VIDEO: De Blasio booed at Columbus parade amid statue controversy


CITY HALL -- Mayor Bill de Blasio was repeatedly booed and heckled during Monday's Columbus Day Parade over his refusal to pardon statues of the explorer from a review of "symbols of hate" on city property.

"Leave Columbus alone, de Blasio!" one woman shouted at the mayor as he marched in the Manhattan parade. "Save the statue!" someone else screamed at another point. "Boo! Boo! Boo!" others yelled.

"Hey, over here," another woman yelled before shouting an Americanized Italian profanity for "f--- you." 

De Blasio was greeted by various heckles or boos from dozens of attendees at various points along the rainy Fifth Avenue route.

In one attempt to drown out a loud refrain of jeers, a mayoral aide shouted into a megaphone, "New York City please make some noise if you're proud to be an Italian American!" Further up the route, the megaphone continued to drown out a booing heckler, "Mayor Bill de Blasio wishes everyone a Happy Columbus Day!"


The mayor's opponents in the Nov. 7 election also descended on the parade.

"Tomorrow night mayor it's me and you, baby! It's all against 'Big Bird!'" independent candidate Bo Dietl shouted at de Blasio toward the start of the march, referencing Tuesday's debate. "You can't hide no more!"

Republican candidate Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis said de Blasio shouldn't have showed up at all.

"It's disingenuous to show up at the parade after insulting the Italian American community with his creation of a statue commission and refusing to say whether the Christopher Columbus statue will be protected," Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) stated after the parade.

A few parade-goers were still excited to see de Blasio.

"We will make him mayor for life!" one woman yelled at him in admiration. "Over here baby! That's my mayor, we making him mayor for life!" De Blasio blew her a kiss.


Still, the most vocal cries were jeers. At the parade route's red carpet stop, there was a large chorus of boos and a de Blasio aide was heard saying, "Maybe we should just keep going."

A Malliotakis campaign ad featuring the Italian flag and a photo of the Columbus statue was hung from scaffolding along the route. "A VOTE FOR MALLIOTAKIS," the ad read, "IS A VOTE FOR CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS."

"Save the statue mayor!" one man holding a Malliotakis sign shouted at de Blasio as he marched. "Then we'll all vote for you!"

Reporters couldn't approach individual hecklers to get their names because the mayor's police detail barred them from stopping along the route.


De Blasio has repeatedly cautioned against a "rush to judgment" over the commission and continued to defend its formation on Monday.

"Nothing is going to change in the short term. I think some of the critics, possibly for their own purposes, have tried to gin this up," de Blasio said before the parade. "No one's moving any statue, no one's changing anything in the short term. We're going to have a real public discussion about how we address issues of the past."

De Blasio announced the 90-day review of "symbols of hate" in August after deadly violence erupted in Charlottesville, Va. when white supremacist groups protested the removal of a statue of Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee.

Since announcing the commission, activists and elected officials have pushed for various streets, statues and paintings of controversial historical figures to be axed.

After Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito suggested that the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle should be considered for removal because of the "oppression" he brought to native populations, Italian Americans have repeatedly called on de Blasio to leave the 15th century explorer out of the review. A Columbus statue in Central Park was vandalized in September, red paint staining its hands.

The commission's first meeting is tomorrow. The group will assess statues and monuments symbolizing racism or anti-Semitism, evaluating each figure and making recommendations before de Blasio makes final decisions.

"There are a lot of different solutions, including something as simple as putting additional historical markers up to tell other elements of the history," de Blasio said Monday.


Since his death over 500 years ago, Columbus has been both praised as a navigator and explorer, and condemned for his contributions to the decimation of Native American populations. The 76-foot statue in Columbus Circle was given to the city by Italian Americans in 1892 after a newspaper held a fundraiser.

"You can debate the historic figure of Christopher Columbus but you can't debate the contributions of Italian Americans to this country," de Blasio said.

De Blasio regularly embraces his own Italian heritage, taking his mother's maiden name as a young adult. He spoke about discrimination that Italian immigrants in his family faced after moving to New York City.

"Italians in this country suffered discrimination for a long, long time," he said. "We're still overcoming that."

Malliotakis has previously said de Blasio "should go back to using his birth name of Warren Wilhelm, because he obviously doesn't have the heart and soul of an Italian."

At the parade, one man jeered, "Save the statue otherwise you're German!"

De Blasio said no criticism can "take away" his Italian roots.

"I don't worry about any critics who try and judge any of us," he said. "No one understands our lives and our families."

De Blasio is often booed at parades and other events.

"I'm never worried about that at any public event," he said before the parade. "Being mayor of New York City means you're going to get some cheers, you're going to get some jeers, it's just part of the job."