Pete Buttigieg wants Jefferson-Jackson dinners renamed
May 18, 2019
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN.....
Iowa Democrats rebrand fundraiser as Liberty & Justice Celebration
The Iowa Democratic Party’s annual fall fundraiser has a new name.
The event will be held November 1, 2019. It will attract international attention, as it has in the past, due to all the Democratic presidential candidates who’ll speak. It’s been re-branded as the Liberty and Justice Celebration.
For decades, the annual event was named for Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who are considered the founders of the Democratic Party. A few years ago Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners in Iowa and other states were renamed after critics pointed out Jackson’s policies towards Native Americans and that Jefferson owned slaves.
The Iowa Democratic Party renamed its annual J-J Dinner “The Fall Gala” in 2015.
The Iowa Democratic Party has rented Wells Fargo Arena — the largest venue in Des Moines — for their 2019 Liberty and Justice Celebration. The party’s chairman says it will give Democrats a chance to highlight the party’s strength heading into the 2020 election.
Aug. 8, 2015
An Iowa Democratic Party panel voted on Saturday to change the name of the popular Jefferson-Jackson dinner, joining several state parties in distancing itself from the legacies of the two former slave-owning presidents for whom the dinner is named.
Andy McGuire, the party chairwoman, said the State Central Committee voted Saturday to begin the process of changing the name. A single-sentence resolution was approved overwhelmingly by a voice vote, said Sam Lau, a state party spokesman. The change will take effect after this year’s event in late October.
The annual dinner, which draws big crowds and presidential hopefuls looking for an early advantage in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, is named for Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Both owned slaves, and President Jackson carried out a bloody campaign to remove Native Americans from the South to make way for white settlers.
“The vote to change the name of the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner comes after much debate and discussion among our activists and grass-roots leaders around the state,” Dr. McGuire said. “This was not a decision that was made lightly. The vote today confirms that our party believes it is important to change the name of the dinner to align with the values of our modern-day Democratic Party: inclusiveness, diversity and equality.”
Jefferson-Jackson dinners have been a Democratic tradition dating back decades, helping to raise money for state and local parties. Nowhere is it more celebrated than in Iowa, where more than 9,000 Democrats turned out in 2007 to hear speeches from a field led by Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in their quest for the party’s presidential nomination.
State party committees in Georgia, Connecticut and Missouri also recently dropped the names of Jefferson and Jackson from the annual fund-raising dinners, and similar moves are being considered in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arkansas, Maine and Tennessee, President Jackson’s home state.
Efforts to drop names and symbols linked to slavery and the Civil War have gained traction since nine black churchgoers were killed by a white gunman in Charleston, S.C., in June. That attack prompted state leaders to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State House grounds.
By Ashley Southall
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 9, 2015, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Will Be Renamed.
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