Council’s Italian Caucus will celebrate ‘Columbus Day’ this Monday

New York City should recognize this Monday’s holiday as “Columbus Day,” a bipartisan group of City Council members said in a letter this week.

Despite growing pushback on the celebration of Christopher Columbus – the Italian explorer who enslaved Indigenous people as governor of a Spanish colony in the Americas – members of the council’s Italian Caucus wrote in a letter that attempts to rename the holiday were an insult to Italian New Yorkers who fought for recognition of Columbus Day, along with “anyone with an understanding of its undeniable importance to our nation.”

“To our understanding, Congress has not changed Columbus Day to ‘Italian Heritage Day’ or ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day,’ yet the City of New York and its agencies continue to refer to it as such, avoiding using the name ‘Columbus’ from any announcements regarding this holiday,” the letter read.

In 2021, the city replaced Columbus Day on the school calendar with “Italian Heritage Day / Indigenous People's Day.”

“Despite debates and disagreements, Christopher Columbus’s expeditions represent a significant turning point in global history, ushering in centuries of intercontinental exchange,” the letter said. “Recognizing this fact does not dismiss Columbus’s shortcomings, just as removing his name from a long-observed holiday, or taking down a statue of his likeness, does not erase him from memory. What it does is take away an opportunity for us to address and understand his complicated legacy and our shared history and diminish the place that people of Italian descent have had in our nation’s history since before its inception.”

A bipartisan group of members of the Italian Caucus signed the letter, including Republicans David Carr, Joann Ariola, Joseph Borelli, Vickie Paladino, and Democrats Bob Holden and Justin Brannan.

Holden, who has also been elected on the Republican Party line, often votes with Republicans in the council. Brannan, not so much. Asked about signing on to the letter, Brannan said that while there’s been no official change to the holiday’s name, he would be open to it.

“I’ve always been open to an official change and renaming it Italian American Heritage Day,” Brannan wrote in a text. “The vast majority of Italian-Americans have been using this holiday to celebrate the countless contributions Italians have made to this country, not to venerate any one person – and particularly not to venerate violence towards Indigenous people,” he said, adding that he thinks Indigenous communities deserve and are long overdue to have their own holiday. “But by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples day, we will continue pitting Italian-Americans against Indigenous people, and that is neither necessary nor helpful.”

Brannan’s comments echo what he said in 2021 when the city first replaced Columbia Day with “Italian Heritage Day / Indigenous People's Day.”

But the letter from the Italian Caucus suggested less openness to renaming Columbus Day Italian American Heritage Day. “While we support the creation of holidays to observe the contributions of Italian-American and indigenous peoples, this Monday is Columbus Day,” the letter read. “We should recognize it as such.”

After publication, Carr, the chair of the caucus, emphasized the importance of keeping “Columbus” in the holiday name, saying that for most constituents of Italian descent, “Columbus Day” means more than the man for whom it was named. “It means recognition and acceptance for us as a people in our nation. It means we are a seminal part of the American story,” Carr said in a statement. “Erasing that name, in our view and theirs, means erasing the history of achievement of all of those things for which they fought so long and hard.”