the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Garfield NJ, Officials in Garfield, New Jersey, have restored Christopher Columbus’s name to a local park, just months after it was removed. In a unanimous decision during a special meeting on Friday, the Garfield City Council renamed the property on Outwater Lane from “Champion Park” to “Columbus Park – City of Champions.”
The council also approved an additional $22,000 in funding to replace park signage as part of a broader $5.6 million improvement project.
A Nod to History and Community Legacy
Council members framed the name change as a tribute to Garfield’s history and its Italian-American heritage. Deputy Mayor Kevin Kane expressed the importance of preserving the city’s cultural legacy in a statement shared on Facebook.
“Garfield has seen so much history unfold — moments that have shaped our identity yet risk being forgotten. This resolution is a step toward honoring Garfield’s history and ensuring that future generations recognize and appreciate the rich tapestry of our city’s history,” Kane wrote.
The “City of Champions” designation reflects Garfield’s athletic achievements, including the Garfield High School football team’s 1939 national championship and Tippy Larkin’s 1946 world light welterweight boxing title.
Controversy Surrounding Columbus’s Legacy
The decision to restore Columbus’s name has reignited debates over his historical legacy. While many Italian Americans view Columbus as a figure of pride and heritage, his role in colonization and the genocide of Native Americans has made him a polarizing figure.
Cities like Newark and West Orange removed Columbus statues in 2020 following national protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. Garfield itself has faced repeated incidents of vandalism at the Columbus statue, leading the council to consider adding more security cameras in the park.
Deputy Mayor Tana Raymond praised the decision, calling it “justly right” to honor Columbus. The council also emphasized that the original decision to rename the park as Champion Park in September 2024 was not intended to disrespect Columbus or the Italian-American community.
“It was never the intention of the previous council to put down Columbus,” said Councilman Joseph Delaney, who proposed the initial name change as part of a broader plan to highlight Garfield’s history through a “Monument Park” concept.
Community Reactions
The Garfield chapter of UNICO, an Italian-American service organization, expressed gratitude to the council for restoring Columbus’s name to the park. Former Mayor Richard Rigoglioso echoed their sentiment, stating, “It’s good that we fixed it, and now we move forward and fix other things as well.”
As Garfield navigates the tensions between preserving historical pride and addressing controversial legacies, the renaming of Columbus Park serves as a reflection of broader national conversations about history, heritage, and inclusivity.
Share Your Thoughts
Do you think renaming Columbus Park strikes the right balance between honoring history and addressing past controversies? Let us know in the comments below!
Love it !
Columbus is controversial, the woke idiots are!
I will never stop celebrating the day
Actually, you will.
Absolutely outstanding work, that park and the past field has been known for many years to us that grew up in Garfield playing Baseball there as Columbus Park or City Field for over 50 yrs
Columbus is never going to be forgotten by history as centuries of history being written and taught by colonizers has glorified his exploits and made sure it is incredibly difficult for him to be erased from American minds. Conversely, the Native American people who saw their culture, sacred places, ancestral homes, bloodlines, and THEIR history systematically wiped out along with so much of the population, with entire tribes and languages being destroyed forever, people who are already forced to endure reminders and celebrations everywhere of people and events that led to such suffering for Indigenous communities, are constantly left out of history books themselves despite their vital contributions. Native Americans’ rights are STILL under attack to this very day but our version of history’s already forgotten them because it never really bothered to see them.
How can we possibly claim this advances inclusivity if it is a source for such severe, multigenerational pain? Italian Americans (which I am, too) can celebrate the man still if they wish (or they can choose to look for greater embodiments of achievement) and they can rest easy knowing America will never forget Columbus, but why is it so important to cling so hard to preserve something that inspires such pain for others?
Passing a park that is no longer named after a guy you admire might be disappointing, but passing a park that your city fought to restore to honor a person who you associate with genocide and suffering of people you identify with is not only painful in the Intergenerational trauma sense, but also because it tells you that your elected officials and unknowable others in your own community think so little of you that even though they know the severe hurt this causes you, they don’t care; being considerate of your pain doesn’t outweigh their need to show their sense of pride…
As I said, this is the opposite of being inclusive because reinstating a name that evokes such a strong negative emotion from the community, a person who represents oppression, slaughter, suffering, enslavement, genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc for people, every time people for who Columbus symbolizes these kinds of things are forced to pass by or walk through that park, they’re triggered. By saying this name MUST be restored, you’re saying our neighbors should have to endure this so that you can feel a sense of excitement because the guy happened to be Italian. Why must government or public property be emblazoned with something that forces part of our community to feel less than upon passing? Why can a person not simply fly an Italian flag or even have some kind of Columbus tribute on their own property? I mean yes, this Columbus display is still going to be hurtful for some people but if you feel that that’s the Italian you must celebrate, at least it doesn’t send an official message that creating a welcoming environment in our community is actually only something we care about doing for certain folks.
My point is that pride is great, but considering safety and pain must be prioritized. When people talk about pride in terms of inclusivity, they are talking about communities that have been told for so long they should be ashamed or they’re not worth celebrating; they’re not talking about boosting egos of groups that already get to see themselves represented regularly or who are able to outwardly express themselves without fear of violence.
