Bill de Blasio Booed At NYC Columbus Day Parade

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — It rained on Bill de Blasio's parade Monday — in more ways than one. Crowds along Fifth Avenue showered the mayor with boos during the rain-soaked Columbus Day parade, demanding that the city not touch the landmark statue of the holiday's namesake at Columbus Circle.

De Blasio, a Democrat, has offered repeated assurances that the statue isn't going anywhere for now. A commission he appointed is reviewing the monument and others around the city that could be removed because they're symbols of oppression.

But that didn't convince the scores of New Yorkers who jeered the mayor, with some yelling phrases such as "Go home, Bill" and "Leave Columbus alone." "Save the statue, otherwise you're German!" one man shouted.

Watch: Calls To Replace Columbus Day Are Gaining Momentum

"This thing is just spreading," said Giovanna Moriello, who was among the revelers who jeered de Blasio. "They're taking down the statues down south — you can't cancel history."

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De Blasio smiled through the boos, waving an Italian flag and joking with the firefighters who flanked him along the sparsely populated parade route. "I don't get lost in the critics," he told reporters before the parade. Staffers from the mayor's office and the NYPD ushered reporters ahead, keeping a greater distance between them and de Blasio than the press would have liked.

The parade followed a week of criticism from Italian-Americans, for whom Christopher Columbus remains a potent cultural symbol, over de Blasio's decision to include the Columbus Circle statue in his commission's review.

More than 40 leaders of Italian-American groups — including the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which sponsors the parade — reportedly boycotted de Blasio's Italian Heritage Reception on Thursday, though his spokesman tweeted that attendance at that event was higher than last year.

De Blasio appointed his commission in the wake of violence spurred by the decision to remove a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia. Columbus is considered an abhorrent symbol of genocide by Native American groups, who held their annual rally Monday to push the city to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

De Blasio again stressed his pride in his Italian heritage, recalling the hardships his family faced after immigrating to the U.S. from Italy. He suggested, though, that there are others besides Columbus in whom Italian-Americans could take pride.

"There's a lot of different things you could be proud of if you think about your Italian heritage, but for Italian-Americans I think we should really focus on what we have achieved in this country," de Blasio said. "... I think we need to think beyond any one historic figure and really think about what this heritage means."

The candidates hoping to unseat the mayor in next month's election tried to capitalize on Monday's pro-Columbus sentiment. Among the first to boo de Blasio were independent mayoral candidate Bo Dietl and Curtis Sliwa, the state Reform Party chairman and head of the Guardian Angels, an anti-crime group.

Posters for state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, de Blasio's Republican opponent, lined the parade route. "A vote for Malliotakis is a vote for Christopher Columbus," some of them read.

"This is is a non-issue," Dietl told reporters Monday. "1492, I wasn't there. Were you there? Let's leave a symbol of the Italian-Americans the way it is." He went on to liken removing the Columbus statue to tearing down the Great Pyramids in Egypt because "a lot of Jewish friends of mine's relatives died making those pyramids."

The parade wasn't all sour for de Blasio. Some cheered when a staffer announced him on a bullhorn in Italian and English. He embraced Cardinal Timothy Dolan outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. And he shook hands with a few people just before leaving the parade route at 70th Street.

"Grazie," one woman told him.

(Lead image by Noah Manskar)