What Does "Columbus Day" Mean (A Repost)

This was first posted in 2020. Then tweaked a year later.

Here's the original:

I'd like to take a break from watching our slow-motion Trump-led social suicide and talk a little about this: 

The Pittsburgh Art Commission unanimously voted on Wednesday to schedule a special hearing for the public to voice their opinions on the potential removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in Schenley Park.

Mayor Bill Peduto asked the commission in a letter Tuesday to begin a public review to determine the future of the statue.

The statue, which was erected in Schenley Park in 1958, was vandalized in 2010, 2017 and most recently again in June and July as part of nationwide protests against monuments honoring Columbus.

After the statue was vandalized in June, an online petition was created calling for its removal.

Let me say as a proud Italian-American that it's probably time for the statue to be removed.  As a cultural signifier, "Columbus" has way too much negative baggage to support it's continued presence in Oakland.

But instead of talking about the statues, let's talk about Columbus Day - something with similar calls for removal. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Evidently, different things to different people at different times.

From The New York Times:

Few who march in Columbus Day parades or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the New World are aware of how the holiday came about or that President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed it as a one-time national celebration in 1892 — in the wake of a bloody New Orleans lynching that took the lives of 11 Italian immigrants. The proclamation was part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic blowup over the murders that brought Italy and the United States to the brink of war.

Here's the story:

It began with the murder of David Hennessy. A popular police chief, Hennessy was shot down by gunmen while walking home from work. As he lay dying, a witness asked him who did it. “Dagoes,” he reportedly whispered, using a slur for Italians.

And so, more than a few Italians were rounded up and put on trial. The trial ended in a way that the public didn't like (six not guilty verdicts and 3 mistrials) and then:

In response, thousands of angry residents gathered near the jail. Impassioned speakers whipped the mob into a frenzy, painting Italian immigrants as criminals who needed to be driven out of the city. Finally, the mob broke into the city’s arsenal, grabbing guns and ammunition. As they ran toward the prison, they shouted, “We want the Dagoes!”

A smaller group of armed men stormed the prison, grabbing not just the men who had been acquitted or given a mistrial, but several who had not been tried or accused in the crimes. Shots rang out—hundreds of them. Eleven men’s bodies were riddled with bullets and torn apart by the crowd.

It's not surprising that the crowd rejoiced. The Italian government, evidently, did not.

Back to The Times on President Harrison's proclamation:

President Harrison would have ignored the New Orleans carnage had the victims been black. But the Italian government made that impossible. It broke off diplomatic relations and demanded an indemnity that the Harrison administration paid. Harrison even called on Congress in his 1891 State of the Union to protect foreign nationals — though not black Americans — from mob violence.

Harrison’s Columbus Day proclamation in 1892 opened the door for Italian-Americans to write themselves into the American origin story, in a fashion that piled myth upon myth. As the historian Danielle Battisti shows in “Whom We Shall Welcome,” they rewrote history by casting Columbus as “the first immigrant” — even though he never set foot in North America and never immigrated anywhere (except possibly to Spain), and even though the United States did not exist as a nation during his 15th-century voyage.

Seems obvious that the establishment of Columbus Day was initially intended to appease an angry Italian government in light of a brutal Southern lynching and not necessarily a celebration of Columbus himself, who, let's remember, was a man of his time and thus could scarcely be seen today as anything but ignorant and vicious.

Harrison was also a calling for patriotism. From the proclamation:

Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.

Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

In order to push the patriotism of the moment, Harrison had to shoe-horn Columbus into something he definitely (and absurdly) wasn't: an enlightenment-age "pioneer of progress." But what about all those who have since felt that the day is not about the misery brought by Columbus (and many others after him) but cultural pride in being written into the American origin story? The day means one thing if you see it as a celebration (or commemoration) of the beginnings of what turn out to be some very bad long-term abuses and another if you see it as a de facto Italian American heritage day and not a celebration of the misery and pestilence that followed Columbus' "discovery" of Hispaniola.

So we're at odds. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Who gets to define its meaning for everyone else? Those pushing for the "heritage day" risk offending those focusing on the very real abuses and those focusing on those abuses risk offending the cultural pride of a large swath of the population.

I don't know the solution.

