Statues panel gets an earful
TWO DOZEN people turned out to offer their feelings about everyone from Christopher Columbus to Boss Tweed on Friday, as Mayor de Blasio’s commission to study the city’s monuments for “symbols of hate” held its first public hearing.
About half of the crowd was there to call for the removal of statues and other monuments memorializing controversial figures like Columbus — revered by Italian-Americans but disdained by some as a bringer of colonization and genocide to indigenous people.
The other half was there to offer support for Columbus and other statues — comparing any potential purge to McCarthyism.
Former State Sen. Serphin Maltese argued that getting rid of Columbus would be akin to book burning.
“I strongly urge that all of us take a more historical perspective on the matter of Columbus and stop asserting our individual, political, religious and racial opinions to make gross and untenable points that disparage and denigrate not only Columbus but his heritage, nationality, religion and all those who honor and venerate him and his historic accomplishments,” he said.
But Shawnee Rice, 27, who works with the American Indian Community House and is of indigenous descent, said the city’s statues should reflect its diversity.
“A lot of the statues — specifically talking about statues and monuments in high-traffic areas — are a lot of older white men,” she said. “For indigenous people, people of color, especially young folks, it’s problematic that we have to look up and see white men on these pedestals and we can’t see any statues that look like us.”
Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl said the solution doesn’t have to be black and white.
“You get a variety of opinions, obviously,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a misapprehension that it’s an all-or-nothing kind of proposition, that it either stays or goes.”
The city could provide “educational opportunities” to help people interpret monuments, including using QR codes that can be scanned by cell phones and direct people to more information.
Still, some monuments could be felled, he said.
The committee’s purview goes far beyond Columbus. And Jacob Morris, the director of the Harlem Historical Society, pointed to Tweed Courthouse — the headquarters of the Department of Education named for the notorious political boss.
“Tweed Courthouse — named after Boss Tweed, the most corrupt elected official in our city’s history,” he said. “Is not the Tweed Courthouse a form of a monument? And it’s the headquarters of our public school system. This is egregious.”
The commission will bring people’s specific recommendations to the mayor, who will then make a decision and direct the relevant agency to carry it out. When the agency begins the process of altering public properties, if it is to do so, a review by the Public Design Commission will be the final step in the process.