'Anti-Columbus Day' Rally Planned For Hackensack

HACKENSACK, NJ — A local Black Lives Matter group is using Thursday as a rallying cry for the Indigenous People of New Jersey.

"Black Lives Matter is an intersectional movement and we honour that we are on Lenni-Lenape land," Black Lives Matter Bergen County wrote in an Instagram post.

The post announced an anti-Columbus Day rally scheduled in Hackensack's Columbus Park for 5 p.m. Monday. However, due to weather the event has been postponed to Thursday at the same time.

In Hackensack, Monday is known as Columbus Day still, but within that park, Black Lives Matter Bergen County will demonstrate in hopes that the Christopher Columbus statue in the park named for him be removed.

"Tomorrow we are fighting for this heinous statue to be removed and replaced with Oratam, a venerated leader of the Hackensacks," the group wrote.

Earlier in the year, a Change.org petition was created to oppose any attempts to change the name of the Hackensack park.

Created by the Hackensack Chapter of UNICO National, the petition posits that removing Columbus' name would discredit the impact of Italian-Americans in the community.

"Renaming Columbus Park and/or removal of the Columbus Statue does nothing to help resolve the tensions and difficulties faced by a modern society trying to interpret the past," they wrote.

"What it does do is delegitimize the City’s Italian Americans’ history, stories and struggles, and we have just as much a right to have these represented as any other group."