Month: January 2023

Will provide clarity to Columbus’s contributions to the formation of our modern world

Mayor Marco Bucci launches academic reexamination of Columbus’ life and legacy, days after Italian Americans win major lawsuit that saved navigator’s statue in Philadelphia.

A historical reckoning is underway in the U.S. and Italy as governmental and cultural leaders work to reset prevailing narratives that, for decades, have maligned Columbus’ legacy and the monuments that pay homage to him.

In Italy, Genoa’s Mayor — Marco Bucci — passed a resolution establishing a center for Colombian studies that will be housed in the historic Palazzo Ducale (a 700-year-old Genoese palace that has been converted into a world-renowned museum and cultural hub).

The new center will enlist researchers and academics to scan and catalog Columbus’ documents and artifacts, stored away in archives and museums across both Italy and the globe, to create a robust database that will offer a wealth of source material and analysis on the navigator and his world-changing voyages.

“Cherry-picked and decontextualized research has completely blurred our knowledge of, and perceptions toward, centuries-old global history,” said Basil M. Russo, who leads The Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations. “COPOMIAO proudly supports Mayor Bucci’s unprecedented Columbus project, as it will provide overdue clarity to Columbus’s innumerable contributions to the formation of our modern world.”

In the U.S., Russo — in coordination with a grass roots network of Italian American organizations, politicians and Italian dignitaries — helped score major legal victories in Syracuse earlier this year, and last week in Philadelphia, blocking city leaders from removing Columbus statues.

Additionally, a federal lawsuit is playing out in Philadelphia, where COPOMIAO’s National Counsel George Bochetto is arguing that Columbus’ holidays and monuments be preserved under the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection” against government discrimination.

“Columbus statues and parades were organized and built en masse by Italian immigrants who used the explorer as a symbol to fuel assimilation and fight crushing discrimination,” said Bochetto. “Today these monuments and events, thanks to misinformation, have been conflated with racism and prejudice. This past year, we saw a surge in attendance at Columbus Day parades, from San Francisco, to Chicago, to Cleveland, to New York City. People want to celebrate their history and ancestry, and COPOMIAO and myself think every community and ethnicity should have the freedom and the right to do so.”

An idea for Mayor Walsh to emulate

A new sculpture greeting visitors outside Cuyahoga Falls’ municipal offices pays tribute to the waterfall that gave the city its name — and a culture that long preceded the city’s establishment.

The statue, created by Peter B. Jones and installed in early December, was commissioned by Cuyahoga Falls and funded in part through grant funds administered by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town initiative. The public artwork depicts what the Cuyahoga River meant to the indigenous people of the area.

Jones created the bronze sculpture “River Trade” to show how indigenous people utilized the Cuyahoga River to trade with their peers in surrounding settlements, with a Native American rowing a canoe and carrying goods aboard.

“I wanted to commemorate the waterfalls and river that goes through the town,” said Jones, who lives in Salamanca, N.Y. “I have friends in the Akron area.”

If the artistry seems familiar, that’s no accident. In the 1990s, Jones was commissioned to create a similarly themed statue, “The Portage,” along the Cuyahoga River corridor nearly 4½ miles west at the central crossroads of Akron’s Merriman Valley. That sculpture shows a Native American carrying a canoe over his head.

Jones is an Onondaga who resides on the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation of Indians in western New York state. His work is featured in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. With his latest work finished for Cuyahoga Falls finished, Jones said his next effort was preparing for his one-man show at the Syracuse University’s art museum, which opens Aug. 24 and is entitled Continuity, Innovation, and Resistance: The Art of Peter Jones. Jones said he will have around 30 pieces in the exhibit.

