For over 80 years, the U.S. has celebrated Christopher Columbus with a federal holiday in his name.
But Columbus did not "discover" America: he pillaged it and brutalized and enslaved its people. Columbus represents slavery, genocide, and a history of exploitation. It is time to stop honoring him.
Cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and Santa Cruz, CA have ended Columbus Day and replaced it with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
I've lived in Philadelphia for five years, it is my adopted home, and I would like to see our city of brotherly love join the movement to honor Native Americans instead of the man who terrorized them.
Please sign my petition to demand that Mayor Kenney replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, change Christopher Columbus Blvd back to Delaware Ave, and take down the monument in the Spruce Street Harbor Park honoring Columbus.The monument, erected in 1992 at the same time Delaware Ave was renamed, calls Columbus "an honored hero of history" and "a giant among men of his millennium." But that is far from the truth.
Columbus' letters, and those of the men who accompanied him,
reveal horrific brutality to the Native people. In 1495, Columbus took 1500 Arawaks as prisoners. He shipped 500 of them back to Spain as slaves,
starting the transatlantic slave trade. The rest were forced to find gold, but there was very little in the region. According to Howard Zinn, anyone over age 14 had to meet a gold quota, and if they didn’t find enough,
they would have their hands cut off.Columbus routinely
gave his lieutenants women to rape as a “reward." He humiliated women in other ways, too: a Native woman who verbally insulted Columbus was made to ride on a mule around the town naked, and then her tongue was cut off.
Women who gave birth were so malnorished and unable to produce milk, they often drowned their babies out of desperation.
These are just a few accounts of the horrors the Native Americans endured at the hands of Columbus. It is well past time we stop honoring him.
Please sign this petition to demand that Philadelphia stop honoring a man who enslaved and brutalized our country's indigenous people.