PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Kenney administration will continue to try to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus from a South Philadelphia park, despite a judge’s ruling this week that the move has no legal basis.
The city has appealed the ruling of Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick to Commonwealth Court.
A statement from the city says the statue will remain shielded in a box on Marconi Plaza. The box went up last summer, after protests demanding the statue’s removal turned to fisticuffs between demonstrators and neighborhood residents.
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The incidents led Mayor Jim Kenney to request, and the License and Inspection Review Board to approve, the statue’s removal.
But Judge Patrick, in her order halting the removal, called those incidents transient and isolated. She said there is no evidence of ongoing civil unrest or, in fact, any since last June, and thus it was arbitrary to conclude that the statue was a public safety concern.
Judge Patrick called the decision “baffling.”
City officials declined to discuss the basis for the appeal, but said it would be detailed in their brief to Commonwealth Court.
The attorney for the Friends of Marconi Plaza, which brought the case to keep the statue where it is, did not respond to requests for comment.
The statue became a target of protest during last summer's social justice demonstrations because of the 15th Century explorer's history of abuse and enslavement of people native to the land he discovered in North America.
Columbus is revered, though, by many Italian-Americans who see him as a unifying symbol of their heritage, and Italy's indispensable contribution to the history of the United States.
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