BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday he was unaware of a Vladimir Lenin statue that exists on the lower east side of Manhattan.
“There’s a statue of Vladimir Lenin? That’s news to me. First, I in all my days here in New York City, I have never heard of there being a statue of Vladimir Lenin on the lower east side,” Mayor de Blasio told The Daily Caller at a press conference. “It may be true. I’ve literally never heard of that in my life. Anyone heard of that before? That’s a new one.”
When asked by TheDC if the statue, which has stood atop two separate East Village buildings for over 20 years, should be considered for removal by the commission appointed by him, the mayor responded, “Any statue could be looked at. That would obviously be one too. A very complex figure in history and it’s easy to say things that became of his work became very bad.”
De Blasio continued, “The bottom line is, I’m not here to judge each one. I want there to be a process where any New Yorker can say, ‘Hey, we’d like to look at that. Here’s our concern. And it gets put through a process that is consistent because we can’t do this as a one off an eye of the beholder situations.”
The commission is also expected to review New York’s Christopher Columbus statue that sits on the outskirts of Central Park. Activists complained about glorifying the famous navigator following the removal of Confederate historical monuments in other cities.