Box removed from Christopher Columbus statue in South Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Christopher Columbus statue in South Philadelphia now stands uncovered on Monday. The statue spent the last two years boxed up, but that's all changed because of a recent ruling from a Pennsylvania court.
Now that the box is removed, it could spark protests in Marconi Plaza similar to what we saw in the summer of 2020.
City crews took down the box covering the Columbus Statue in Marconi Plaza on Sunday night.
It comes after a commonwealth court judge ruled on Friday the plywood structure must be removed.
In her ruling, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said the city accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876, and it has a fiduciary duty to preserve it. She went on to say the statue is not city property in the same way a city snowblower is, and if the city disagrees with the message the statue sends, it can add its own plaque with what it wants to convey.
After the box was taken down, a supporter of the statue says it's a symbol of his heritage and critics weren't willing to consider that.
"They don't want to sit down and talk," Michael Vasos said. "They'd rather stand and protest and yell and scream, and nothing gets solved by yelling and screaming. We're not bad people. But when you attack our statues and put boxes around it, now you're bringing the fight to us and we're not going to stand and let that happen to us. We're going to stand up for ourselves."
Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the statue be removed in June of 2020 following the nationwide George Floyd protests over racial injustice, calling it a matter of public safety.
"The box was put up two years ago. it was done to keep people safe," Kenney said. "There was a lot of conflict going on down there, a lot of fights and it was seeming like it was escalating. We didn't have the capacity at the time to remove the statue or the legal authority and we figured if we boxed we would put it out of sight, out of mind, which happened and things calmed down. And it's been kind of status quo ever since."
Critics of Columbus argue he doesn't deserve a statue since he had a history of enslaving and killing indigenous people.
Supporters of the statue celebrated the court's decision, saying it's a symbol of the community's Italian heritage.
Following Friday's ruling that the box around the statue must come down, a city spokesperson said in a statement: "We are very disappointed in the court's ruling. We continue to believe that the Christopher Columbus statue should be removed from its current position at Marconi Plaza."
There's no word yet on whether the city will continue the legal fight in court.