U.S. parades, protests mark Columbus Day, now also Indigenous Peoples’ Day
At the White House, where U.S. President Joe Biden had declared Oct. 11 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, community activists held protests on climate change, fossil fuels and the coronavirus which disproportionately affect Native Americans.
In New York City, crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue to watch traditionally the nation’s largest Columbus Day parade, which was canceled last year due to the pandemic.
Despite the cool, dry weather, the turnout seemed smaller than before. In 2019, the event, which features bands, politicians and marchers from Italian-American groups, drew about 1 million spectators, organizers said.
“I love it. Missed it last year,” Alphonse Vecchione, a resident of New York’s Queens borough. “We love our Italian heritage.”
Columbus Day parades were also held in Chicago and Cleveland.
But a growing number of cities
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-columbusday/in-los-angeles-columbus-day-is-out-indigenous-peoples-day-is-in-idUSKCN1MJ016, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver and Portland, Oregon, have replaced Columbus Day with – or added – a holiday honoring indigenous people. States from Alaska and Hawaii to Wisconsin and Vermont have done the same.
Beginning in 1492, Columbus led three voyages across the Atlantic to the Caribbean in service of the Spanish throne. Many indigenous peoples encountered by the Europeans were enslaved or died of diseases introduced by the newcomers.
“We must never forget the centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror wrought upon Native communities and Tribal Nations throughout our country,” Biden wrote last week in a proclamation recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
He also issued a proclamation recognizing Columbus Day.
A few dozen people, many in traditional Native American garments, gathered at sunrise on Monday on New York City’s Randall’s Island and waded into the waters of the East River to mark the day.
“The only reason we celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day today is because it is Columbus Day,” said Cliff Matias, one of the event’s organizers. “We celebrate the survival of indigenous people despite Columbus.”
The White House on Monday issued an executive order to help strengthen tribal colleges and universities and boost economic and educational opportunities for indigenous people.
“For more than a century, the United States imposed educational policies designed to assimilate Native peoples into predominant United States culture that devastated Native American students and their families,” the order said.
The order creates a government initiative chaired by three of Biden’s cabinet members to focus on improving the education system for Native Americans.
(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Shannon Stapleton and Mike Segar in New York; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang)
David Edwards
October 11, 2021
Fox News/screen grab
A Fox News segment on Monday celebrated the works of explorer Christopher Columbus, who is responsible for rapes, murders and genocide of indigenous people.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy began the segment by blaming "cancel culture" for the effort to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
Talk show host Joe Piscopo argued that Columbus Day should not be replaced because it would dishonor his Italian grandparents.
"They were treated with the utmost disrespect and they fought so hard," he whined. "They wanted to come here just to be American. That's all they wanted."
"Why are they trying to take this away?" the former comedian asked. "You diminish the fight and the journey of my grandparents by trying to cancel out Columbus!"
Campos-Duffy went on to slam historian Howard Zinn as a "Marxist" because he had advocated for ending Columbus Day in an effort for the United States is to reject its racist foundations.
"You know, I don't know how that got into the school system," Piscopo complained. "But you have to understand is, what we celebrate today, Columbus Day, is even beyond Columbus. It's celebrating the ethnicity of America. The ethnicity and the mosaic is the foundation of the United States. It's the strength of America. They literally, by their hands, built this great country, the Italian Americans, the Jewish Americans, the Latino Americans, the Black Americans, the Chinese Americans. We're all in this together!"
He added: "And once you cancel out one of these groups, the Italian Americans, you hurt all of America."
"They say that he was so brutal," Campos-Duffy said of Columbus. "It's interesting that those who are trying to cancel Christopher Columbus are the same people who are trying to cover up the brutality of communism and socialism in the 20th century."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
