Italian-American leader pays tribute to Columbus Day after years of statue fights

After five years of storied statues Italian explorer After Christopher Columbus was overthrown, beheaded, and vandalized across America in the name of “social justice,” the issue was raised again before the Columbus Day holiday.

Socialist candidate for mayor of New York City Zahran Mamdani He has been struggling with many of the extreme views he has shared in the past – including the Italian man who discovered America.

A The image reappeared From his X account from June 2020, he showed the candidate’s hand in the foreground turning over a statue of Columbus that stood in the background.

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The post’s caption read, “Take it down.”

However, there is one group that does not support this, and has been working to advance the interests of Italian Americans in the years following the attack on Columbus statues.

“First, I think Mamdani should be ashamed of himself because the position he holds is so hurtful and hurtful to the Italian-American community,” Basil Russo told Fox News Digital.

Russo is president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, a caucus created to unite Italian American groups to defend their special interests. The group has grown from 35 member organizations to 75 in the four and a half years since the toppling of statues swept America.

“He should show our community the same degree of respect that he claims to show to all the other groups he claims he will represent if he wins,” Russo said. “You know, sometimes people have to be old enough to admit that they made a mistake or didn’t know enough about a certain issue at a certain time, and now they’ve educated themselves, they understand the issue more clearly, and they’ve adopted a more respectful attitude. He has to do that.”

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped his re-election bid, is seeking to designate statues of the explorer in Columbus Circle and Columbus Square in Astoria as historic landmarks to prevent Mamdani from removing them if elected.

“The beauty of New York City is that we celebrate and respect all of our diverse communities and cultural heritage,” Adams said. New York Post. “As mayor of the city with the largest Italian population in the world, I am proud that we celebrate Italian-American heritage, today and every day.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Adams and Mamdani for comment.

Emboldened during the “Summer of Love” of 2020 as rioters rioted against racism and set urban fires in the name of… george floyd, Anger later turned toward Columbus, whose critics accused him of genocide.

During the riots on June 10 of that year in St. Paul, Minnesota, a mob attached a chain to a statue of Columbus on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol and tied it to the back of a truck, dragging the statue to the ground while officials stood by.

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Around the same time, a statue of Columbus in a park bearing his name in Boston was beheaded in the dead of night.

But Rousseau corrected some of the falsehoods that led some Americans to harbor anti-Columbus sentiments.

He said Columbus Day was born, and that Italian-American pride in Columbus himself stems from the largest mass lynching ever, when 11 Italian immigrants were killed in 1891.

“Most people, especially people outside the Italian-American community, don’t realize that Columbus Day was the result of the largest mass lynching in American history,” he said. “In 1891, 11 Italian immigrants were beaten, shot, and lynched in New Orleans by a mob of more than 5,000 people.”

He added, “The situation has become so bad that Italy severed its official relations with the United States after the execution of these immigrants without trial.”

President Benjamin Harrison intervened at the time to lower the temperature.

“He was one of the few people who was appalled by lynchings. So Harrison was very disturbed by that. So the next year, 1892, he declared a national observance of Columbus Day,” Russo said. “For the first time in our country, in 1892, this is a president saying, ‘We’re going to have a national celebration in honor of Christopher Columbus.’ Why? Because Columbus was connected to Italy, because he came from Genoa. The Italians were very proud of the fact that he discovered America. This was his way. To encourage Americans to be more accepting of Italian immigrants.”

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Russo noted the irony that many of those preaching a message of immigrant acceptance were among the crowds that tore Columbus statues to the ground.

““Each group has made important contributions to this country of which that group can be rightfully proud,” Russo said. “And of course, our community has made many of these contributions. Columbus discovered America.”

“When you look at cities like New York City, the infrastructure of that city was literally built by Italian immigrants,” he added.

Italian Americans have a rich history of fighting for America as well, Russo added, noting that more Italian Americans fought in World War II than any other ethnic group.

However, during the summer of 2020, stories of statues being destroyed emerged from all over the country.

In Miami, a statue of Columbus was spray-painted with “George Floyd” and “BLM,” along with a communist hammer and sickle, and in Richmond, another statue of the Renaissance explorer was torn down and disposed of in a river, its base left with the inscription “Columbus Represents Genocide.”

In Central Park, Columbus is painted red, as is the monument to him in Tarrytown.

Some city governments abandoned Columbus statues after several rounds of vandalism and decided to remove them, such as in New Haven, Connecticut.

This memorial, erected in 1892, finally found a new home earlier this year at the Museum of Lost in New Haven, NBC Connecticut I mentioned.

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In 2021, then-President Joe Biden announced that Indigenous Peoples’ Day would be observed on the second Monday in October, although the holiday was never officially changed.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognizing Monday as a holiday Columbus Day.

“In other words, we’re calling it Columbus Day,” Trump said as a White House staffer read the proclamation.

The press in the room surprised Trump by applauding this step.

“That was the press that burst into applause,” Trump joked. “I’ve never seen that happen before. The press actually burst into applause. Good. Columbus Day. We’re back. Columbus Day. We’re back, Italians. We love Italians.”

Russo praised Trump’s efforts.

“You’re now seeing some change happening in the climate because President Trump isn’t mincing any words about his support for Columbus, and that’s kind of changing the environment across the country,” he said.

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“What the president is doing is saying that he understands the contributions that Christopher Columbus made to this country, that he appreciates the historical importance of Columbus to the Italian-American community, and supports treating Columbus as a true American hero. This is very important to the Italian-American community because it helps us preserve and perpetuate our heritage that we hope to pass on to other generations.”

Emma Colton and Andrew Mark Miller of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.