Somehow, amidst the 2020 racial justice protests, amidst the protest and eventual removal of the Columbus statues by brave activists targeted by Mayor Lightfoot and police, amidst the renaming of one park named after a prominent racist slaveholder to Douglass Park, the Chicago Park District has continued to ignore calls from the predominately Black westside community of Chicago to rename Columbus Park. In fact, one mostly-forgotten petition to change the name of Columbus Park that started circulating back in 2020 received over 500 signatures with little attention other than a story in the Austin Weekly News.

In 2020, after violating the rights of protesters in order to protect a symbol of White supremacy and racial injustice, Mayor Lightfoot "temporarily" had two statues of Columbus removed and created the Advisory Committee to the Chicago Monuments Project (CMP) to delay justice and insulate herself from responsibility. CMP is a collaboration between the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Public Schools, and the Chicago Park District.

In August 2022, the Advisory Committee released a report, and while Columbus is mentioned 45 times in the document and most of the report sides with progress and concludes that symbols of racism and colonialism be removed, Columbus Park is not mentioned once in the 73-page report.

It is time to stop equivocating the need for racial justice for marginalized groups with culturally-insensitive and factually-incorrect arguments in favor of White Supremacy from White non-immigrants identifying as Italian American. It is time to stop waiting for Mayor Lightfoot. The Chicago Park District can and must act to immediately strip Columbus Park of its name (as it did with then-"Douglas Park") and seek community input in establishing its new name.