LA City Council replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day

[Judi Lynn]

Source: UPI

By Ray Downs | Aug. 30, 2017 at 11:26 PM


Aug. 30 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to do away with the Columbus Day holiday and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Councilmembers passed the measure 14-1 to commemorate indigenous, aboriginal and native people, reported KABC. As before, the holiday will take place on the second Monday in October and will be a paid holiday for city employees.

Read more: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/30/LA-City-Council-replaces-Columbus-Day-with-Indigenous-Peoples-Day/5391504148920/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=2

[zentrum]

1. Fantastic. Hope this

...spreads nationwide.

Could hit trouble in NYC where Columbus Day is really important to the city's Italians.

[sandensea]

3. True. The politics of this can get dicey in areas with large Italian constituencies.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina - where around half the population is either fully or mostly Italian - the center-left former president, Cristina Kirchner, had the Columbus monument in the park behind the presidential offices replaced in 2015 with one honoring Juana Azurduy - an indigenous woman who led guerrilla forces during the country's wars for independence in the 1810s.

Suffice it to say that the uproar was nothing short of operatic. You could have sworn that Mrs. Kirchner had banned pizza from the way they reacted (the right-wingers, especially).

The decision was hailed by human rights groups; but definitely contributed to her party's narrow loss in presidential elections that November - to a son of an Italian immigrant, as it happens.

[zentrum]

5. Wow. Thanks for

...that information. Had no idea.

[sandensea]

6. Sure thing.

To be fair, that Columbus monument is, aesthetically at least, much more appealing than the Azurduy monument - but then doing the right thing isn't always pretty.



Columbus monument (1921)



Azurduy monument (2015)

[Drahthaardogs]

9. Columbus Days is a day dedicated to Italian Americans

Not Columbus. Most people have no idea. It was always meant that way.

[DBoon]

2. Good

We owe more to the Tongva and Chumash than we ever did to Columbus

[Drahthaardogs]

10. Are you of European descent?

Do you live in America?

[denbot]

12. I don't know about DBoon..

But my answers would be no, and yes. What's your point?

[Drahthaardogs]

13. I find white European descents living in America

Going to Starbucks, drinking a mocha, making statements about the colonization of America to be so hypocritical I can't take the argument seriously.

It's also ridiculous when one compares the New Spain version of slavery to the Brittish version. No comparison
No one did cruel like the Brittish.

You can't wave the flag on the fourth and curse Columbus at the same time.

[denbot]

14. "You can't wave a flag on the 4th, and cures Columbus at the same time".

Not true, I can and do.

[Drahthaardogs]

15. Doesn't make sense

Our founding fathers we're far far worse than Columbus (and fir the record, that of quoted text is probably false),

But you do you.

[denbot]

16. Gee thanks..

By heritage I'm primarily Chiricahua Apache, and Tamahumara from my mothers side, and Yaqui, and Mescalero from my fathers, so I have a different perspective than you.

[Drahthaardogs]

17. No you don't.

The United States government had a policy of eradication. The military wiped out the bison to control the plains Indian. Wounded knee was done by American soldiers. Columbus didn't put your people on reservations, our government did.

Blaming Columbus for that is stupid. The Spaniards didn't do it, the country whose flag you admit you wave on the fourth did it.

Bartolome de las Casas advocated enslaving black people from Africa to the Spaniards instead of the nativev Amerindian. His writings are almost certainly an exaggeration at best, outright lies at worst. His motivation was conversion to Catholicism

[denbot]

18. The indigenous population of Hispaniola was all but wiped out by 1550

Who the fuck are you to tell me what I think. How fucking ignorant and mother fucking galling that some ignorant fucks think that they can tell other people what they think.

Fuck that child sex trafficking shit stain and all of his deplorable supporters.

[Drahthaardogs]

19. But it doesn't make sense

Sorry. You can rant all you want but blaming Columbus for the plight of the tribes you attributed yourself to and NOT our own government is just pure lunacy.

As for your accusations YOU said I have a different perspective yet never asked me what mine was. So yoi spoke to mine, not me to yours.

[denbot]

20. I am sick of your fucking whitesplaining of Columbus to me.

Fuck Columbus, fuck his supporters.

[Drahthaardogs]

21. And I am confused why American natives rail against

Spain while letting our own government off the hook. If you were angry at Grant, I would be right there with you. If you were Cuban or Puerto Rican, I would see where you come from.

Blaming Columbus for what happened here in the United States is like blaming Einstein for Hiroshima

[olddad56]

4. this is news that makes me happy.

[progressoid]

7. B b b b but our heritage!!1!

[Bayard]

8. As it should be....

Columbus was a terrorist.

[Cicada]

11. Columbus troops cut off hands, killed for sport

If you failed to produce your gold quota for a quarter they cut your hands off. They tested whether their swords were sharp enough by slicing through natives. They murdered for fun. They used 9 year olds as sex slaves.

Columbus was little known until Italians wanted to boost their image in the early twentieth century. They promoted him sort of like coffee industry promoted Juan Valdez.

Let's dump this homicidal monster.

[dalton99a]

22. Yep - invented by the Knights of Columbus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html

Columbus Day, as we know it in the United States, was invented by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization. Back in the 1930s, they were looking for a Catholic hero as a role-model their kids could look up to. In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt signed Columbus Day into law as a federal holiday to honor this courageous explorer. Or so we thought.

There are several problems with this. First of all, Columbus wasn’t the first European to discover America. As we all know, the Viking, Leif Ericson probably founded a Norse village on Newfoundland some 500 years earlier. So, hat’s off to Leif. But if you think about it, the whole concept of discovering America is, well, arrogant. After all, the Native Americans discovered North America about 14,000 years before Columbus was even born! Surprisingly, DNA evidence now suggests that courageous Polynesian adventurers sailed dugout canoes across the Pacific and settled in South America long before the Vikings.

Second, Columbus wasn’t a hero. When he set foot on that sandy beach in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. Writing in his diary, Columbus said they were a handsome, smart and kind people. He noted that the gentle Arawaks were remarkable for their hospitality. “They offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, they never say no,” he said. The Arawaks had no weapons; their society had neither criminals, prisons nor prisoners. They were so kind-hearted that Columbus noted in his diary that on the day the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the Arawaks labored for hours to save his crew and cargo. The native people were so honest that not one thing was missing.

Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years, 125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island were dead.

[jcmaine72]

23. Great! I hope Thanksgiving in its present form is next.

Columbus day should replaced everywhere with Indigenous People's Day, and everything named after him renamed to honor the original peoples of this land.

In addition, Thanksgiving in its current form also needs an major overhaul. Our children shouldn't be celebrating the trials and tribulations of a bunch of Christo-Fascist extremists, who came to America not for religious freedom as was wrongfully taught in our schools for eons, but to establish an oppressive, backward Christian theocracy. The emphasis of the holiday should be on the indigenous people who saved these bigots from starvation their first sorry year here and whose only reward for their nobility was murder, rape small pox, and having their land stolen out from under them.