It is unfortunate that people care so much more about honoring a man who barely did anything impressive (he never even came to North America, wasn’t even the first to the Americas, personally enslaved 6 people the very first day he landed, and used his exploits to enter the slave trading market) than ensuring everyone in our community, particularly those historically most vulnerable, feels safe and welcome.
If you want to honor your/our heritage, wouldn’t you prefer to gravitate away from such a barbaric figure who caused such destruction worldwide? (He even brought diseases to the “Old World” like polio, causing the deaths of many in Europe, like he did to Indigenous people with diseases like small pox) Is THAT really the part of your heritage you’re proud of?
Clinging to this figure in this way demeans the contributions of Italian Americans as it suggests that the man so many view as a monster who oppressed, enslaved, and slaughtered people and set the stage for such brutality for centuries and who never even reached North America is the best representation we have of what Italians can do. (The first person to reach North America since the Norse folk was also Italian and did it shortly after Columbus, by the way)
It’s so disappointing that the new Garfield administration makes these claims that they are committed to making Garfield a place where everyone feels they belong, fostering a supportive environment, have a vision of a “compassionate community”, yet they immediately jump to return the name that people worked hard for years to get the city to hear them about. The way officials spoke a few years back about people who would disagree with the Columbus statute or park name, it must have been pretty hard for people to continue speaking out about their feelings regarding it, but people found that courage and tried to get their voices heard. They actually manage to feel seen and get this small but meaningful change made, but then just a few months later, the administration of inclusivity, compassion, and fighting for the least listened to reverts it back (which is a massive change). Of all times they do this when across the country people are being erased from history teachings, policy, every aspect of life in this “land of the free”. They did it going into an inauguration that was instilling substantial terror in folks, particularly the most vulnerable communities as they were being told they would not be safe.
This decision was an unfortunate display of where this administration’s priorities lie, in my opinion. I don’t care what you think of politics, if you believe in basic human rights and you are not a white supremacist, (and I’m pretty sure is most of our residents are not that) you should be able to appreciate the fear people in our community are feeling and NOT want them to get the idea that our city is on the side that’s against them, that it’s aligned with white supremacy ideals.
We need to be thinking about each other right now, particularly those who are most vulnerable, not simply about ourselves. Uniting our community means prioritizing those most likely to be targeted, harmed, or forgotten. It means lifting the voices that have historically been silenced or discriminated against (historically meaning over an extended period of time causing a disadvantage that creates barriers for folks of that group to overcome on their own without great effort on a regular basis). Uniting means taking the time to consider the real threats people are facing and considering there may be more important things than our own self interest at that moment. It’s being aware that our decisions, actions, inactions, words, and silence all have additional meaning to the others around us and taking the extra moment to consider this before proceeding.
It takes incredible privilege to see this as such a simple act, to dismiss the name as being an overreaction, to see your own disappointment at not having this symbol of pride as on par with the pain of the Intergenerational trauma the figure represents and the message it sends of their worth in the eyes of the city, to pick and choose what parts of the history suits you, to say, “moving on,” after reopening a not-so-old wound (since the whole point is that the name Columbus prevents people from being able to move on), to speak so nonchalantly about something people have told you hurts or offends them, to not have to think about finding an alternative (knowing wearing down the other side typically works so technically you can continue the hard headed approach and have a good shot of getting your way)…..
These are some significant privileges folks supporting this choice get to enjoy
i am afraid you are misinformed about Columbus, you are another victim of liberal revisionism, most of what we read about Columbus was written by his detractors and in a words “fake news”
https://theridgewoodblog.net/book-review-christopher-columbus-the-hero-defending-columbus-from-modern-day-revisionism/
So you choose to completely disregard all the parts that mattered about what I said. You want to deflect and try to get into this absolutely absurd debate by trying to what? Distract me with absurdities like “liberal revisionism” or throwbacks like “fake news” so I won’t notice you ignored everything that mattered most about what I said?
Regardless of what information you choose to believe is real, the fact of the matter is that people in our community do feel real anguish associated with this. Where Columbus is a source of pride for some, he is a source of severe pain for others; the very same people personally targeted by the government right now. Even if you believe people were effectively given bad intel and thus Columbus should not be a source of dismay for any person, the fact is that that IS how people see him. Based on THAT fact alone, that people in our community feel a deep sense of hurt by that man and what he represents to them, unless you are a psychopath, a white supremacist, or just a truly truly self absorbed individual who really can’t be bothered to consider someone else’s feelings if it means you might not get your way exactly as you want it, we should be prioritizing being considerate of those feelings over the desire to show our pride, particularly since that can still be done in so many other ways (like having displays on your own property instead of a public place that’s supposed to be welcoming to our entire very diverse city – or at least not actively hostile to certain already vulnerable groups, which is what a place becomes when it is explicitly named to honor someone vulnerable groups have said is triggering/upsetting, particularly when it’s been reverted back to that upsetting name after finally being changed).
Are you saying that you do not care about those in our city who do not look like you, who live a different experience than you? Are you saying that people in our city do not deserve to feel safe and welcome in their own community?
If people tell you something is traumatizing or deeply upsetting and your response is that it makes you happy so that’s a good enough reason for it to stay, how can that send a message to those people that they’re included, welcome, and safe (all of which being what the new officials claim to stand for)?
Read the book get informed instead of repeating liberal BS , with no factual basis what so ever , reading is fundamental, its called FAKE NEWS , because its made up and driven by a political agenda