For the full article from the Akron Beacon Journal, visit

https://news.yahoo.com/creator-merriman-valley-statue-revisits-110051122.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKlQNqINWnWAU7EdeU9JrMRJODmL7VyF7CwTe3rBlsGk9IGizPYCGxoJ2l0RM2kpofBBPFzTFFhO8xVXlHNwUYeJr1GiY0RPMenDKBdPu5rCAZFUrBLl_AV9Q8dPcda289BqWhDnR4gefd_kar3W9dW3RhVgQNilNf8NzjnTYQxy

a Bellwether of Cultural Progress

The precedent-setting IAFL Conference has reached its endpoint. Syracuse was well represented by Jared Saya, Syracuse, Jackie Antonacci, Town of Onondaga, and, Dominick Ciciarelli, Town of Salina. Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations (COPOMIAO) VP John Viola is setting the stage for a new wave of leaders to uphold our heritage, elevate our culture and promote our history – starting with Columbus.   

Conference organizers were struck by the impassioned and highly insightful remarks by delegates that mirrored the viewpoints of elder generations concerning the importance of ancestry and traditions, and the negative effects of pervasive stereotypes.   

Hollywood directors Joe and Anthony Russo highlighted how their Italian American upbringing played a critical role in shaping their lives and careers. The Russo Brothers encouraged attendees to take up the torch and celebrate their heritage.  

“Our family emigrated to the U.S. from four small hill towns in the Abruzzo and Sicily. We feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to those places and connect with our roots because we love and value the role our Italian cultural heritage has had in our lives,” said Anthony Russo. 

COPOMIAO President Basil Russo’s motivational keynote address set the tone and was enthusiastically received by the delegates. 

Russo spoke about the significant contributions Italians have made to world civilization, the need for younger Italian Americans to assume the mantle of leadership in the IA community, the challenges facing the younger generation of Italian American leaders, and his faith that younger delegates will get the job done. 

By Heather Cox Richardson

You hear sometimes that, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, America has no heroes left.

When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings, choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.

It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself, in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.

It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.

It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold print, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.

It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.

Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.

None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that, when they had to, they did what was right.

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2023.

—

Notes:

Dr. King’s final speech: 

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/martin-luther-kings-final-speech-ive-mountaintop-full/story?id=18872817

The Future Youth Leadership Conference in Fort Lauderdale is hosted by the prestigious national CONFERENCE OF PRESIDENTS OF MAJOR ITALIAN AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS. COPOMIAO President Basil Russo has been the initiator of this first-of-its-kind conference. John Viola, producer of The Italian American Podcast, will be the Conference’s leader. 

Jared Saya, Syracuse, Jackie Antonacci, Town of Onondaga, and, Dominick Ciciarelli, Town of Salina, have been selected to attend this prestigious event. The attendees were nominated by the Columbus Monument Corporation of Syracuse, a member of COPOMIAO. They will be joining hundreds of other visionaries, creators, and can-doers (ages 21-35) who will continue to lead the Italian American communities throughout the US. 

IAFL isa brand-new networking and fellowship platform that’s empowering a younger generation of Italian Americans anxious to uphold their ancestorial culture, and elevate it in their community. Attendees were selected as future leaders who can help promote shared Italian traditions, uphold Italian-American heritage, and pursue a range of commercial, cultural, advocacy and event-based initiatives, bridging the divide between old and new Italian American generations. 

“We are thrilled to have Syracuse represented by these three outstanding young people” said Bob Gardino, Board Member of the Columbus Monument Corporation. “We are looking to them and others like them to continue the 88-year traditions of our organization, while they create new initiatives to promote our Italian-American heritage and contributions within the Syracuse community.” 

The Conference runs from Friday, January 13th to Monday, January 16th. 

To the Editor:

In response to Douglass Dowty’s article on the Onondaga Nation’s court appeal in the Columbus Monument Corp.’s case against Mayor BenWalsh’s decision to dismantle and take down the 1934 monument (”Onondaga Nation wants appellate court’s attention on Syracuse Columbus statue: ‘Fundamentally offensive, ’ “ Dec. 23, 2022):

There are a number of inaccuracies in lawyer Joseph Heath’s facts and interpretation.

I find it mindboggling that because . Heath finds something personally offensive and has projected his animosity into others related to the Columbus Monument — that he feels a court of law should sanction to destroy it. Those are Heath’s words. If courts of law started to take cases based on subjective and often spurious, emotional reactions to events and public controversies, there would no time in a courtroom’s purview for true and warranted justice.

