CHANGE: Philadelphia forced to remove box that hid Columbus statue since BLM protests.

The statue in Marconi Plaza has been covered since June 2020, when progressive Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to completely remove it as protesters took to the streets after George Floyd’s murder.

But on Friday, a judge ordered the city to finally free the statue and remove the plywood box.

Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said “the City accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876” and was not able to just ditch it.

“It has a fiduciary duty to preserve that statue, which it designated an historic object in 2017. The Columbus statue is not City property,” the judge ruled.

Local outlet WPVI-TV filmed city workers removing the box late Sunday.

A handful of onlookers cheered as the controversial statue finally emerged from underneath its covering, which since October had been painted the green, white and red of the Italian flag.

Attorney George Bochetto, who represents the statue’s supporters, told the local station that he is “delighted” that “the rule of law still matters.”

“That we are not a society ruled by cancel culture mobs. That all ethnic groups can proudly protect and honor their diverse heritages,” Bochetto said in a statement, referring to the 2020 protests.

He also told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the court’s decision was “not just significant for the Columbus statue and Italian Americans, it’s significant for every ethnic group in this country.”

The mayor’s spokesman, Kevin Lessard, said the city is “very disappointed” in the court’s ruling.

Of course he is: “In all of his political writings, [the late Roger] Scruton takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a ‘culture of repudiation.’ The Left is ‘negative.’ It dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’ Like 1984’s ‘two minutes of hate,’ this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.”