for BigTrial.net
It's not news to the woke Philadelphia Inquirer, but last week a Common Pleas Court judge ripped Mayor Jim Kenney one more time for "singlehandedly" taking the law into his own hands in his failed attempt to evict the 20-foot high marble statue of Christopher Columbus from South Philadelphia's Marconi Plaza.
During the George Floyd riots of 2020, Kenney had issued an emergency executive order that called for the immediate removal of the more than 140 year-old statue in the dead of night, allegedly because the inanimate object supposedly posed an imminent threat to the public health and safety.
But last August, Judge Paula Patrick reversed Kenney's "baffling" emergency order by stating that "the city's entire argument and case is devoid of any legal foundation." The city appealed that ruling, but in a 28-page opinion issued last Thursday, Judge Patrick ruled against the mayor and the city one more time.
According to Judge Patrick, the city was guilty of "clear violations" of the city's Home Rule Charter as well as the city's Managing Director's Directive 67 that specifies a long but orderly process for removing historic art from the public square.
That directive calls for consulting the Public Art Director, the Chief Culture Officer, the Department of Public Property [or the Department of Parks and Recreation], the Public Art Advisory Board. The directive also calls for allowing public input, and requires the city to notify the original artist and donor, which would have been the Italian government that donated the statue to the city during Philadelphia's centennial celebration of 1876.
But in Kenney's mad rush to take out Columbus, the city "failed to meet several of the requirements contained in the directive," Judge Patrick wrote. "The record shows that the process of approving removal was extremely rushed, and not in compliance with multiple provisions of the directive."
And who was responsible for breaking the law? According to Judge Patrick, at every turn, it was Mayor Kenney: "The record shows that the entire removal process was initiated and controlled by the Philadelphia mayor starting in June of 2020," the judge wrote.
Is our mayor chastised in any way? Nope. A spokesperson for the mayor, Kevin Lessard, said the city has already appealed the case to state Commonwealth Court. Meanwhile, the Inquirer, Kenney's official partners in all woke political crusades, has responded to Kenney's most recent defeat in the courts by pretending that it didn't happen.
In her opinion, the judge took pains to say that the case she was ruling on "has nothing to do with the legacy of Christopher Columbus as a person, or any of the historical connotations that might be attributed to him."
Instead, the judge wrote, "this case solely concerns whether there was adequate evidence to support the decision of the Philadelphia Board of License and Inspection Review and whether there was sufficient evidence of compliance with applicable laws relating to the removal of public art" as specified in the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, and the city managing director's Directive 67, which applied specifically to the removal of public art.
The judge's only concern, she stated, was "to make sure that the law and orderly process is followed."
There was nothing lawful and orderly about the city's emergency plans for Marconi Plaza. It was more like a lynch mob.
The original plot to topple the Columbus statue in the dead of night was outlined in a June 14, 2020 conference call during an emergency hearing held before Common Pleas Court Judge Marlene Lachman.
Fran Kane, the business agent for Iron Workers Local 405, told the judge that he got a tip from an anonymous city employee that the Columbus statue, which weighs several tons and was extremely fragile, was "going to be taken down by a non-union rigging outfit" some time between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. the next morning.
The statue's defenders had every reason to take the threat seriously. Just 20 days earlier, city workers had taken down the Frank Rizzo statue in the middle of the night, but in the process, they botched the job, by dropping the nine-foot-high 2,000-pound bronze statue and severely damaging it.
At a June 15, 2020 hearing the city solicitor testified that when it came to Columbus, it was "wholly the mayor's office who would be spearheading and initiating the removal process through an emergency executive power."
"So the mayor has the authority in the event that there is an emergency to remove a piece of public property," the solicitor claimed. "So the statue belongs to the city, it's city property, and if there is a period of unrest or the mayor needs to protect public safety, the mayor can remove it."
Regarding the city's Managing Director's Directive 67, the city solicitor told the judge that "this same directive is not binding law," and that the emergency powers granted to the mayor allowed him to "disregard the directive or the Philadelphia code."
