Columbus Statue Removed, Amid Joy, Jabs

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, after a week of debate and a morning of sometimes violent conflict, a city-hired crew removed the statue of Christopher Columbus from Wooster Square Park.

A screaming match turned into a brief racial fight in the park earlier Wednesday morning as a crowd waited for a late crane to arrive to remove the statue of the 15th-century explorer.

Watch the altercation above. (A Columbus statue supporter threw the first punch at around the 4:10 mark in the video.)

The crane finally arrived hours later. Watch live in the above video as, amid protests and singing and chants of ​“Take it down!,” a crew removes it.

Arms were raised in triumph by pro-removal protesters, many of whom wore face masks to guard against spread of Covid-19.

Native American protester Norm Clement (pictured at left) had a megaphone ready for the moment, declaring it a start to worldwide fights against racism and colonialism.

“He took away our language! Our culture,” Clement declared of Columbus. ​“Thank you all!”

Clement also burned sage and prayed for peace at the memorial earlier in the morning. A statue supporter responded to Clement’s prayer by spitting at him. A group of statue supporters then recited the ​“Lord’s Prayer” in unison to try to drown out Clement’s ceremonial singing. Click on the video below to watch.

Mayor Justin Elicker stayed away from the scene as the conflict occurred, order was restored, opposed camps of citizens pressed their cases, and city-hired workers tried to figure out how actually to get the statue down.

Elicker did issue a press release immediately after the removal. In the prepared statement, he emphasized the role of local Italian-American leaders in the process of deciding to remove the statue.

“The decision to remove the statue of Columbus today was one that was spearheaded by a group of leaders in the Italian community. While this decision for those leaders was not easy, they courageously did the right thing. I support this decision,” Elicker is quoted as saying in the statement.

“I want to take a moment to thank those leaders for their support in recognizing the history of colonialism and its negative effects on many cultures, and their help to identify a place where the statue can reside. I know that there are some people who strongly disagree with the decision to remove the statute. People have the right to protest and express their opinions peacefully. We will work collaboratively to ensure we honor New Haven’s Italian Heritage and immigrant history. I look forward to the many community conversations surrounding what we would like to see replace the statue of Christopher Columbus, and how we can highlight other cultural icons for the many Italian-Americans that have made New Haven their home.” He called the fighting outside the statue ​“disappointing.”

Police spokesman Capt. Anthony Duff said the statue is going to storage in an undisclosed location. The mayor later said during an afternoon press conference that the statue will eventually end up with the Knights of Columbus.

“This is the beginning!” echoed one protester as the crowd watched the statue removal from a distance maintained by police officers who worked for hours to keep calm after an initial scuffle.

“This Is My Country”

Two supporters of removing the statue, lifelong New Havener Nate Blair and Los Fidel of Hamden, arrived with a shirt reading, ​“White Lives Matter Too Much” and a sign reading, ​“Y’all left New Haven ​‘cause of blacks … Funny this is when you come back.”

Forty mostly Italian-American protesters had been on scene since dawn to await the arrival of a city-hired crew to remove the statue. Some surrounded them and started screaming at them to leave, calling them ​“fucking assholes.”

“Fuck you!” one person screamed.

“Fuck you too!” one screamed back.

“You gonna hurt me? You gonna hurt? I’m not leaving nowhere. This is my country,” said Fidel, who is Latino.

Blair (pictured), who is an African American, began a discussion about assimilation in history. The conversation proceeded with debate over the meaning of Columbus’s statue — its evocation of the historic lynching of Italian-Americans, or subjugation of other cultures?

Voices were somewhat restrained at first. Then the shouting resumed and the finger-pointing and physical tussling.

“Give us the false narrative!” a white Columbus statue supporter yelled.

“Who told you that — your Marxist professor?” shouted another.

“Go steal another TV!” one white protester yelled at Blair.

As a group tried to wrestle the sign from Blair’s hands, one of the pro-statue protesters punched Fidel in the back of the head.

Fidel responded by smashing his megaphone over the head of his attacker. The two fell to the ground. The crowd began chasing Blair and Fidel.

