Two dozen people turned out to offer their feelings about everyone from Christopher Columbus to Boss Tweed Friday, as Mayor de Blasio’s commission to study the city’s monuments for “symbols of hate” held its first public hearing.
About half of the crowd was there to call for the removal of statues and other monuments memorializing controversial figures like Columbus — revered by Italian Americans but disdained by some as a bringer of colonization and genocide to indigenous people. The other half was there to offer their support for Columbus and other statues — comparing any potential purge to McCarthyism.
