World War Columbus Rages…WITH A BIG WIN IN PHILLY!

In Philadelphia PA, Judge Paula Patrick of the Court of Common Pleas has ordered the City of Philadelphia and its Italophobic mayor James Kenney to stand down and leave Philly’s Christopher Columbus statue where it stands, finding the City guilty of an “abuse of discretion and clearly arbitrary action”; characterizing the City’s arguments as “devoid of any legal foundation” and finding it “baffling…how the City of Philadelphia wants to remove the Statue without any legal basis.”

In Westborough MA, the Italian American Alliance asks all allies to email that town’s Select Board at selectboard@town.westborough.ma.us to politely but firmly demand they desist from renaming Christopher Columbus Day to the incorrectly named “Indigenous People’s Day,” but rather designate another date, such as August 9th, the date the United Nations has designated as “International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” to honor the tribal peoples of the Americas.

In New York NY, The Epoch Times has released a new film, America Rewritten, a documentary on “how history is being falsified.”  In it, Dr. Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, reveals how the late Marxist propagandist Howard Zinn dishonestly presented America’s history and discusses her book Debunking Howard Zinn:  Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation Against America, available wherever books are sold.

In Boston MA, a collection of approximately a dozen Italian American organizations have collectively sent a letter to Massachusetts Italian American Legislative Caucus member Senator Salvatore DiDomenico demanding help from that caucus in combatting the anti-Italian-American terrorism in Boston.  The letter, poetically reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, calls for the “reject[ion of] bigotry in all its forms because it is inherently wrong and because it divides us as a people, an American people.”  The letter is the perfect template for similar grass-roots letters to Italian American legislative caucuses in any state.

In Chicago IL, the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Park District seeking the return of the Arrigo Park Columbus statue to its rightful place and organized a rally to support the legal effort regarding that and Chicago’s other two Columbus statues.  JCCIA President Ron Onesti said, “We are not asking for damages, an explanation or even an apology.  We simply want the statues back where they belong…”

In San Francisco CA, the city’s Columbus statue, designed and sculpted in 1957 by Vittorio di Colbertaldo and set upon a pedestal gifted by the City of Genoa on a marble ring donated by the Marini Family has been unceremoniously shoved into storage after vandals defaced the statue with red paint.  The city is keeping the storage location a secret as well as the fate of the statue.  Years ago, San Francisco eliminated Columbus’s name from that city’s 150-year-old parade.

In Oberlin OH, President Basil M. Russo of the Order of the Italian Sons and Daughters of Italy in America, backed by over sixty supporters, gave a rousing speech to Oberlin’s City Council, successfully persuading that body to hold off on replacing Columbus Day with “Indigenous People’s Day.”  President Russo explained to City Council that Italian immigrants began celebrating Columbus Day in the 1800s “in an effort to deal with the prejudices they were confronted with and in an effort to establish a sense of dignity and self-worth” and decried City Council’s “inherent unfairness of promoting one group’s rights and interests by trampling upon the rights and interests of another group.”