With New York City ravaged by violent crime and in the midst of a migrant crisis that is driving deep cuts to city budgets, one would think that Gotham’s city council would have plenty on its plate instead of focusing on the culture war against great Americans of the past.
But that’s exactly what the Democrat-led body is doing with a crusade to cleanse city property of monuments and artwork honoring the likes of iconic former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson along with Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who is credited with discovering America.
The Cultural Affairs Committee of the city council is scheduled to hold a Tuesday hearing to discuss a proposal to remove statues of figures who have been deemed to have benefited from slavery, a barbaric practice that has been outlawed in the United States for over a century and a half but in recent years has been resurrected as a key grievance of the “woke” left despite the fact that it no longer exists.
According to the agenda posted to the city council’s website, the measure would task the Public Design Commission (PDC) with publishing a plan “to remove works of art on City property that depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefitted economically from slavery, or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.”
For statues that are not removed, the PDC will be required to “include in the plan steps it will take to install an explanatory plaque next to the work of art.”
New York City may be going broke but it can always find the money to tear down statues of white people. https://t.co/SmTL96xMqs
— Dr. Clayton Forrester (@DrClaytonForre1) September 19, 2023
Critics blasted the unnecessarily divisive proposal, one of them being Columbus Heritage Coalition president Angelo Vivolo who vowed to put up a fight against the cultural revolutionaries’ efforts to tear down any statues.
“Columbus was a migrant!’ Vivolo pointed out, according to the New York Post.
“I thought this was behind us,” he said. “This woke group wants to cancel our culture.”
“I’m here for the fight. The Italian-American community will come out strongly against this move to ban Columbus, a symbol of Italian-American accomplishment. But it’s not just Columbus. You’re going against Washington, Jefferson. You’re going against the people who contributed greatly to America,” Vivolo added.
“This is little more than an attempt by the radical left to rewrite our nation’s history,” said Joann Ariola, a Republican councilwoman from Queens. “These men all had an enormous impact on this country, and these statues commemorating their achievements have been in place for decades.”
“The radical left has been trying to reframe our nation as one born from evil, and it is time we put our foot down and say enough is enough,” Ariola said. “The Founding Fathers and the others who worked so hard to establish this great country should be celebrated, not eliminated from memory.”
The city council agenda also includes other race-obsessed measures such as the creation of a “truth, healing, and reconciliation process,” requiring “anti-racism” training for contractors and of course, reparations.
While calling for the removal of statues that are deemed to be unacceptable to the Democrat majority, another proposed bill would “require the New York City Department of Transportation to install an informational sign near the intersection of Wall and Pearl Streets, in Manhattan, to mark the site of New York’s first slave market.”
The council’s misplaced priorities come as New York City Mayor Adams recently warned of a “financial tsunami” due to the ongoing arrival of illegal aliens who have placed a massive strain on city finances and is calling for agencies to slash their budgets so that more money can be made available for the migrants.
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