Cuomo Defends Columbus Circle Statue As Calls Mount To Remove It

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended the Columbus Circle monument Thursday as a symbol of "Italian-American legacy" as calls to remove it, and tributes to other controversial figures, mounted across the country.

"I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support," Cuomo replied when asked if it was time to take down the Upper West Side monument.

"But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian-American contribution to New York. So, for that reason, I support it."

The question comes as Christopher Columbus statues across the country are getting toppled or beheaded as police brutality protesters spurred by the killing of George Floyd call for Confederate and offensive monuments to be taken down.

In New York City, a petition to change the name of Columbus Circle and take down the 14-foot statue of Columbus at the top of its monument has gained more than 3,000 signatures.

"Christopher Columbus was a white colonist who slaughtered thousands of Native Americans on their own soil," the petition reads. "Honoring him is honoring those murders. We shouldn't be memorializing someone who began mass genocide and enslavement in America."

NYPD officers were seen guarding the Manhattan monument on Thursday.

Renaming calls have also surfaced in Brooklyn, where lawmakers argue that two streets at a military base in the borough should not bear the names of Confederate generals.

The Columbus Circle petition specifically points to the Black Lives Matter movement as renewing a call to "reject the old ways of life and the antiquated systems put in place by the generations that came before us." It calls for all tributes Columbus in New York City to be taken down.

Gabe Friedman, who started the petitions, suggested that Columbus Circle be renamed after the Lenape Indians, a Native American tribe that lived in New York, or Seneca Village, an early 19th-century African-American community in Central Park. Though, he adds, any name should be decided by consulting with Native American and black leaders.

It is not the first time calls to abandon tributes to Columbus have surfaced in New York City.

Debate over the removing the statue and legislation to rename Columbus Day in New York as Indigenous People’s Day similarly grew after the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, according to reports at the time.

A report the mayor commissioned about offensive and problematic monuments ultimately called for keeping the statue in place and instead adding historical makers.