We, the people of Jersey City, in order to form a more perfect city ask Mayor Steven Fulop and the nine City Councilmembers to remove the Christopher Columbus statue in Journal Square permanently from our great city.

It would be antithetical to our city’s mission and status as the most diverse city in the United States to promulgate a statue of a man whose crimes include (but are not limited to):

-Mass rape of Native American women and included selling girls as young as 9 into sexual slavery

-Brutalities including cutting off Native Americans’ ears and daily cruelties such as “knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades."

-Forced a quota system for collecting gold on the Native Americans with unmet quotes resulting in getting their hands cut off and ultimately bleeding to death

-Enslaved 1,500 Native Americans to be shipped to Spain where 200 died in transit and many more while in captivitiy

-Mass genocide where the population of the Native Americans dropped from ~300,000 to 500 within 50 years

Source: Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”

For us to tolerate a statue of Christopher Columbus would mean us tolerating the above listed crimes against humanity. That’s just not who we are.

Please do the right thing.