Directive 67 also calls for 90 days of public input, Judge Patrick noted, which didn't happen. Directive 67 also requires the city's Public Art Director to oversee an approved plan that calls for removal of the artwork by "sculpture conservation professionals, qualified riggers."
"No such approval or assessment was ever given or received from the city of Philadelphia's chief culture officer in compliance with the parameters of the directive," the judge wrote. "Instead, the record shows that the entire removal process was initiated and controlled by the Philadelphia mayor starting in June of 2020."
"The record is also devoid of any efforts by [the city] to properly contact either the donors, the artist or any relevant representatives as required by the directive," the judge wrote.
The city "very clearly failed to comply with multiple provisions of the directive," the judge wrote. "It was error and clearly arbitrary action for the Board and the PHC [Philadelphia Historical Commission] to approve removal in the absence of compliance," the judge wrote.
In her opinion, Judge Patrick wrote that Margot Berg, the city's public arts director, claimed that the statue posed an imminent threat to the public safety, but had no facts to back up her position.
"Notably despite the 'extensive threats' to public safety testified to by Ms. Berg, [the city] did not present any first hand testimony to either the PHC or the board from police officers, emergency responders, other security personnel or anyone that was present during the occurrence to any alleged disturbances around the statue," the judge wrote.
"Berg only presented information and evidence obtained from second-hand sources," the judge wrote. Berg never indicated that she "possessed any specific personal or specialized knowledge of the events and unrest that occurred around the statute."
"She also didn't disclose what methods or machinery would be used for the removal process or what precautionary measures would be taken to prevent damage, and harm to statue," the judge wrote.
The judge also didn't buy the mayor's claim that the statue posed an imminent threat to the public safety.
Since the George Floyd riots of 2020, the judge wrote, "There has not been one single act of violence, protest or period of public disorder in the area immediately surrounding the statue," which, due to the city's orders, remains enclosed in a plywood box.
Judge Patrick concluded the city's decision to approve the removal of the statue was "based on temporary and transitory events of disorder" and "clearly constituted arbitrary action" by the city. "Accordingly, the judge wrote, [the city's] claims should be dismissed."
After whacking the Rizzo statue and attempting but failing to take out Columbus, a vindictive Mayor Kenney then decided to eliminate Columbus Day as a city holiday, and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day, as well as declare a new woke holiday of Juneteenth.
“We respect those who feel these statues are part of history and/or their culture," the mayor continued to pontificate from his pulpit. "However, acknowledging someone’s role in history does not mean we need to celebrate them or give them a venerated position in our public spaces, where all Philadelphians and visitors must be exposed to them and the pain that comes with it.”
The Inquirer was all on board with Kenney's woke sermon and righteous crusade against Italian-American statues and their former holiday.
"Dozens of cities across the country have changed the holiday’s official name to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, citing Columbus’ racist views and the genocide against Native Americans," the Inquirer wrote in a headline over an alleged news story about a legal challenge to the mayor's actions.
Then, the Inquirer's columnists of color took over.
"The Columbus Day holiday is based on a lie. Yet, some people don’t want to let it go," was the Inquirer's headline over a Jenice Armstrong column.
The subhead: "Columbus Day is no longer an official city holiday. The sooner people accept that, the better."
Ok, then. How authoritarian the enlightened can be.
In her column, Armstrong declared that she was "pleased" with the mayor's decision to dump Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples' Day.
"When you know better you do better," a smug Armstrong wrote about the woke mayor.
Not to be undone, Inquirer columnist Helen Ubinas dismissed Columbus as a "poor genocidal colonizer" and she described the toppled Rizzo statue as the "city's perennial racist lighting rod."
Yes, on this crusade, the mayor and the city's paper of record were in intellectual lockstep because of their shared sense of moral superiority.
As in, "When you know better you do better."
But when a judge found that the mayor's woke crusade to whack Columbus was in repeated violation of city law, the Inquirer's official response was to ignore it.
It's just not news that instead of acting as the duly elected mayor of a city of more than 1.5 million people of all ethnicities and races, the Inky's beloved woke Mayor Kenney decided to take the law into his own hands and act like a vindictive banana republic dictator.