Tuesday, March 19

Month: October 2020

It’s time to end Columbus Day: An Open Letter to the City of Philadelphia
Opinion

It’s time to end Columbus Day: An Open Letter to the City of Philadelphia

For too long we have honored colonizers and slave masters and silenced the history of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. It’s time for Philadelphia and the world to stop celebrating the architects of genocide and white supremacy. It’s time to end Columbus Day. Contro Colombo: Italian Americans for Indigenous People’s Day We are a growing group of Philadelphian Italian-Americans petitioning the City of Philadelphia to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. We stand in solidarity with groups like Indigenous 215 and Indigenous Peoples Day Philly who have been making this demand for years. For too long, members of the Italian-American community have stood behind Columbus and lifted him up as our hero, but any student of history can plainly see he was not. T...
Italian Americans, forget Columbus
Opinion

Italian Americans, forget Columbus

The Christopher Columbus statue is removed in Grant Park in Chicago, following protests and police violence. By Luca Peretti Translated by Amy Bizzarri It’s early morning on June 24th when a few dozen Italian Americans have gathered around the statue of Columbus in the Italian neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. For days there had been rumors circulating about the removal of this statue inaugurated in the late nineteenth century, when the first Italian immigrants began to arrive here to work in local industry. Over the years, they would become the largest ethnic group of the city, and yet in the area surrounding the statue—in a neighborhood that has now changed immensely due to economic and historical forces—there are still the Catholic church, restaurants, social clubs, in...