WILL CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS BE EVICTED FROM WATERTOWN SQUARE?

The Battle for Watertown (referring to the actual ongoing battle, not just the name of this blog) resumes this Tuesday, April 18, at 7 pm.

This particular battle is mostly about a rock.

Not this Rock…

It’s about THIS rock…

The battle began at Watertown City Hall on June 21, 2022, when a petition was presented to the then-town council to change the name of the Columbus Delta. Like many people, I had no idea it was called the Columbus Delta because I had always heard it referred to as simply the delta. For over forty years, I walked past that rock without ever noticing the name Columbus Delta engraved in the rock in big capital letters.

This turned out to be a highly emotional meeting before a jam-packed audience. We got to learn quite a bit about the Pequossettes, who occupied Watertown before Europeans invaded, as Europeans did pretty much all over the world, a few centuries ago. It was quite a lecture, designed to deliver the mother of all guilt trips. If you would like to read my impolite blog post about that meeting, you can pull it up here.

From that June 2022, meeting and from online comments that followed, I learned that some people cannot even look at Columbus Rock without being traumatized and that groups conducting protests on the delta have been known to cover the rock with a blanket so its existence and message could do no harm to those who are especially susceptible to being traumatized.

 I don’t know if the message on the rock is considered a microaggression or a macroaggression or if a separate aggression is committed every time a vulnerable individual, walking past the rock, happens to glimpse the message.

But, on the other side of this coin, there are longtime Watertown residents, many of whom are Italian American, who revere Columbus and embrace the message on the rock. To them, this is their rock, it was their parents’ rock, and it should be their children’s rock and their grandchildren’s rock.

So what do we do?

Or, more accurately, what do our elected representatives do?

On Tuesday, April 18, at 7 pm, the City Council’s Committee on Public Works will open their hearts and minds to the community and then vote to make their recommendation to the Council on the petition to rename the Columbus Delta.

The Committee’s three members are Vincent Piccirilli, chair, Lisa Feltner, vice-chair, and Tony Palomba, secretary.

It might be worth noting that the petition is the work product of the group known as Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice, and the Environment and also worth noting that Councilor Palomba is listed on their site as a member of their steering committee, a.k.a. board of directors.

Well, I’m sure that in order to avoid an obvious conflict of interest, he will recuse himself from this vote, as any principled public official would do.

And if the Committee votes to recommend that the full Council adopts the petition, I trust that at that Council meeting, Councilor Palomba and Councilor Gardner, herself listed as a steering committee member, will both steer themselves out of the Council chambers while the vote is taking place.

And as for the solution to addressing this sticky issue in a (need I say, election year?), they could simply vote to officially rename the delta, “The Delta,” leaving  Columbus Rock untouched. But that would be an untidy solution since the rock clearly says Columbus Delta in big capital letters.

Maybe they could simply vote to provide a similar monument elsewhere on the green dedicated to the Pequossettes, which would display whatever message the petitioners would see fit. They might even find an actual Pequossette to appear at its dedication.

This would allow us all to be good neighbors, respecting − even while disliking − each other’s political and cultural views. We would all then be free to picnic or protest at the rock of our choice, where perhaps civilized thought-provoking conversations would occasionally take place between members of the disagreeing tribes, without government intervention.

And what a great lesson all of this could provide for our student population, where they could see tangible proof that great compromise is attainable, while also being exposed to the one diversity that too infrequently sees the light of day – diversity of opinion.

Oh, and regarding the location of this additional monument, not to worry, neither tribe will have a placement advantage over the other, because, from both locations, everyone will have an equally spectacular and inescapable view of our great monument of public folly…

…Godzilla on Galen!

Bruce Coltin, The Battle for Watertown