Aldermen, Activists Join Mounting Push To Remove Balbo Monument, Rename Drive

By Stephen Gossett in News on Aug 17, 2017 11:12PM

Balbo Monument / Flickr / Photo: rchdj10

In the wake of the Charlottesville attack and ongoing conversations about whether or not to take down monuments of repressive governments, the push to remove the Balbo Monument and rename Balbo Drive has received support from some Chicago officials, with a handful of aldermen reportedly throwing their names behind the effort. At the same time, a petition to change the name of Balbo Drive to Ida B. Wells Way, in honor of the suffragist icon and early leader in the Civil Rights movement, gathered momentum on Thursday.

The Sun-Times reports that Ald. Gilbert Villegas (Ward 36) and Ald. Ed Burke (Ward 14) are both in favor of a plan to ask the Chicago Park District to remove the Balbo monument—which was gifted to Chicago in 1933 by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. It was built as a tribute to Italo Balbo, an Italian Air Force Marshal and Fascist organizer, and his transatlantic flight to Chicago. The monument was fashioned by placing a 2,000-year-old antiquity—an ancient Roman pillar—atop a stone base. It was gifted to the city to be displayed at the Italian Pavilion at the Century of Progress World's Fair and remains in Grant Park. The name of 7th Street was also changed to Balbo Drive in 1933.

The aldermen also plan on lobbying the City Council to have Balbo Drive renamed "after a late Chicago mayor who never was honored by having a building or street dedicated to his memory," Burke told Michael Sneed of the Sun-Times.

Also, Ald. Ameya Pawar (Ward 47) tweeted on Wednesday that it is "time to rename Balbo Drive and remove this monument."

Meanwhile, a grassroots effort is lobbying for the street-designation honor to be shifted from Balbo to Ida B. Wells, the revered Chicago journalist and editor who wrote against the normalization of lynchings and combatted racism within the suffragist movement.

She laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement, said Aislinn Sol of Black Lives Lives Matter - Chicago, one of the reasons she stands as an ideal choice for the replacement.

"Through her citizen journalism and work with the black press, traveling through the country to garner support in opposition to the domestic terrorism of lynching that sprung up after Reconstruction, she was integral to the longer fight of the black freedom movement," Sol told Chicagoist. Wells is "much more apt of public recognition and honor than a participant in crimes against humanity."

Although the petition specifically addresses the roadway and not the monument, Sol said she was also in favor of removing it from public display, and placing it in a museum. It should be replaced with a monument to "actual freedom fighters" and/or a tribute to the victims of police torture, she offered.

The Balbo Monument should be removed but preserved in a museum since it reflects "an honest depiction of how the U.S. did support the rise of Fascism.. and how we must remain vigilant in weakening the power of fascists and preventing their rise," she said. Removing the monument does not rewrite history or culture; rather it carries on the unfinished project of the American Revoltuon, Sol said, channelling W.E.B. Du Bois.

Via Change.org petiton