Weigh In On NYC's Controversial Statues At Public Meetings

NEW YORK, NY — Starting next week, you can take your thoughts on New York City's controversial statues straight to City Hall. A city commission on Thursday scheduled five meetings across the five boroughs throughout this month to get public feedback as it reviews local "symbols of hate."

New Yorkers can sign up now to make comments to the 18-member Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers on Nov. 17, 21, 22, 27 and 28. All meetings start at 10 a.m.

The commission finally released the meeting schedule late Thursday night — two days after Mayor Bill de Blasio won re-election, and nearly a month after the body pledged to set meeting dates "in the coming days."

"Our public spaces belong to New Yorkers, and their input is crucial to the monuments commission’s work," city Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl, one of the panel's co-chairmen, said in a statement. "As we develop guidelines around public art and monuments, we need to hear their thoughts on the best way to foster public spaces that reflect who we are as New Yorkers."

De Blasio impaneled the commission in September after a national stir over what to do with monuments to racist Confederate leaders. The issue sparked violence in August between white supremacists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

That discussion has since quieted across the country. But the meetings will ensure it continues in New York for at least another few weeks.

The panel has so far only met behind closed doors. It opened an online survey on Oct. 25 to collect New Yorkers' thoughts on specific statues and the general role of monuments in public spaces.

De Blasio has said the commission's task is to create a "universal" way to address monuments to now-reviled historical figures. It may not decide to tear any statues down, he's said.

The commission still hasn't released a list of specific landmarks it's reviewing. But de Blasio has said it'll look at the Christopher Columbus statue in Columbus Circle; a Central Park monument to J. Marion Sims, an early gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women; and a plaque honoring Phillippe Pétain, a French military leader turned Nazi collaborator.

The debate has earned the mayor grief from both sides of the political spectrum. Italian-Americans booed him at last month's Columbus Day Parade for even considering touching the Midtown monument to the explorer. But Native American activists say there's no place in the city for that and other statues of violent, genocidal leaders.

You can sign up online or in person to speak at the monuments commission's public meetings. Here's the full schedule.

• Friday, Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. — Queens Borough Hall, 120-55 Queens Blvd., Jamaica
• Tuesday, Nov. 21 at 10 a.m. — Brooklyn Borough Hall, Community Room, 209 Joralemon St., Brooklyn
• Wednesday, Nov. 22 at 10 a.m. — Manhattan DCAS Health Building, second floor atrium, 125 Worth St., Manhattan
• Monday, Nov. 27 at 10 a.m. — Bronx Borough Hall, Rotunda, 851 Grand Concourse, the Bronx
• Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 10 a.m. — Staten Island Borough Hall, Room 125, 10 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island

(Lead image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)