Posted on 05/17/2011 9:29:52 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
PITTSFIELD - Amid heavy opposition from hundreds of city residents, Mayor James M. Ruberto has dropped his plan to change Columbus Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Ruberto was seeking City Council approval for the name change, but Monday night he submitted a brief letter to the Committee on Public Works and Utilities asking the council subcommittee to send the matter back to him "for further community discussion and consideration." The five-member panel unanimously agreed with his request.
"The petition ... has elicited an unfortunate amount of controversy, something which is not befitting this great man of social change," wrote Ruberto.
(Excerpt) Read more at berkshireeagle.com ...
Were they trying to change the name from Karl Marx Strasse?
Some guy named Christopher Columbus. /sarc.
Have they finally figured out the connection between renaming a street MLK and the resultant increase in crime?
Well don’t you know Ol’ Cap’n Chris brought genocide, imperialist exploitation, and every deadly disease known to man to those poor peaceful indigenous peoples of America?
;-)
It’s helpful to tourists. They know which part of town to avoid.
“The petition ... has elicited an unfortunate amount of controversy, something which is not befitting this great man of social change,” wrote Ruberto.”
This shows Ruberto had no concern whatsoever for his people & only cared about the “look at me” factor.
Name a street after MLK & drugs dealers follow. Everyone knows it & he just didn’t care about the people who had to live with the affects his PC nonsense.
Then again, if there’s any state that deserves to feel the consequences of its politics...
Interesting... I always thought such streets were named in areas where such things already happened.
I’m very familiar with Pittsfield. 50 years ago it was a thriving industrial town making power transformers at the local GE plant. Today it is a shell of its former self. The GE is long gone.
Roads are filthy and potholed, the city budget is exploding, real estate taxes are insanely high... and this is the kind of foolishness the city finds time to work on; renaming roads.
If you want to know what Pittsfield was like in its heyday, think “Bedford Falls” in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. If you want to know what Pittsfield is like today, think “Pottersville”.
So does this make Columbus or Ruberto the racists?
In 2006, the Columbus statue in Boston was beheaded.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/9356325/detail.html
Pittsfield is w-a-y behind the times. Decades ago the University of Mass. at Amherst created its “Afro-American Studies Department” to honor WEB du Bois, a career anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-American black thug. It’s obligatory in Massachusetts to honor du Bois, King, and a Kennedy. That locals indicated they’d finally had enough is heartening. Today, any minority school dropout can study at the UMass Department of Social Justice. “Worthy” students can earn a Doctorate in Social Justice and then stay on as anti-American staffers. UMass recently sent me a plea for money. As always, I sent a check “strictly limited to ROTC.” Makes me smile.
That is true!
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