Give Us Custody Of Columbus Statue – Only In Bridgeport®

From Brian Lockhart, CT Post:

Over two years after Mayor Joe Ganim’s abrupt decision to remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Seaside Park and stick it in storage, an Italian American organization has asked the monument be transferred to its custody.

“That statue has been lying in a barn  —  in a barn  —  where horses once were,” former state Rep. Christopher Caruso of the Council of Italian-American Societies of Greater Bridgeport told members of the park commission Tuesday. “That symbolism itself is disturbing and insulting.”

A gift to the city in the 1950s by the the Italian-American community of that time, the bronze likeness of Columbus, Caruso said, has never belonged to Bridgeport and, if city officials refuse to put it back on display, the council should have it.

“I’m for giving the statue back to Mr. Caruso and the Italian community of Greater Bridgeport. It is due to them,” Banjed Labrador, the commission’s chairman, said during Tuesday’s teleconference. “It is theirs. It was funded by their heritage.”

Full story here