Several police officers formed a wall between the two sides and stopped the fighting. One of the white pro-statue protesters was handcuffed and detained before being released.

“Now you want the cops! Now you want the cops! Get the fuck out of here!” white protesters yelled.

The officers escorted Fidel away.

“You’re causing trouble!” one told him.

“I’m not causing nothing!” he responded, noting that he had been slugged on the back of his head.

Sporadic other punches were observed near the scene around the same time.

A bit later (at the point of the video with 12 minutes remaining) Fidel and Charlie Salerno (who earlier serenaded the protesters with banjo) had a calmer, cordial discussion of what it means to be an American.

Later, top neighborhood cop Lt. Sean Maher said police detained an East Haven man who allegedly pushed one of the pro-removal activists. The man was not arrested.

As the morning wore on, more Black Lives Matter and anti-Columbus activists arrived in the park. Officers worked to keep the situation calm.

Chanting and discussions continued through mid-morning. The city struggled to find a crane operator to come take away the statue, while opponents sought to obtain a court order to stop the removal.

At 10:30, anti-Columbus protesters dominated at the foot of the stage. Wielding a megaphone, veteran Native-American activist Norm Clement declared, ​“This is our time. We’re not going to stop. We want to take down the power that oppresses all of us! … The racism that runs rampant across this country and around the world.”

Then a crane arrived, from National Crane company, along with a city public works bucket truck … (Watch the action in the above video.) Several protesters tried to form a line to block it, including state marshal Peter Criscuolo (pictured).

“Let the cops do their jobs. Don’t put them in the middle,” one of the protesters advised another. Police succeeded in clearing the path.

“It’s coming down!” others in the crowd cheered.

“Nah nah nah nah … Hey hey hey … Goodbye!” they started singing.

The crowd watched from the street, and thousands more on various online platforms, as Hamden-based arts conservator Francis Miller prepared the statue for removal.

Local musician Thabisa Rich (pictured) sang Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, ​“A Change Is Gonna Come,” first through a megaphone, next through a microphone and amp provided by Unidad Latina en Accion founder John Lugo.

Well over 100 people watched and cheered as Miller and the crane truck succeeded in lifting the bronze Columbus statue and an underlying granite slab from momument’s pedestal.

“Columbus didn’t take nearly as this long to put a noose around our ancestors necks,” wrote one commenter to the New Haven Independent Facebook Live thread.

Late Arrival

The crane was supposed to come at 6. Then 7. Still no crane.

A crowd of 40 protesters — including a Republican candidate for Congress — remained on scene.

Meanwhile, a former city corporation counsel has filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the statue’s removal.

The city had planned to have a crane operator remove the 128-statue from the park at 6. Local leaders, including of Italian-American groups based in the city, called for the statue’s removal. The call, begun with a Wooster Square petition drive, came amid a national discussion over the memorializing of Columbus and of Confederate leaders, prompted by racial justice protests that intensified after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The city Parks Commission, which owns the park and the statue, voted June 17 to remove the statue, following the lead of Middletown and Hartford, where Columbus statues were also coming down.

A smaller group of largely Italian-American supporters of the statue sprung up on Facebook and prepared to protest this Saturday. East Haven-based attorney Patricia Cofrancesco, who served as city corporation counsel in the mid-1990s, filed a complaint in state court Tuesday on behalf of citizens calling themselves the Italian-American Group of New Haven. The complaint seeks to have a judge issue an injunction barring the statue’s removal. The suit claims the Board of Alders is responsible for deciding whether to remove the statue and has never considered the matter. (Read the complaint here.) The complaint echoes the national debate over how to view and commemorate American historical figures as popular understandings of their roles evolve.

Some 65 protesters showed up at the park at 6 a.m. Wednesday, when the city had scheduled to have a crane operator arrive to remove the statue.

Then the word from the city was that the crane would arrive at 7. The hour came. The hour passed.

The next expected time of arrival was 8. Come 8 a.m., no crane. Some 40 protesters remained.

