CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long-delayed review of Chicago monuments still isn’t completed, but the mayor has restated her controversial pledge to return a Christopher Columbus statue to its prominent pedestal in Grant Park — the site of a bloody battle between police and demonstrators nearly two years ago.
Lightfoot ordered Columbus statues removed from Grant Park and Little Italy in summer 2020 after a clash between protesters and police injured numerous officers and demonstrators. Amid unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Lightfoot promised to conduct a broad review of monuments as part of what she called “a racial healing and historical reckoning project.”
That commission was supposed to finish its work by the end of 2020 but has been delayed numerous times. Lightfoot officials recently said it would be completed by the end of this month, but the administration is still working on the project, which is meant to catalog the city’s public monuments and make suggestions for new exhibits.
“What’s important is to make sure that we’re really respectful of, I think, legacy projects that people across the city care deeply about and particularly those that have been the subject of controversy. I would say the Columbus statue in Grant Park in particular, making sure if that statue comes back, which I fully expect that it will, that we have a safety plan in place,” Lightfoot said at an unrelated news conference this week.
Acknowledging the security issues that could arise with a return of the statue, the mayor continued: “I’m not going to do anything that puts our officers in harm’s way. I will probably be forever haunted by the experience of the vigilantes who attacked our officers in Grant Park (in 2020).”
Lightfoot’s handling of Chicago Columbus statues has generated criticism from all sides. Comparing the debate over Columbus statues to those about Confederate Army monuments being removed in other cities, Lightfoot initially resisted calls to take down Columbus statues and said she favors acting “to not try to erase history, but to embrace it full-on.”
But she ordered the removals after the unrest at Grant Park in July 2020, leading to criticism from Columbus supporters who believe she caved to mob rule. At the time, Lightfoot said the statues’ removal would be “temporary,” though the possibility of bringing the massive statue in Grant Park back raises public safety concerns as it could again become a battleground.
Lightfoot is also facing two lawsuits related to the statues’ removal. She is being sued by an Italian American group that says the Chicago Park District illegally removed a statue at Arrigo Park in Little Italy.
The city is also being sued by a former high-ranking Park District attorney who said Lightfoot blocked a deal the Park District made with an Italian American group to allow a Columbus statue to be displayed in a parade and made obscene remarks aimed at government lawyers during a contentious meeting.
The lawsuit, filed by former Park District deputy general counsel George Smyrniotis against the city and Lightfoot, alleges he worked with lawyers for the Italian Americans to make a deal allowing the statue to be displayed in a Columbus parade last fall.
When Lightfoot learned about the plan, Smyrniotis alleges in his lawsuit, she threatened to pull the permit for the parade and ordered Park District officials to attend a hastily called Zoom meeting.
“Get that f------ statue back before noon tomorrow or I am going to have you fired,” Lightfoot said, according to the complaint.
Lightfoot also made obscene comments to Smyrniotis and King, according to the lawsuit, which alleges she called them “d----” and asked, “What the f--- were you thinking?”
“You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. ... You are out there stroking your d---- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot,” Lightfoot said, according to the complaint. “My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago.”
Lightfoot has said Smyrniotis’ lawsuit is “wholly without merit” and said she has no animus toward Italian Americans.
Even before the unrest sparked by Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, cities around the country were grappling with controversies over monuments that celebrate Columbus, Confederate leaders and other historical figures. Some have been marked with graffiti. Others have been pulled down.
Activists have urged that public art do a better job of representing a broad spectrum of American life, something Lightfoot has said the Chicago effort will accomplish.
Before Lightfoot took down the Columbus statues, her administration promised Italian American leaders that the removals would be temporary. But critics and supporters alike worry that there could be public safety challenges around a return of the statues.
Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato, who has been a supporter of Columbus statues, said he would like to see the statues return, though he acknowledged there are real public safety concerns due to potential protesters.
“These crazy lefty loons, you’re not going to stop them, and they say whatever they want to say and they say whatever they think is right,” he said. “Unfortunately, you may have to surround it with barb wire.”
Ald. Maria Hadden, who texted Lightfoot in summer 2020 to recommend the Columbus statue come down, said she would like to see the monument commission’s report to learn more about “the whys, the hows and the conversation.”
“I want to see what this monument report says and I want to see what the recommendations were,” Hadden said. “I want to see the result of the community process.”
Northwest Side Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, a Columbus critic who went down to Grant Park to witness the statue’s removal, said the mayor’s comments are “offensive” since the commission’s reports aren’t out yet.
Rodriguez Sanchez also said the idea of reinstating the statue is a “slap in the face” to groups pursuing justice.
“White supremacist statues should have no place in Chicago,” she said.
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