Here's my domanda piuttosto pericolosa: is an Italian-American Heritage Day even necessary at this point? The fact of the matter is that every ethnic/cultural group deserves recognition for its unique contributions to The American Experience.

Perhaps it's time retire the day and use the temporal space it inhabits to make election day a national holiday instead. Perhaps we can all celebrate the American Experience that way.

Ah, Those 2nd Amendment Solutions - Ain't They Grand?

From The Washington Post:

Federal emergency response personnel on Saturday had employees operating in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with response in the state. Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday. 

Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops 'had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.’”

And The NYTimes:

A meteorologist based in Washington, D.C., was accused of helping the government cover up manipulating a hurricane. In Houston, a forecaster was repeatedly told to “do research” into the weather’s supposed nefarious origins. And a meteorologist for a television station in Lansing, Mich., said she had received death threats.

“Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes,” wrote the forecaster in Michigan, Katie Nickolaou, in a social media post. “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

And:

Last summer, Chris Gloninger, the chief meteorologist of a television news station in Iowa, left his job after he received a string of harassing messages — including a death threat — for his on-air discussions of climate change. He began incorporating the topic into his forecasts after being stunned by Hurricane Sandy.  

Back to The Post on how damaging this is:

The heightening tension has resulted in residents harassing federal employees, said Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official who lives in Asheville.

Duncan, who is also a representative with the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said people have been yelling at federal employees delivering aid or showing up to do repairs, saying, “We don’t want your help here.”

One Forest Service employee, she said, was pulling into a gas station when someone yelled at him to leave, saying “We don’t want the government here.”

“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Duncan said. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.”

Yea. And then what happens next?  They complain that they're not being helped.

Reality:

Claim: The federal government isn’t helping Republican areas of western North Carolina.

“They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on September 30. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.”

Reality: FEMA administrator Criswell has described these allegations as “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.” 

And so on.

So Trump lies to his flock, the flock believes the lies and then refuses guv'ment help - or worse threatens the lives of those delivering it.

 

 

 

THIS Is Criminal. Anyone Else See It?

We'll start here:

🚨 At Moonies gun cult Rod of Iron Ministries, Flynn Org terrorist Ivan Raiklin announces plan to interfere with electors in PA, including a plan to confront state legislators echoing J6 — on 12/1/24 at the State Capitol, in Harrisburg, PA 🚨

This is criminal seditious… https://t.co/E3oE5hejZV pic.twitter.com/UY5ryYuJpT

— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) October 12, 2024

For those who've forgotten about "Rod of Iron" here's some background.

I found a few RoI FB pages announcing how PA State Sen Doug Mastriano was set appear there.

But what about this Ivan Raiklin guy?

There's ties to Doug, too.

Take a look.

Especially this:

Election fraud conspiracy theorist and GOP nominee for PA Gov Doug Mastriano celebrating his win tonight with decertification memo author Ivan Raiklin, who says:

“20 electoral votes!”

Curious … pic.twitter.com/liYB77NJFV

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 18, 2022

Yep. That's Ivan Raiklin.

And then this:

Ivan Raiklin posted to his Telegram from the Dog Mastriano rally.

Next to him sits the leadership of the Patriot Caucus, which @EverettStern1 has pointed to as a group willing to commit acts of political violence and chaos to advance their goals.
H/t @clayberg pic.twitter.com/2bOjbo8wwo

— Gal MF (@gal_suburban) January 8, 2022

Yep. That's Ivan Raiklin, too!

Does Doug Mastriano have any comment about how his friend Ivan Raiklin was speaking before a crowd at the Rod of Iron ministries urging them to interfere with the 2024 election?

BTW, Raiklin is the source of the so-called "Operation Pence Card."

That was the part of Trump's coup to pressure VP Pence into not certifying the electors.

And let's remember what happened the night before Trump's mob stormed the Capitol:

The committee also released call logs from the days leading up to January 6, 2021 painting a fuller picture of who the former president was speaking to as he and his allies were plotting for him to stay in office, the first time the panel is releasing White House call logs in their entirety.

The logs have been crucial to the panel’s investigation in piecing together a timeline of events. While the log for January 6 has a seven-hour gap, the committee has gone to great lengths to fill in that part of the timeline through witness interviews and other records.