“Elicker —enjoy your one term,” read one sign resting by the foot of the statue, referring to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who came out in support of the removal.

Elicker, who was not present at the scene, told the Independent shortly after 10 a.m. that the city still intended to remove the statue Wednesday ​“for public safety.”

Whose History Is It?

Some of the anti-statue-removal protesters present Wednesday live in New Haven, such as Republican Town Chair John Carlson. Most interviewed said they live in suburbs of New Haven. One was Margaret Streicker, the Milford-based Republican candidate taking on Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who grew up in Wooster Square, historically the heart of New Haven’s Italian-American neighborhood. The families that originally immigrated to Wooster Square in the 1900s from Italian communities like Amalfi helped build the modern city and create its cultural identity. Many families have since moved to New Haven’s East Shore or suburbs like East Haven, and the neighborhood’s demographics have changed, but Italian-American businesses and traditions remain a defining presence in Wooster Square.

“To erase this history is a disgrace,” Streicker said as the crowd continued waiting.

“You learn from history; you move on,” said Eric Mastroianni, a Republican who has run for New Haven state legislative seats.

“From its inception, and to date, [the] statue has been a source of great pride to the ltalian-American community in general, and to the plaintiff Group whose members view its presence as a symbol of their ltalian heritage,” Cofrancesco wrote in her complaint.

Italian-American leaders signing a group letter calling for the statue’s removal argued that Columbus’s history of brutalizing indigenous populations made him no longer the right figure to memorialize in New Haven. ​“Many of our community members understandably view this statue as a representation of injustice, and as a reminder of the mistreatment of immigrants and people of color going back to the founding of our nation,” read the letter, whose signatories included the president of the St. Andrew of the Apostle Society a half block from the park.

Native-Americans said the statue represents ​“100 years of genocide.”

Toni Cietano, who grew up in Fair Haven and currently lives in East Haven, said, ​“it’s part of history. You don’t take history away.” She argued that the statue of Columbus ​“isn’t bothering anyone.”

Asked why she was rallying in New Haven and not East Haven, she said, ​“It doesn’t matter what state or city” Columbus statues are taken down in. She said the removals are part of a broader attack on history that all people should stand against.

“What’s next after this?” asked Debbie Caswell, who also grew up in Fair Haven and also now lives in East Haven. She said she vehemently disagrees with toppling Confederate statues and Columbus statues alike: ​“I think it’s disgusting. When do you stop destroying things?”

Multiple pro-statue protesters mentioned a mass lynching of 11 Italians in Louisiana in 1891. They said that the statue of Columbus represents the accomplishments of Italian-Americans as well as the struggles they have faced in this country.

“He has a little bit of cloudiness to his history,” but who doesn’t? New Haven native and current East Haven resident Louis Pane said about Columbus. Pane is identified in Cofrancesco’s court complaint as founder of the Heritage Group.

The school board, meanwhile, voted Monday night to change the name of Christopher Columbus Family Academy on Grand Avenue.

“Extremely Unfortunate”

Below is a statement sent out Wednesday afternoon by Columbus Day Committee of Greater New Haven Board Chair Laura Florio Luzzi.

Today’s events are extremely unfortunate. Statements were made by individuals that should not have been and that have no place in public discourse. It is time for our community to unite in embracing this moment of social change. We welcome a dialogue with the City of New Haven and members of the Wooster Square community to discuss the future of the Columbus monument and what may come in its place to honor Italian-American heritage and our contribution to history.

The Greater New Haven Italian community is proud of its heritage. Many of our ancestors were hard-working immigrants who suffered from discrimination in a new world. Like all other immigrants to our country, Italian-Americans made significant contributions to the history of our nation, from building roads and bridges to invention and innovation.

Our organization has supported the Greater New Haven region for decades – working to celebrate Italian-American culture and conducting outreach to all communities in New Haven and beyond. We welcome this opportunity to evolve and identify new ways to honor our community in collaboration with others. We look forward to hearing from and meeting with all members of the Wooster Square community and our public officials to help determine a path ahead.”

Maya McFadden and Sophie Sonnenfeld contributed.