by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo columnist
Last weekend I took a nontraditional fall break. I went to Denver for the Transform Columbus Day protest.
The mainstream media coverage on such events generally stinks. For example, on this particular protest, the Denver Post headline reads, "Columbus Day fails to boil, Parades, protests equal lots of noise, rhetoric, but violence is absent," and the article proceeds as if the only issue worth covering is whether the black bloc broke any windows. So I thought I'd give you a view from the inside.
Contrary to the usual coverage, the protest is not a battle of American Indians versus Italians. A wide diversity of people participate in the protests, including even Italian Americans who believe that Christopher Columbus should not be raised as an Italian hero.
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Why not? Because Columbus was responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the establishment of African and American Indian slave trade as viceroy and governor of part of the American continent and the Caribbean islands. These facts aren't the product of a modern revision of history; they were recorded by Columbus' contemporary, the Dominican priest Bartolome de Las Casas.
The organizers of the Columbus Day Parade in Denver, the Sons of Italy-New Generation are not unaware of these facts. Publicly, they claim that the parade is about pride in Italian heritage. With this supposed goal in mind, the Transform Columbus Day organizers haven't asked them to disband the parade. Since 1990, they've asked the Sons of Italy only to change the parade's name to one that reflects this pride, and not the brutal legacy of Columbus.
And this legacy is not just a matter of an event 510 years dead and gone. Its effects carry on to the present day, both directly and indirectly.
The United States' policy of breaking treaties with American Indians ought to be well known. The policy carries into the present day. Need oil? Uranium? A good place to put a road through? If you find it on a reservation, no problem. It'll just be another opportunity for the government to show the American Indians how meaningless those treaties are.
The legacy of colonialism is also evident - and the slavery that accompanied it - in many other areas of U.S. policy. The vast majority of people in prison for drug convictions are African American, in spite of statistics showing that whites make up the majority of drug users and sellers. The so-called free trade agreements have as their effect the overthrow of the sovereignty of individual nations to determine their own trade, labor, and environmental regulations.
The implications are clear - colonialism is not just a mistake of the past; it continues as a force today. This was the reason that about 2,000 people protested against the Columbus Day Parade of less than a thousand people last Saturday.
The protest kicked off at 8:30 a.m. with the Four Directions march. As one of the speakers said, this was the part of the day when we said what we are for - essentially, an end to colonialism and respect and sovereignty for all peoples. People marched from north, south, east and west to a central point at the state capitol. A rally continued throughout the day, and was there to greet the Columbus Day parade when it passed.
The Denver police managed to refrain from the usual tear-gassing - though one person mused that this might have only been the case because they didn't want to teargas the parade. They did, however, round up a group of about 30 people for the crime of walking down the streets of Denver wearing black and masks - though not all were so attired. All but one were released, and five others were arrested elsewhere.
While the police were busy rounding up these criminal strollers - they weren't even jaywalking - four women about 14 years old sat down in front of a motorcycle contingent, temporarily disrupting the parade. The women remained nonviolent, but a few of the motorcyclists hit and pushed them. The women said that they couldn't watch this celebration of genocide go on without putting their two cents - and their bodies - in.
Those arrested included one of the people from the large group that had been detained previously, who was arrested after he refused to leave the others behind, four people who had sat down in front of a limousine in the parade, and a lawyer who was acting as a legal observer. About fifteen of us went down to the jail to support the arrestees and await their release.
A little before 6 p.m., the last of the arrestees finally arrived at the jail - all but the lawyer had been detained at another location since the arrests, which took place between 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., approximately. When the woman who went into the station to get information and post bail returned, she told us that one of the police officers had expressed that she was on our side.
Whatever common conceptions may be, no one came to the protest thinking it would be fun to get arrested. Nor did we come to degrade pride in Italian culture. The Progressive Italians to Transform the Columbus Holiday listed a number of historical figures worth celebrating, including Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo.
There is so much more to Italian heritage that deserves to be honored, that can be honored without celebrating a man responsible for so much destruction. As several of the speakers at the protest said, if the Sons of Italy would only recognize this, then we could march and celebrate together, and no longer in opposition.
Approbation or disapprobation may be expressed to Sari Krosinsky at michal_kro@hotmail.com.
