For ten years Denver Italians have been fighting the 'illegal' protests of Native Americans against Columbus Day Celebrations, who "symbolically" charge Columbus with genocide of indigenous peoples in North America, when he never even set foot on the Continent. 

It appears as if Glenn Morris an Indian Activist, and Ward Churchill, a discredited "faux" Indian formerly professor at University of Colorado, are unsure of their degree of "protest" this year. 

Morris, having lost the argument that Columbus was responsible for all the Indian Massacres and Removals, and Broken Treaties, now says that the founding of Columbus Day was not to honor Italian Americans. BUT no one claims that.  Italians claim that Columbus deserves to be honored, and Italian Americans took pride in his accomplishment. Morris also says that the Knights of Columbus deserved some credit, and they were actually Irishmen, who were unwilling to be called Knights of St Patrick, because the Irish were at that time unwelcome in the US, but the Knights were proud that a fellow Catholic was being honored, Morris then states that Italians at that time were held in very low esteem, as more evidence that Italian Americans were Not being honored. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day

In Colorado, this October's arrival means the peak of aspen gold is already gone from the mountains, along with any glimmer of civility in political campaigns. And the annual Columbus Day parade controversy, even if somewhat muted, again ignites. 

There's nothing new about the agita that pits parade supporters who hail Columbus as a hero and cultural icon for Italian-Americans against detractors who insist he was a slave-trader who launched the genocide of indigenous peoples.

Elsewhere, pressure from Native Americans led to "Columbus Day" being renamed "Fall Weekend" by faculty at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Berkeley, Calif., has gone to "Indigenous People's Day," while Hawaii now uses "Discoverer's Day" and South Dakota prefers "Native American Day."

But suggestions that Denver might also de-emphasize Columbus have proven, as Mark Twain might have said, "greatly exaggerated." Efforts to emphasize Italian-American heritage have gained ground in Colorado in recent years, and October is now dubbed "Italian Heritage month" here. But leaders of Denver Italian-American groups see no reason to support what they view as an unnecessary dilution of a national holiday that's a point of honor for Italian-Americans.

Which means that, after nearly 520 years and organized attacks in recent decades, Columbus still stands tall in Denver's Italian-American community, whose thinking is far from that on campus citadels of political correctness.

The parade that marks 103 years in Colorado will roll through downtown Denver on Saturday, with an effort organizers hope may be bigger than ever. (For details, go to www.columbusdayparade.org.) 

"It's a national holiday," said Columbus Day Parade Committee president Rich SaBell, "and the majority of Italians here are unwilling to appease protesters by calling it something else. What we're trying to do is restore the luster that used to mark the parades of old."

George Vendegnia founded the Denver Sons of Italy/New Generation in 1995 and revived the Denver Columbus Parade in 2000. "The city of Denver tried to get us to change the name to 'Heritage Day,' 'Explorer's Day' or 'Italian Pride Day' . . . anything but Columbus," he said. "Well, we have plenty of pride. If they want to change it, let them do it at the national level."

Longtime parade opponent and Columbus detractor Glenn Morris finds that logic based on "bogus" assumptions that are historically flawed. An associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado Denver, Morris - an American Indian - has opposed honoring Columbus at least since the late 1980s, when he and fellow American Indian Movement activist Russell Means led a demonstration that poured symbolic "blood" over a Columbus monument in Denver's Civic Center Park.

"The notion that the Colorado legislature designated Columbus Day a holiday in 1907 to honor Colorado Italians is completely bogus," he said. The facts, he contends, have the holiday bill passing as a result of political chicanery by Italian immigrant Angelo Noce, who published Colorado's first Italian newspaper, La Stella. And Irish, not Italian, fraternal organizations provided the impetus.

The first Denver Columbus Day parade, in 1907, said Morris, was not organized by Denver's Italian community, but by Irish Catholics in the Denver Council of the Knights of Columbus, led by Edward Delehanty, David O'Brien and Father H.L. McMenamin. The national Knights of Columbus group, Morris added, was formed in 1881 in New Haven, Conn., with the name "Columbus" and not "St. Patrick" selected to avoid further fanning anti-Irish sentiment in the East.

Colorado honoring Italians at the time is ludicrous, said Morris, because Italians weren't even considered "white" at a time when Irish were also thought to belong to a sub-species. In 1893, he said, Italian saloon-keeper Daniel Arata was lynched with a mob of 10,000 watching in what was called the "Death to the Dago" incident. No arrests followed. Two years later, Morris said, six Italians were murdered in Walsenburg and, in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, most of the coal miners killed were Italians.

"That's how highly regarded Italians were in Colorado," Morris said, adding that "many of us have gotten a raw deal."

"Our position has never been to take something away from Italians, but to move toward celebrating the cultural richness that all ethnic groups brought to America," Morris said.

While American Indians undoubtedly suffered genocide due to America's 19th century Western expansion, whether that can be traced to Columbus, who died in 1506, is questioned. During the "Columbian Exposition," or Chicago World's Fair of 1893, Columbus became a "poster boy" for American expansion into the Caribbean and Pacific, Morris said, with the contrived Spanish-American War coming five years later.

While Morris calls Columbus "the architect of genocide," parade organizer SaBell differs. "Columbus was a man of his time," he said. "In 1492, there wasn't a civilization in Europe, the Caribbean or anywhere else that didn't practice slavery."

When it was pointed out to Morris that it was Spanish conquistadors Cortez and Pizarro, and not Columbus, who destroyed indigenous Aztec and Inca civilizations in Mexico and South America and enslaved its populace, he replied, "They don't have national holidays in their names. If they did, we'd probably protest them as well."

Protesters and the threat of street violence shut down the 1992 parade moments before it was scheduled to start. "TV was disappointed," said Sons of Italy member Frank Macri at the time. 

"They wanted a confrontation between Plains Indian and Joe Paisano in the street."

While more than 100 protesters were arrested while trying to block the parade in 2000 " revived by Vendegnia and others after being dormant since 1992 " their numbers have dwindled since. Only about 15 protesters were at last year's parade when cold and snowy weather made for a small turnout all around.

Morris wasn't sure how many might protest this year, or whether he'd even be there himself. "It's time," he said, "to turn this effort over to new blood."

Protesters have become far less of a concern in recent years, said Italian honorary vice consul Maria Scordo Allen. "I've heard nothing but enthusiastic support for the parade from all corners of the Italian community," she said, adding that the "negativity" and "controversy" of previous years seems "largely gone."

Goodbye, Columbus? Don't count on it.

J. Sebastian Sinisi is a retired Denver Post reporter. 

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_16220812
 

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