With happy smiles, beautiful balloons, and tooting trumpets, more than 1,000 people gathered on State Street three days ago to celebrate the Columbus and Indigenous People Parade. Some of them to watch it, others to watch and join the parade. The Columbus people have been hoping, and waiting, and waiting for City Hall to return to them their treasured Christopher Columbus Monument that City Hall, in the middle of the night, wrapped up and stashed away from where it had been standing for nearly 60 years on the near West Side in a regal park until it was damaged during a public protest in 2020. Mayor Lightfoot, back then, promised the Italian American community that City Hall would return the Columbus Monument to a regal park as soon as the protest was over and done with. The protest is over and has been done with for more than four years. And the Chicago Joint Committee of Italian Americans is negotiating with Mayor Johnson the return of the Columbus Monument to a regal park. The memory of Christopher Columbus is hugely important to our dear Italian American neighbors. It is past the time, long past the time Mr. Mayor, for City Hall to keep that promise.

Walter Jacobson gives his Perspective: