Hey everyone:
It’s 2020 and Pittsburgh is still celebrating Christopher Columbus with a statue! The City has failed to act on decades of requests-for-removal from residents, so we think they need help from their nonprofit friends!
We’ve provided the list of board chairs, CEOs, and HR directors of Phipps and the Parks Conservancy. Both these nonprofits operate in Schenley Park, by privilege of the City, and recently signed a letter, with 29 other environmental organizations, on justice, race, and responsibility, and we think it’s time for them to take action, not just words, on these topics and demand that the City remove this racist statue. You can’t say our parks are equitable when there’s a City-owned statue of a colonizer in the most visited park in the City.
We know Columbus shouldn’t be honored for his crimes of abuse and murder of indigenous peoples; he’s hardly an Italian hero, but some powerful people in Pittsburgh still believe what he did was normal in his time. Your email can be a sentence or two, historical preciseness isn’t important, it’s most important we show them our numbers. Ask these nonprofits to speak out about the racism they’ve ignored until now.
We’ve also included, as a courtesy, the head of the City’s Office of Equity, tasked with making sure the City is inclusive, and not racist; the DPW director, maintainer of the parks; and the Art Commission, responsible for all city-owned monuments.
We have more to fight for after this, the City still provides a permit to the racist Columbus Day parade through Bloomfield every fall, and we still don’t celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, like many, more inclusive, cities across the country.
A suggestion of how to start your email:
Hi, I’m writing to ask the Parks Conservancy and Phipps Conservatory boards and staff demand the City of Pittsburgh remove the Columbus statue in Schenley Park.
Please email ALL of these people, each one plays an important role:
mike.lyons@pnc.com, wburlack@pcrg.org, cqureshi@pittsburghparks.org, ceo@phipps.conservatory.org, acarvalho@pittsburghparks.org, hr@phipps.conservatory.org, pacd@pittsburghpa.gov, mike.gable@pittsburghpa.gov, majestic.lane@pittsburghpa.gov, mcheever@pittsburghparks.org
-Alison Keating, supporter and co-organizer