why the (*&% are we still observing "Columbus Day"??

[ima_sinnic]

A day that honors the "official" initiation of genocide and plunder of native peoples and occupation and outright thievery and desecration of other people's lands, a most tragic foundation, along with slavery, of our republic.

Does anybody even "celebrate" Columbus Day besides bank and government employees? It is just another excuse, like "President's Day" (formerly known as "Washington's Birthday" combined with "Lincoln's Birthday," which used to be about a week and a half later) for some to get a paid holiday--for some, at taxpayer expense. It is totally and absolutely meaningless--actually, it is negatively meaningful. It should be a National Day of Mourning and a day when all "Americans" would come together to honor and remember the people whose lands were stolen and lives destroyed by the timeless American war and plunder machine.

How did "Columbus Day" survive the past few decades of "PC"? I hang my head in shame that we would "celebrate" the monstrous acts of our ancestors.

I just "discovered" a very nice home down the street!
I want it, therefore it is fine for me to kill the people who live there and move in.

THAT is what we are "celebrating"!

[Bicoastal]

1. Meh.

I get a day off from classes. That's all I care about.

[ima_sinnic]

5. you and millions of Americans--that is all they care about--themselves

[kdmorris]

2. I don't celebrate it

I wear black that day and wait to see if anyone will ask. Most people only know the lie they are told in history class. They don't know that, of all the "explorers", Columbus may have been the worst (and THAT'S a hard thing to manage). Columbus killed or enslaved almost 300,000 native peoples. When he landed on Hispaniola, he decimated the population there, treating them like cattle to be sent back to Europe as slaves. The Taino indians on Hispaniola were a peaceful people whose numbers went from 300,000 to only 600 in 39 years.

Columbus was the perpetrator of the very first genocide of the New World, and I cannot observe that day except with mourning.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/100.html

[Disturbed]

3. Many people like parades & many Italians still think Columbus

was a hero that makes them proud. Delusion die hard.

[HereSince1628]

4. Actually we celebrate having had germs, steel and gunpowder,

on our side. It's just a whole heck of a lot easier, and a lot less disconcerting, to do that in the name of Columbus.

[Bobbieo]

6. Anti-Columbus Day has been the most popular topic on my Native Unity

blog for the past week highlighting three stories on the same issue.

[dbt]

7. "What you want comin' around here in that boat?"

"I'm Chris Columbus. I'm out discoverin' things. I'm gonna discover y'all!"

"Hmpf. You can't discover nobody if they don't want to be. You better discover yo' ass away from here."

--The Prophet Flip Wilson, ca 1970

[Didereaux]

8. we celebrate Easter as well....

more than a wee bit of genocide, murder, torture(can we say Inquisition, Puritannical hanging and burning of disliked females), ad nauseum. Just take the damn day off and sit in a sweat tent with a Sioux and cleanse your immortals that way.

[Jazzgirl]

9. Columbus Day was the one day we gave up many years ago.

I have no idea why anybody would want to celebrate it. We get the day after Thanksgiving instead. C-Day is worthless IMO.

[DaveJ]

10. People used to be different

People used to get excited about discovery and accomplishment, and thought what Columbus did was worth symbolizing it. People did not care about specifics, and did not delve into them frequently because they knew they would certainly find flaws in anything. I'd be happy to get rid of Columbus Day if someone could think of another holiday that would have the same meaning that Columbus Day once had.

[ima_sinnic]

12. I like the solution above, to take the day after Thanksgiving instead

--having a holiday fall on a Thursday year after year for centuries is not the brightest move, esp. when almost every other holiday except Christmas has been moved to a Monday. The only real thing being "celebrated" on Columbus Day is a day off from work and school, and people often have to finagle and sacrifice to get the day after Tbanksgiving off, so why not just make that Friday "official" also?

[DaveJ]

16. Personally, I want two days off for Thanksgiving

Then another day to celebrate the idea of innovation and exploration. I think it's worth a day off, or maybe a week off to give people time to innovate and explore.

