeted on Aug. 16, that he would create a “90-day review of all symbols of hate on city property.”
Instead, the committee will merely offer suggested guidelines on how to handle controversial monuments, and recommend what to do with “a select few items,” including “pieces that have been the subject of significant public discussion.”
A de Blasio spokeswoman declined to name these items but promised a list “soon.”
The mayor also appeared to have changed his mind about having the general public weigh in about specific statues. Last month he told reporters he wanted a process “where any New Yorker can say, ‘Hey, we’d like this looked at. Here’s our concern,’ and it gets put through a process that is consistent.”
On Friday de Blasio said simply that there will be “opportunities for public and community engagement.”
The group will be co-chaired by the president of the nonprofit Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, and Thomas Finkelpearl, de Blasio’s cultural affairs commissioner.
Its members have backgrounds that will add historical, ethnic and racial perspective on how to balance what’s historically important versus what is simply offensive.
The committee, for example, includes Audra Sampson, a Mohawk associate professor of anthropology at Columbia. Many statues in New York celebrate Civil War heroes who were also involved in the brutal 19th century campaign to force Indian tribes from their homes.
Another committee member, Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prizewinning author of biographies of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, recently argued in The New York Times that statues of Confederates such as Robert E. Lee should come down while statues of Presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson - all slave-owners - should stay up.
The Friday announcement mentioned no specific statues, including one that’s already created a rhetorical conflagration — Christopher Columbus.
The mayor has refused to say whether he would support or fight removal of that statue after Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called for it to come down three weeks ago.
De Blasio vowed to create the committee in mid-August after protests in Charlottesville, Va., over removal of a Confederate statue turned violent.
Since then, de Blasio has targeted for removal a marker on lower Broadway referencing Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain and voiced support for renaming streets in Brooklyn named after Confederate generals.