The decision to nix Columbus Day from the San Francisco Unified School District calendar last month came not with a bang but a whimper in The City. But the news apparently struck a chord with Italian Americans in Washington, D.C., who wrote a scathing letter Feb. 2 that singled out Board of Education Commissioner Matt Haney for his “particularly unsettling” comments about Christopher Columbus.

Kevin Caira, president of the social justice commission for the Order Sons of Italy in America, wrote that Columbus was “a man whose courage is not only admired by thousands of [Italian Americans] but citizens of other ethnicities as well.”