[cgrindley]

11. Bite me

the colonization of North America was a good thing. We have Canada, the US and Mexico to show for it. Close to half a billion people make their homes here and enjoy full and meaningful lives. Lives that are a fuck of a lot better than they would have been anywhere else in the world. This continent is populated by refugees from some pretty shitty places and times. And back in the day, the colonies provided a way for people to escape a lot of class-based nonsense in their homelands.

Even my parents, who moved to Canada in 1964, did so to escape a shitty life in an out of work, still bombed flat, North Yorkshire hellhole. I've lived in the UK in the past (for 3 years or so), and I can tell you... I'm glad Columbus began the process of colonization. Him and my personal favorite, Cabot.

I defy you to argue that the world would be a better place if North America had gone uncolonized.

so yeah... I'm going to celebrate.

PS it's Canadian Thanksgiving for me, so I'm pretty fucking happy that there is a Columbus Day here in the US so I can celebrate my homeland's thanksgiving without taking a sick day (and I would by the way, because I'm thankful as shit that I was born here and not in some poverty-striken, North Yorkshire hellhole, where I'd be living on some vast housing estate or festering in some jail).

[ima_sinnic]

13. whatever ... so what is stopping your from "colonizing" that big mansion

on the other side of town?

There is no way to know what the world would be like if Columbus and his ilk had not started raping, plundering, and killing off those whose lands they wanted to steal. Perhaps if they had turned their attention to improving life where they were already living, instead of feeling it was their right to steal somebody else's land, the world would indeed be a better place. What goes around comes around, and a country built on plunder and slavery has some karmic mojo that ain't pretty.

[DaveJ]

14. (delete)

[cgrindley]

19. Perhaps if it was still the tail of the middle ages, I would

but seeing how nearly 600 years have gone by, it's probably no longer appropriate to just go ahead and colonize that big mansion on the other side of town. Personally, though, I hate McMansions, so I probably wouldn't colonize it even if I had the opportunity.

[NotGivingUp]

23. are you for real? so murdering all those people is a-ok with you?

:puke:

[cgrindley]

26. Yeah, I'm for real. No, murdering people is wrong

and yeah, I like what happened to North America. I like it here. I'm glad the place was colonized. I'm sorry that it resulted in the deaths of a lot of the native peoples, but I'm still really happy that we ended up here.

[King Coal]

25. Well said.

[radfringe]

15. was wondering when the war on columbus day was going to start.....

:eyes:

[Tesha]

17. Italian-Americans have a good lobby.

And labor unions that have today written into their
contracts as a day off are reluctant to give it up.

Tesha

[maine_raptor]

18. If it weren't for Columbus,

they'd have to come up with some other name for that city in Ohio.

:sarcasm:

[Red Zelda]

20. Happy Indigenous Genocide Day!

now go hug a white guy and get his smallpox

[NotGivingUp]

21. Columbus was a murderous asshole. It sickens me that there's a Columbus Day, BUT

the ever-imperical assholes that rule our lives appreciate murderous, imperical assholes.

[Freddie Stubbs]

22. Because FDR and Congress made it a federal holiday in 1937

As far as I am aware, there has been no effort in the Democratic controlled Congress to change this.

[cigsandcoffee]

24. I think it's difficult to apply modern standards to 15th century thinking.

A progressive culture has to "progress" from something.

Your post essentially says that the creation of the New World (and thus the United States) was immoral and shameful. You're just not going to get a lot of Americans to sign on to that.

[nickinSTL]

27. I don't. I get the day off work, but for me...

it's Leif Ericsson and Freydis Ericsdottir Day.

True, their discovery of the "New World" didn't result in long-term colonization or the slaughter of thousands, but they are the earliest proven "discovery" of the Americas by Europeans.

[zalinda]

28. Because we need this day for the "incredible" sales

that will be going on to pad the bottom line. Lots and lots of Columbus day sales around the country, no store owner wants this "holiday" erased.

zalinda