Columbus Statue Removal Becomes Campaign Issue

When America’s culture war and social-justice movement came to Wooster Square this week, it landed at the heart of a race for Congress.

The moment in question was the removal of the statue of Christopher Colmbus Wednesday from Wooster Square Park.

The park is at the heart of a neighborhood where Rosa DeLauro grew up — the child of two neighborhood political leaders (each dubbed the unofficial ​“mayor” of Wooster Square) — and began a career that has led her to a three-decade career as U.S. representative from the Third U.S. Congressional District. Another memorial sculpture honoring the DeLauro family sits in the same park.

New Haven’s Italian-American leaders this month joined other community leaders in calling for the Colmbus statue to be removed.

DeLauro’s Republican opponent, Margaret Streicker, joined a crowd of mostly suburban Italian-Americans who showed up in the park Wednesday to protest the statue’s removal — and to attack DeLauro for supporting the removal.

The moment echoed DeLauro’s first run for Congress, in 1990. At the time she faced another Republican from Milford, Tom Scott. Scott held a campaign event in Wooster Square Park accusing DeLauro of betraying her neighborhood and ethnic roots by, for instance, supporting legalized abortion. DeLauro won a close race that year, thanks to overwhelming support in New Haven (including Wooster Square). She has since won reelection 14 times by overwhelming margins.

Will a similar appeal to traditional white-ethnic working class values work 30 years later? Whether Streicker’s criticism gains traction — either in the city, or in suburbs where the descendants of former Italian-American Wooster Square families have resettled — will test that proposition. Just as the past week’s events reflected the evolution of Wooster Square itself, along with the surrounding city.

Following are statements DeLauro, Streicker, and Green Party candidate Justin Paglino released this week on where they stand on the Columbus statue removal. (DeLauro’s piece was originally written as an op-ed for the New Haven Register; Streicker’s was a press release from her campaign; Paglino submitted his statement in response to a request from the Independent.)

Streicker: DeLauro Flip-Flopped

For the past week, there has been intense public debate over whether or not to remove the Christopher Columbus statue in Wooster Square in New Haven, culminating in its removal on Wednesday morning.

Margaret Streicker spoke out against the removal of the statue, including attending a rally to save the statue on Wednesday morning, citing its importance to the heritage of many residents of the Wooster Square area. Streicker said, ​“We should be adding to the pages of history, not ripping them out.” DeLauro, on the other hand, supported removing the statue, a complete reversal of her previous position from just 7 months ago.

A timeline of Rep. DeLauro’s flip-flop on Columbus can be found below.

• In 2018, Rosa DeLauro served as the ​“Grand Marshall” of the Columbus Day Parade in New Haven.

• In 2019, Rosa DeLauro opposed calls to remove New Haven’s Christopher Columbus statue, saying, we shouldn’t be ​“concerning ourselves with trying to denigrate someone else [Columbus] who created an immigrant experience.”

But then…

• In 2020, Rosa DeLauro, capitulated to her ultra-liberal D.C. puppeteer, and betrayed her constituents by supporting the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue. 

Streicker offered the following comment:

“Unfortunately, this is what voters in CT-03 have come to expect of Representative DeLauro — she’s more worried about appeasing her party bosses in D.C. than she is with listening to her constituents,” said Streicker, ​“Rosa DeLauro stopped representing this district a long time ago. It’s time for her to step aside.”

Justin Paglino: Celebrate Our Ideals

I think controversial issues need to be approached by first finding basic principles we can all agree on.

Namely, I think we can all agree that Italian Americans (including myself) have a tremendous amount to be proud of when we consider our contributions to American life, culture, and history.

The question we may disagree on is this: which contributions should we be most proud of?

There are abundant Italian Americans we can choose to celebrate from our rich history. And this is the purpose of public statues: to celebrate leaders who inspire us to our highest ideals, not simply to ​“teach history.”

The history of Columbus should indeed be taught accurately to all, and should include not only the fact of his great bravery as an explorer, as we learned in school, but also the fact that he enslaved many Native Americans and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality, as we should have also learned in school.

So I assert that as Italian Americans, we can do better in showing our pride, by choosing to celebrate Italian Americans who did not choose to turn people into slaves by use of force, and that is most of us.