The day before the US Capitol attack, Trump spoke to then-Vice President Mike Pence. After that conversation, Trump spoke with Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who helped fuel Trump’s election lies in the state, and then the switchboard operator left a note “that Senator Douglas Mastriano will be calling in for the Vice President.”

What did they talk about?

Has Doug Mastriano EVER explained this to the people of Pennsylvania?

This.

This moment from @BarackObama 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UbKo7g0sif

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 11, 2024

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More From Jack Smith's Latest

You can read it here.

From the Factual Proffer:

When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the “targeted states”). His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification. The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud. (p. 3)

See that? It says, "knowingly false claims of election fraud."

And now with some facts:

Although his multiple conspiracies began after election day in 2020, the defendant laid the groundwork for his crimes well before then. Leading into the election, the defendant’s private and Campaign advisors, including [P6] (then a private citizen) and [P2] (the defendant’s Campaign manager), informed him that it would be a close contest and that it was unlikely to be finalized on election day—in part because of the time needed to process large numbers of mail-in ballots prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also told the defendant that the initial returns on election night might be misleading—that is, that he might take an early lead in the vote count that would diminish as mail-in ballots were counted because his own supporters favored in-person voting, while supporters of his opponent, Joseph R. Biden, favored mail-in ballots.

Privately, the defendant told advisors—including [P6] Campaign personnel, [P7] (a White House staffer and Campaign volunteer), and [P8] (the Vice President’s Chief of Staff)—that in such a scenario, he would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected. (p. 5)

And then:

By October 2020, [P1] a private political advisor who had worked for the defendant’s 2016 presidential campaign, began to assist with the defendant’s re-election effort. Three days before election day, [P1] described the defendant’s plan to a private gathering of supporters:  “And what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory. Right? He’s going to declare victory. That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner.”  After explaining that Biden’s supporters favored voting by mail, stated further, “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump’s going to take advantage of it—that’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner." (p. 7)

Immediately following election day on November 3, the defendant did exactly that.

According to Newsweek, P1 is Steve Bannon.

They knew they'd lost.

 

Watch This. Now.

Some Pennsylvania Details From Jack Smith's Latest

So what?  I can hear the deniers say.

But let's look at how the fake elector scheme shows in the filing:

Shortly after election day, the defendant began to target the electoral process at the state level by attempting to deceive state officials and to prevent or overturn the legitimate ascertainment and appointment of Biden’s electors. As President, the defendant had no official responsibilities related to the states’ administration of the election or the appointment of their electors, and instead contacted state officials in his capacity as a candidate. Tellingly, the defendant contacted only state officials who were in his political party and were his political supporters, and only in states he had lost. The defendant’s attempts to use deceit to target the states’ electoral process played out in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as across these and other states that used certain voting machines. (p. 16)

And so on.

And now onto Pennsylvania:

Two days after the election, on November 6, the defendant called [P46] the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party—the entity responsible for supporting Republican candidates in the commonwealth at the federal, state, and local level. [P46] had a prior relationship with the defendant, including having represented him in litigation in Pennsylvania after the 2016 presidential election.' The defendant asked [P46] how, without fraud, he had gone from winning Pennsylvania on election day to trailing in the days afterward.'? Consistent with what Campaign staff already had told the defendant, [P46] confirmed that it was not fraud; it was that there were roughly 1,750,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in Pennsylvania, which were expected to be eighty percent for Biden. Over the following two months, the defendant spread false claims of fraud in Pennsylvania anyway. (p.37)

And:

On the defendant’s behalf, [CC1] too spread patently false claims about Pennsylvania. On November 25, [CC1] and [P12] attended an unofficial hearing with Republican state legislators in a Gettysburg hotel conference room. The defendant called in, claimed to have been watching, and demanded that the election in Pennsylvania “has to be tumed around.” During the event, [CC1] falsely stated that Pennsylvania issued 1.8 million absentee ballots and received 2.5 million in return. The claim was rooted in an obvious error—the comparison of the number of ballots sent out in the primary election to the number of ballots received in the general election. After seeing [CC1] make this claim, [P43] the RNC’s Chief Counsel, tweeted publicly, “This is not true.” In the following days, Campaign staff internally confirmed that [CC1] was lying: when one Campaign staffer wrote in an email that [CC1] claim was “Just wrong” and “[t]here’s no way to defend it,” [P3] responded, “We have been saying this for awhile. It’s very frustrating.” Likewise, in late November or December, [P9] informed the defendant directly that a claim [CC1] was spreading, that “Pennsylvania received 700,000 more mail-in ballots than were mailed out,” was “bullshit” and explained the error. 