Heath decries what he calls “disembodied indigenous heads” that should be taken down from the monument. His use of pejorative, negative language is inaccurate, in artists’ terms. Those are artistic “masks,” not heads, so defined by artists over thousands of years as creations of honor. Sculptor Renzo Baldi meant to honor the Indigenous having them facing in all four directions. The “frescoes” he describes as also offensive aren’t frescoes at all. They are bronze bas reliefs.

One bas relief shows Columbus bringing a Christian cross onto San Salvador — the first landing in the Western Hemisphere Columbus made. His men are kneeling because of the cross. The Indigenous are standing. The second bas relief Heath wants taken down is the presentation of six Indigenous men to the King and Queen of Spain. hat is not a servile action, but an artist’s rendering showing respect to Spain’s royalty. That is an act of respect that still exists today. There are other paintings of that moment whereby Columbus is on his knees bowing to the King and Queen and others are standing on the side. No camera ever existed at that time to really know what exactly happened.

It is surprising that Heath is only concerned with the Columbus Monument and the 1794 treaty that once promised land to the Indigenous of our area as affecting ownership. City Hall stands on the same land, as does every one of the historically preserved edifices that are in proximity to the Columbus Monument.

One needs only to read on page one of “A Guide to Public Art in Downtown Syracuse,” published by the Syracuse Downtown Committee, to understand the value of the Columbus Monument. Just below a picture of one of the four indigenous masks it reads on page one: “Masks of Native American faces surround the Christopher Columbus Monument by Renzo Baldi celebrating the people who were already in America when Columbus arrived.” This was Baldi’s true intention. Heath created a fiction to suit his own subjective narrative.

Christopher Columbus died in 1506, only 14 years after reaching the Western Hemisphere in 1492. Ironically on his death bed he thought that he landed in the outlying Japanese islands off the coast of China. He never realized that he had ventured into the Western Hemisphere. Yet 530 years later he is blamed for every negative element occurring in the Western Hemisphere, Northern and Southern — over the course of five centuries.

From the Downtown Committee’s guide: “Public art often reflects a moment in time, a slice of the past and the emotion of an occasion or circumstance. Peering into the eyes of a figure cast in bronze deepens our perspetive. Studying the abstract form opens the mind to endless possibilities …”

Mr. Heath, “A little learning is a dangerous thing — drink deep or taste not of the Pierian Spring.” — Alexander Pope

Robert Gardino

Syracuse

The writer is a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s decision to remove the Columbus Monument.

The Christopher Columbus Statue stays in place in front of Borough Hall

Pioneering 19th-century artist Emma Stebbins might well have been the latest victim of the irrational frenzy that seeks to wipe away all memory of Christopher Columbus, but for the grass roots support of local citizens.

Stebbins, a trailblazer who was gay, was the first woman awarded a New York City art commission for her interpretation of the Great Admiral of the Ocean Sea. In 2021, a small group known as Take Down Columbus set their sights on ridding Stebbins’ Columbus statue, commissioned in 1863 and one of her earliest works. Determined to prevent Stebbins and Columbus from being carried off into the night, a group of courageous New Yorkers stepped forward, demanding that Community Board 2 in Brooklyn Heights reject Take Down Columbus. Nearly two years later, we are thrilled to report that Emma Stebbins and her Columbus memorial in Columbus Park have prevailed, thanks to a coalition of activists and their appeal to drop the hate and seek the truth.

As we begin 2023, we thank all who have supported the Columbus Monument Corporation in its drive to preserve the historic Columbus Monument Syracuse, and those who have supported the Columbus Heritage Coalition and its mission, as we say, to “Drop the hate. Seek the truth.” We are proud of what we all have achieved together. The new year will bring new challenges, including a proposal in the New York State Legislature that abolishes Columbus Day and renames the holiday Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Rest assured, we will continue to reach out, build bridges and protect our statues, holidays, and heritage.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Vivolo is the president of the Columbus Heritage Coalition. The organization’s web site is https://www.columbusheritagecoalition.org/leadership/