A City Council committee will take public comment and consider a resolution to move a statue of Christopher Columbus from a prominent city park at its meeting tomorrow, December 2, 2020.
The resolution was referred to the Council’s Committee on Administration, Finance and Law at the November 12, 2020 Council meeting.
The resolution will now be considered by that committee at its meeting on December 2, 2020. That meeting is start at 7:00pm with a public hearing on an unrelated matter and public participation on the Columbus statue resolution.
Introduced by two Democratic Council members, Ald. Chris Anderson (D-AL) and Ald. Colin Osborn (D-2), the resolution calls for the removal of the statue of Columbus from its present location on city parkland at the corner of Main and North streets and replacing it with another symbol honoring Italian Americans in New Britain.
In the November 12th Council meeting Ald. Anderson said that he thought that the Council had enough information needed to approve the resolution at that time.
But, Republican Ald. Sharon Beloin-Saavedra (R-AL), while claiming to support moving the statue, made a motion to refer the resolution to committee, saying that she wanted the committee to consider who is to remove the statue, at what costs and where it will go. Expressing concern that some resolutions have died in committee, Anderson said that he was putting his faith in the Council’s Republican majority that the resolution would return for final approval.
In October, in a Council committee, City Council Republicans voted down a proposal that would have created a strong community police review board in New Britain, a move that prompted the New Britain Racial Justice Coalition to announce that it is seeking public documents to find out, “what is happening behind the scenes.”
Apparently confirming Ald. Anderson’s concerns, on November 24, 2020, the Hartford Courant reported that Republican Mayor Erin Stewart is considering deferring the question of whether to remove the Columbus statue from a public park to a non-binding referendum.
“There is no precedent for a non-binding referendum in New Britain,” said Anderson. “The Republican majority killed the Police Civilian Review Board proposal, decided to allocate surplus funds to police instead of education, and gave elected officials a 13% pay increase during a pandemic—all without the Mayor calling for more public input. We have heard from the community for months. A majority of residents want the statue removed and it is time to vote.”
With nationwide protests against racism and inequality including a focus on bringing down symbols of racism and colonialism, renewed attention to accounts from a priest, Bartolome de las Casas, and others, telling about enslavement, murder, rape and other brutality upon native peoples under Columbus’ conquests have led to successful calls for statues of him being removed in some cities.
The issue of removing the statue from the city park has been the subject of public discussion for months, with considerable support for it being moved. The New Britain Racial Justice Coalition has been advocating for the city to remove the statue since July. The group held a protest against the statue in July and has been pressing for its removal since.
New Britain NAACP President Ronald P. Davis commented in July that,
Although Christopher Columbus is remembered as a ground-breaking explorer, we must remember his actions led to the transatlantic slave trade and the mass killing and exploitation of indigenous people. He is the cornerstone of ‘Institutional Racism’ in America.
“As a community, we cannot continue to praise a man who stole land and continually chose to dehumanize native people,” Davis said in his July comments, “Why should we have a statue, or a street dedicated to anyone who stands as a symbol for the violence?”
Opposition to moving the statue has been expressed, but drew strongly worded rebukes from community leaders about racist comments made against removing the statue.
The resolution proposed by Ald. Anderson and Ald. Osborn acknowledges that the statue of Columbus, “was erected in New Britain in 1941 as a symbol of the important contributions Italian Americans made in New Britain and across the country, in spite of the discrimination they faced at the time,” and goes on to say that,
Christopher Columbus also symbolizes a dark history of white supremacy and violence against the indigenous residents of the Americas, perpetuated by Columbus as well as other conquistadors, practices which persisted in the United States well beyond our nation’s founding, the impacts of which are still clear today.
If approved, the resolution would order that, “the City of New Britain will immediately remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from McCabe Park and donate it to a local Italian American organization.”
It goes on to say that, the city will work with the city’s Italian American community, “to find a symbol to honor the significant contributions of Italian Americans to our city that can be celebrated by the entire New Britain community.”
The meeting of the Council’s Committee on Administration, Finance and Law, where the resolution is being considering, is to be December 2, 2020 at 7:00pm. The agenda for that meeting says,
Due to current public health concerns, this meeting will not be open to the public. Members of the public may view a live broadcast of the meeting online via the livestream link:
http://www.newbritainct.gov/meetings
Individuals seeking public participation may join the queue beginning at 6:45 pm by calling 1 (609) 663-5783.
