https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2022/3/3/22959813/columbus-statue-arrigo-lawsuit-parade-park-district-onesti-smyrniotis-lightfoot-italian-americansA civic leader is demanding that Mayor Lori Lightfoot apologize for the obscene and derogatory remarks a lawsuit alleges she made about Italian Americans during a phone call to discuss the statue of Christopher Columbus removed from Arrigo Park.
That statue was taken away on Lightfoot’s orders in 2020 after it became the target of protests and vandalism. The statue is the property of the Chicago Park District, which was sued by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans seeking the statue’s return.
The comment that incensed Ron Onesti, president of the civic committee, was allegedly made during a video call the mayor had the evening of Columbus Day with several people, including two park district attorneys, after she killed a deal the district had made with Onesti’s group to allow the statue to be displayed at the Columbus Day parade, according to the lawsuit.
“You d--ks, what the f--k were you thinking?” Lightfoot is quoted as saying in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Lightfoot went on to accuse King and Smyrniotis of making “some kind of secret agreement with Italians, what you are doing, you are out there measuring your d--ks with the Italians seeing whose got the biggest d--k ... I am trying to keep Chicago Police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My d--k is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--k in Chicago.”
...
On the call, Lightfoot told Smyrniotis: “Get that f--king statue back before noon tomorrow or I am going to have you fired.”
Thank you for standing up to the colonialists, Mayor Lightfoot!
“It’s offensive. We’re Chicagoans first. That’s our mayor. And our mayor is talking about her constituency that way. About an ethnic group that way. A very large ethnic group,” Onesti said.
“There isn’t an ethnic group that deserves that kind of vulgar referencing. ... I’m astounded . . . It’s embarrassing and it’s insensitive.”
True leaders are unconcerned with popularity. It doesn't matter how large your ethnic group is. If you support Columbus, you instantly share in all the violence that Columbus initiated and hence deserve all the retaliatory violence that Columbus himself deserved (but unfortunately did not receive).
“Her position is that the city of Chicago owns it,” Onesti said Thursday.
“The last time I checked, the city of Chicago is our people. We’re the people. We own it. We, as an organization, have a legal claim to it,” he added.
If you support Columbus, you are not even American, let alone Chicagoan. You are nothing but Western colonialists. This is what you look like to us (as Lightfoot accurately described):