Miracle of due process

If you’re just now finding out about the agreement to bring the Christopher Columbus statue back to the Near West Side, you might be disappointed to learn that it’s headed for a museum on Taylor Street rather than its pedestal in Arrigo Park. (For more, click here.)

But those of us who watched the process unfold at the monthly meetings of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans can tell you just how triumphant the final accord truly is.

As many of you know, the JCCIA is a congress of 50-plus local organizations tasked with acting on behalf of the Italian American community. Anyone can attend its meetings but only the delegates of the member organizations can vote.

Attendees were kept scrupulously well-informed throughout the protracted negotiations, and no major decision was made without the knowledge and approval of the delegates. JCCIA President Ron Onesti and attorneys Enrico Mirabelli, Frank Sommario and Anthony Onesto did their community proud, and the attendees returned the favor.

“If any of what we revealed at the meetings got out, it might have compromised the negotiations,” Onesti reports. “We asked them to keep things under wraps and they rose to the occasion.”

What the membership witnessed was a dedicated legal team that fought tooth and nail against seemingly insurmountable odds to wrestle the statue back into the light.

A return to Arrigo Park was a reasonable expectation at the start of the lawsuit. After all, the team went to court armed with a 1973 agreement that committed the Chicago Park District to keeping the statue on its pedestal and maintaining it in perpetuity.

“Our goal from the get-go was to return the statue to its place of honor and make sure that it was adequately protected against future vandalism,” Onesti says. “It’s what the park district promised to do 50 years ago and it was only just.”

But what’s just and what’s doable aren’t always the same in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics.

“The current administration would never have allowed the statue to be put back in a public space because of the safety concerns they had,” Mirabelli says. “You can dispute the justice of that and you can dispute whether the statue could have been adequately protected, but they weren’t going to budge and we were in for a legal battle with no end in sight if we continued to pursue it.”

Efforts aimed at taking ownership of the statue were met with similar resistance. “The city and the park district were never going to gift us the statue,” Mirabelli notes. “They never have in the past and they never would because of the precedent it would set.”

A deal for the other two Columbus statues was also a non-starter. “The community only had a contract for the statue in Arrigo Park,” Mirabelli explains. “We tried to negotiate for all three but they refused to go beyond the terms of this contract.”

In the final analysis, the compromise Mirabelli and his team hammered out was a miracle of due process on every level and it boasts several benefits.

First and foremost, a cherished icon that has been hidden away for more than four years will be cleaned up and put on display as early as October. Better still, it will be showcased in a brand-new museum dedicated to the Italian immigrants who contributed so mightily to the growth and success of the city. And to top it all off, yet another one of our heroes will ascend to the pedestal in Arrigo Park for all the world to see.

Where once there was only one monument to our accomplishments, soon there will be three. And who’s to say the museum will be Columbus’ final home?

“Any agreement can be renegotiated and ours leaves open the possibility of the statue returning to an outdoor setting if a future administration is receptive,” Onesti says. “In the meantime, our statue will be out of storage and back in the public eye, where it belongs.”

The article above will appear in the July 2025 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.