Good-bye, Columbus Day. Hello, Italian Heritage Day. Starting this year, the city-recognized holiday on the second Monday in October will no longer be named after the 15th-century European explorer whom many Italian-Americans celebrated as a heroic, cultural icon, and whom critics lambasted as an enslaver of Indigenous peoples and an emblem of viol...
READ MORECiao from Rome! It's September, and the vacations are over. Here at We the Italians we are preparing a surprise for the next Columbus Day, which will unite Italy and the United States online to celebrate Christopher Columbus. This year the American Columbus Day (the second Monday of October) and the Italian Columbus Day (again on October 12) coinci...
READ MOREThere will be no formal Columbus Day program in Westfield this year, organizers of the annual event said. The Westfield Italian American Club and Greater Westfield UNICO in a statement said the event’s organizers consulted with town officials and agreed to cancel the program in case there is a resurgence of COVID-19. In June, Westfield health offic...
READ MOREThe celebration of Columbus Day next month could be Hartford’s last, as a community task force is taking shape to address growing concerns about memorializing the Italian explorer. Two city councilors had sought to rename Oct. 12 as Indigenous Peoples' Day, as Bridgeport, West Hartford and other U.S. cities have done in recent years in recognitio...
READ MOREMy parents brought me to America when I was 8 years old. Like all other Italian immigrants, they were incredibly proud to become American citizens. They learned English along with the history of this great country as they looked forward to the opportunities that lay ahead. Still, they never forgot where they came from and always made our Italian he...
READ MOREA local elected official wants to do away with Columbus Day, which is observed the second Monday in October. Omari Hardy, a city commissioner in Lake Worth Beach, says Christopher Columbus is not someone who deserves a holiday. It's often said that Christopher Columbus was a great explorer, but Hardy says there’s another side to him that most kids...
READ MOREBeginning this year, Howard County will no longer celebrate Columbus Day. The county is joining a growing list of communities replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. “We’re pleased to take another step to rectify and recognize the impact of Native Americans and Indigenous people whose land we occupy today,” County Executive Calvin Ball...
READ MOREFollowing a national trend, the School Board on Tuesday approved a proposal to cease the celebration of Christopher Columbus’ map-expanding voyages of discovery and instead focus on the accomplishments of the original inhabitants of the what Europeans viewed as the New World. Under the proposal introduced by Harris Mahedavi (Ashburn), the schools w...
READ MOREColumbus Citizens Foundation (CCF) is proud to announce a new scholarship to support Italian Americans with great academic prowess seeking financial aid at the graduate level in medical and public health fields of study. The scholarship will be awarded annually, recipients will be chosen by a qualified standing committee and the scholarship is to b...
READ MOREAfter seeing several online petitions circulating calling for the removal of the Jersey City Christopher Columbus Statue and calls to rename Christopher Columbus Drive, Jersey City Columbus Day Parade President, Nicholas J. Grillo and a dozen other local Italian American Leaders sent a letter to the Mayor and Council Members of Jersey City explain...
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