By Ralph Cipriano![]()
for BigTrial.net
The rumor was that the 20-foot high marble statue of Christopher Columbus was going to get the Frank Rizzo treatment from Mayor Jim Kenney.
The story making the rounds in South Philly was that the Kenney administration was planning to take down the Columbus statute between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Sunday. And, to add insult to injury, the city had supposedly hired a non-union contractor to do the job.
So attorney George Bochetto went into Common Pleas Court on behalf of some South Philadelphia neighbors with a petition for an emergency hearing. On Sunday night, Judge Marlene Lachman issued a temporary restraining order preventing the city from moving the statue until a second hearing could be held at 2 p.m. today.
At today's hearing, according to Bochetto, Judge Paula Patrick decided that if the city wants to move the Columbus statue, they're going to have obey the city's home rule charter, and go before the Art Commission, and hold public hearings on the matter.
"I'm just delighted that we can proceed with these kind of issues in a fair and deliberative way so that everybody has any opportunity to be heard, and we just don't succumb to a mob," Bochetto said.
In court, Bochetto said, the city solicitor contended that the Kenney administration wasn't planning to move the Columbus statue. But Bochetto countered that he heard the same promises before the Rizzo statute was toppled in the middle of the night.
A spokesperson for the city did not respond to a request for comment.
According to Bochetto, the judge stated that she didn't want anyone to "unilaterally bully their way" into deciding this issue.
"The judge essentially told the city you're not going to remove this statue unilaterally, you're going to have to go through the Art Commission process," Bochetto said. The judge, he said, also ordered the city to take reasonable steps to protect the statute, which has been targeted for attacks by protesters.
The city has proposed building a wooden box around the statue to protect it, Bochetto said, but he thought a better idea would be to build a plexiglass box around the statute, so it could still be seen.
The state was donated by the Fairmount Arts Commission to the city in 1982, when it was brought to Marconi Park. Previously the statute, originally sculpted in 1876, was kept in Fairmount Park.
"We just want some kind of due process where our voice will be heard, and the opposition will also be heard," said Rich Cedrone, president of Friends of Marconi Plaza. "We don't want to get involved in any violence."
If the Art Commission decides the statue has to be moved, Cedrone said, he would respect that decision. "We just want the statue taken down the right way. We don't want it vandalized, we don't want it destroyed."
Fran Kane, an assistant business agent for Ironworkers Local 405, said he had been told that a non-union contractor was going to take down the Columbus statue.
The local union was contemplating setting up a picket line if the city went through with removing the statue. But the picket line wasn't necessary after Bochetto went to court and won.
Kane said it would be a big job to remove the Columbus statue because it's constructed of four or five pieces of aging marble that is "fragile and brittle," but weighs several tons. And if the statue has to be moved, Kane said, he didn't want to see the job bungled the way city workers did when they toppled and damaged the Rizzo statue.
Another supporter of the effort to protect the statue was former state Senator Vince Fumo.
"People have to understand that all ethnicities have their own historical markers that memorialize the struggles of their parents and grandparents when they came to this country," Fumo said. "And if other people to don't like it, well you can't please everybody."
Fumo described the judge's decision as a victory for the rule of law over mob rule and anarchy.
It was also a defeat for Jim Kenney, the would-be dictator of Philadelphia. But you'd never know it by reading the local Democrats house organ, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the Inquirer's version of the story, it was the mayor who initiated a "public process" to determine the future of the Columbus statue by sending a letter to the Art Commission. There was no mention of the court battle that prompted the mayor to send his letter to the Art Commission.
And there was no mention of the judge who had told the mayor that he wasn't the dictator of a banana republic, but that he would actually have to follow the rule of law, as laid out in the city's charter.