On New Year’s Eve, as part of the America 250 celebration, Christopher Columbus’s three ships were projected onto the Washington Monument; a federally sanctioned acknowledgment that Columbus remains inseparable from the American story. In Chicago, however, city officials have decided he is too offensive for Italian Americans even to be allowed to vote on.

Yet the City of Chicago and its Park District insist they are “listening” to Italian Americans. They claim to be engaging in “community dialogue,” weighing perspectives, and thoughtfully deliberating what should replace Christopher Columbus at Arrigo Park.

OPINION: THE NATIONAL ITALIAN AMERICAN FOUNDATION’S DEVOTION TO HERITAGE

That claim collapsed during last week’s Chicago Park District Zoom meeting. Here are the facts:

The Park District recently polled the community about what should replace the Columbus statue at Arrigo Park. Columbus himself was not an option. His return was explicitly “off the table.”

And yet, when the results came back, later obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Columbus dominated the responses anyway. Despite being excluded and treated as unacceptable, a clear majority of respondents wrote Columbus in. Not Mother Cabrini. Not Florence Scala. Columbus.

That detail matters.

This wasn’t nostalgia choosing from a list. This was a community going out of its way to say, “You got this........

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