So I support the decision that was made to remove the Statue of Columbus, and may I suggest as an alternative, perhaps a statue of Paul Russo: the man who led the initiative in 1884 to have the Wooster Square area designated as its own parish, a defining moment in the creation of a vibrant cultural community that we all cherish as part of New Haven.

DeLauro: The Work Goes On

I supported the decision of Wooster Square community leaders to take down the statue of Christopher Columbus and move it to a place for civic education and to replace it with a new statue that honors the contributions of Italian immigrants and America’s rich immigrant history. I also support renaming the Christopher Columbus Family Academy.

The focus on ​“Christopher Columbus” and what happened in the Americas to Native peoples is an important period to be explored and re-examined as we reunite our country, but it has nothing to do with why my mother and I and communities across the New Haven area were celebrating Columbus Day every year.

I come to this with a unique position with my deep-rooted history in the Wooster Square community.

My father came to New Haven from Italy as a young man. He was filled with hopes and dreams, but he could not speak English. Laughed at, he left school because of that language barrier. Despite the lack of a formal education, he would go on to fight for the Italian language to be taught in New Haven’s public schools.

My mother worked in the sweatshops of New Haven doing piece work. In 1957, when I was barely a teenager, the Franklin Street fire claimed the lives of 15 people, mostly Italian immigrants. We worked to survive.

Both of my parents blocked the bulldozers when the city of New Haven threatened to put a highway through our neighborhood. My father started the Wooster Square Neighborhood Association to revitalize, diversify the neighborhood, and to create a more welcoming environment.

Our ancestors immigrated from Amalfi, Scafati, Minori and Maori in search of the promise of opportunity. And when they arrived, they rejected Old World ideas about privilege and power. They challenged the prejudice they faced in their new American home. And, they founded the community organizations on whose shoulders we stand today: St. Trofemina, St. Catello, Societa Maria Maddalena, St. Andrew and Santa Maria delle Virgine.

When the Italian-American community celebrates Columbus Day, we are celebrating the accomplishments of those of Italian descent. We are celebrating our parents, our grandparents and their contributions to our lives, our heritage and our country. None of our celebrations of Christopher Columbus were celebrations of the conquest of the Americas or the triumph of colonialism over native populations.

I attended and spoke at nearly every Columbus Day dinner before and after being elected to the U.S. Congress. I sometimes spoke of Columbus’ navigation skills. But my speeches were about the Italian-American immigrant experience. I reminded people that America is a nation of immigrants and that our ancestors would have not been able to come if our current refugee and immigration policies were in place then.

Italians arrived in this country with a foreign language, many with darker skin and the Catholic faith. Domestic workers looking for employment would find ads warning: ​“Catholics need not apply.” So, once here, new arrivals had to stick together. The reality of American life was often harsh; the discrimination deep, challenging and hurtful.

In March 1891, 11 Italians were hanged in New Orleans by an angry mob after eight had been acquitted of murdering the police chief. A young civil service commissioner in Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, said the Italians, ​“got what they deserved.”

In 1920, two Italian-Americans were tried for a murder for which there was only tenuous and circumstantial evidence. So, when Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty and eventually executed, many felt the true crime being punished was being Italian.

When I was just a girl, the New Haven Police Department came down Wooster Street because of an illegal fireworks display for the Fourth of July, and I heard a police captain say, ​“Let’s break the guineas’ backs.” I was in front of my grandmother’s pastry store. My father was holding my hand.

Ours was a community that faced intolerance and discrimination. Our hard-work faith family and strong community helped each generation succeed. We must never forget that America is an immigrant country.

I believe we must also become more conscious of what happened to Indigenous populations in the Americas, New England and across the country throughout its founding. I believe that struggle must be recognized by holidays and monuments and I favor an Indigenous People’s Day.

I oppose moves anywhere to substitute Indigenous People’s Day for Columbus Day. That makes Italian-Americans invisible again and disrespects my history.

So, I look forward to focusing on what matters: a statue and holidays that symbolize the Italian-American immigrant experience and an America that welcomes all immigrants.

It was at the unveiling of the New Haven Columbus Monument in 1892, on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ historic voyage, then Mayor Joseph Sargent said, ​“May this statue serve to eliminate any differences between Italians and Americans. May this statue maintain peace and prosperity for future generations.”

That work goes on. We must do it together.