This should not be an official holiday. Neither one should. Just another day for some people to get off. In fact, schools were open yesterday here in Los Angeles, but courts, mail, other government services were not. Sad. But way too many 'official' holidays.
Call it what you what. Columbus Day. Indigenous Peoples Day. National Donut Day.
I don't care.
But wasting taxpayer money is giving government people another day off - while many of us have to work - that I do care.
From LA Times
"Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, civic leaders hailed Columbus as the man who brought culture and civilization to the Americas and in so doing planted the seeds that grew into the democratic republic of the United States. They honored this proto-Founding Father in innumerable proclamations, statues, monuments, street names and public plazas. All this adoration culminated in 1937, when, following massive Italian immigration to the U.S., the federal government proclaimed a national holiday in his honor. The city of Los Angeles followed suit that year.
Today, however, those who know most about the life of Columbus see him as more than a skilled mariner, expert promoter and courageous
explorer. Increasingly they point to the other aspects of his character and life: his arrogance, his poor administration of his colonial ventures and his blinkered conscience, which was untroubled by the enslavement of Native Peoples, even when doing so went against the wishes of his royal backers."