This would be Doug Mastriano's hearing on November 25, 2020.

Oh, and from the context it's obvious that CC1 is Rudy Giuliani and P12 is Jenna Ellis.

Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred for spreading misinformation.

Jenna Ellis pled guilty in Georgia for lying to the legislature. She was disbarred for 3 years in Colorado. She was also Mastriano's "Senior Lead Counsel" for his failed gubernatorial campaign.

Does Doug Mastriano have any comment on Jack Smith's filing?

The Damning Non-Answer

Gov. Walz: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

Vance: I’m focused on the future

Walz: That is a damning non-answer pic.twitter.com/h1MXP2fGY8

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 2, 2024

ABCNews has some context:

As the debate winded down, Vance was asked if he would seek to challenge the 2024 election even if every governor certified the results. However, the senator sidestepped the question and pivoted to what he claimed was Harris and tech companies censoring people. He also brought up the endorsements of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

And then there's this from The NYTimes:

“What President Trump has said is that there were problems,” Mr. Vance said when asked about his own past assertion that he would not have certified the 2020 election. “We should fight about those issues, debate those issues, peacefully in the public square. And that’s all I’ve said. And that’s all that Donald Trump has said.”

His debate opponent, Tim Walz, stared at him, unblinking, and then looked down at his lectern.

“Remember,” Mr. Vance said of Mr. Trump, “he said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully. And on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president. Donald Trump left the White House.”

Yea, he left out a lot of stuff, didn't he?  But it's basically, this:

“We need to tell the story,” Mr. Walz said. “I mean, [Donald Trump] lost this election and he said he didn’t.”

 That's when the above happened:

Mr. Walz had a question for his counterpart.

“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Mr. Walz said of Mr. Trump, turning grandly to Mr. Vance. “Did he lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim,” Mr. Vance replied, “I’m focused on the future.” He swerved to a point about Covid and censorship.

“That,” Mr. Walz said, “is a damning non-answer.”

A damning non-answer.

Giuliani Disbarred

From The NYTimes:

A panel of judges on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Thursday barred Rudolph W. Giuliani from practicing law in Washington because of false statements he made about the 2020 election results while he was former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer.

You can read the order here:

On consideration of the certified order from the state of New York disbarring respondent from the practice of law; this court’s July 25, 2024, order maintaining respondent’s suspension pending final disposition of this proceeding and directing him to show cause why reciprocal discipline should not be imposed; and respondent’s D.C. Bar R. XI, § 14(g) affidavit filed on August 9, 2021; and it appearing that respondent has not filed a response, it is

ORDERED that Rudolph W. Giuliani is hereby disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, nunc pro tunc to August 9, 2021.

That July 25, 2024 order can be found here.

You know what I'm gonna do next, right?

Yep:

The Referee found that on November 25, 2020, in violation of rules 4.1, 8.4(c), 8.4(d), and 8.4(h), respondent falsely and dishonestly claimed to Pennsylvania state legislators that in Philadelphia during the 2020 Presidential election, many thousands of votes were cast in the names of dead people. 

Respondent stipulated that “[m]any thousands of votes were not cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia during the 2020 election.” Further, the Referee found that respondent knew, or should have known, that on November 11, 2020, Philadelphia Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, made a televised statement in which he criticized the allegations of fraud as having no basis in fact and specifically concluded that the investigations regarding dead voters had led nowhere.

The date of the violation: November 25, 2020.

Again, yep.  That was Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano's hearing on election irregularities:

The hearing on election irregularities in Gettysburg was historic. @PASenateGOP @SenatorArgall pic.twitter.com/DouU5fbkLs

— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) November 26, 2020

Interesting thing, if you go to Sen Mastriano's official page and look for the link to the meeting, you get this:

Oops! That page can’t be found.

And searching for the name "Giuliani" also comes up empty.

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place, perhaps it's a glitch.

But if neither is the case, did Doug Mastriano scrub the references to the disbarred Giuliani and that November 2020 hearing from his webpage?

Any comment (or corrections) for the blog, Senator?