Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
Columbus Day Protesters Pushed Infamy Over Free Speech
By Jessica Peck Corry, 1-24-08
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If radical activists protest a parade and no one gets arrested, did they ever protest at all?
In the aftermath of demonstrations marring Denver’s October Columbus Day parade, Denver is again being subjected to a round of jury trials this month for activists arrested after they attempted to block the parade route with a human chain. Under city ordinance, it is illegal to obstruct the street during such a permitted event.
The parade, an annual battle testing the will and stubbornness of its Italian American organizers and American Indian protesters, has seen a dwindling attendance and waning public attention. Last year was particularly sad. At times, it seemed there were more people on floats than in the audience, leaving protesters to resort to staged antics designed to give them the media attention they so desperately desired.
To make their extremely debatable point that Christopher Columbus was a murderer, rapist and slave trader, they splashed fake blood peppered with doll heads onto the streets. They then blocked the street, at which point 80 people were arrested.
During jury selection last week for the trial of three of those arrested, eccentric defense attorney David Lane asked potential jurors questions clearly encouraging jury nullification.
“Are you aware that to some Native Americans, celebrating Columbus is the same as celebrating Hitler to Jews?” he asked, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
Lane also tried to equate the parade with “ethnic intimidation” like burning a cross in the yard of a black family. At best, such a comparison is disingenuous. A bunch of old guys waving flags from the top of flat bed trucks is a whole lot different than torching someone’s front yard.
Fortunately, for the sake of sanity, all three protestors were convicted.
But there is little doubt that Lane and his clients will be back for more action next year. As Lane, a talented lawyer, is well aware, the legal question in the case had nothing to do with whether Columbus was a good guy.
Instead, it had everything to do with the free-speech rights of Italian-Americans. Oh, and basic city ordinances that respect the rights of every nationality to host a parade without being stopped by those who disagree.
Of course, Lane was only doing his job. He is continuing the political theater his clients can’t live without. These individuals, which have included the likes of Glenn Morris and Ward Churchill, occasionally grace Colorado’s college students with their presence as professors, where they share with them their incredible knowledge on American law and history.
But as this week’s verdict demonstrates, the public is growing tired of this annual battle. By continuing on, Lane and his radical clients have done nothing to help their cause, especially in my household, where my two-year-old daughter is now deeply afraid of American Indians.
Her fear is not the result of some bigoted Hollywood movie production. Rather, it’s because of the radical activists themselves. On a morning walk with my husband not far from our home in downtown Denver on the day of the last parade, my daughter heard the sound of drums and wanted a closer look. As she leaned forward in her stroller, protestors jumped out in front of her, splashing their “blood” onto the street.
Nearly four months later, she still talks about the event. Every time she hears the sound of a drum, she says “boom, boom, boom. Indians scare me, Mommy.”
I’m scared too, but for a different reason. I’m worried about what will happen to my country if our legal system allows the logic of those like Lane, Churchill and Morris to prevail.
Three decades ago, the American Civil Liberties Union fought to protect the free speech rights of Ku Klux Klan members in Skokie, Ill. As ACLU founder Roger Nash Baldwin put it, the organization was defending the KKK’s right “to parade in their nightgowns and pillowcases, and their right to burn fiery crosses on private property.”
Baldwin understood then what Lane has forgotten today. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the speech of all - not just those with politically-palatable perspectives.
If Lane’s clients want to have their voice heard, they should do it in a way that respects the Constitution - not through an approach that attempts to nullify it. They should simply pick another weekend in October and host a parade of their own. But maybe they’re fearful that no one will get arrested.
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
You're lucky to have left with your child
before the screams as police inflicted pain on
protestors! At trial one police officer admitted
they could've easily made a minor parade route
change to avoid the protesters. At that point
they also could've left protesters to sit in the
street, get bored and dehydrated in the hot sun,
and get up of their own accord to either leave
or be arrested -- no need for the pain really --
and the appeal to the press would've also been
stunted.
This article to me contains condescending and
denigrating adjectives, obvious lack of historic
research, almost willful ignorance the laws, and
a naive dualistic interpretation of "the law is
the law" which would've put you on the side of
brutalizing and jailing past suffrage and civil
rights protesters.
I'm sorry you got caught up in a message intended
for adults not children (the weekend free schools
would've been better for kids), but is there a
bigger motivation for the tone of this article
than your family's unfortunate trauma?
If we had a state holiday celebrating the KKK,
or Hitler, or Saddam Hussein, or somebody saying
women shouldn't have the right to vote, I suspect
you might be more sympathetic to protesters. If
this is correct, your negative attitude toward
Coluumbus protesters is perhaps because you don't
identify with, or know of, or respect, or fear,
the ongoing struggles of Indian people. This
parade is only a tiny, but hateful and damaging,
tip of the iceburg of multi-faceted destruction of
Indian peoples.
So I suspect maybe you harbor prejudice against
Native Americans and probably protesters too --
anyone who makes you feel uncomfortable.
Oh, please. Jessica Peck Corry's piece is a well-written and frank assessment of the situation.
George, if you could duck-tape your leg to a chair for a moment to avoid that embarrassing knee-jerk from which you seem to be suffering, you'd see that her tone is both fair and just. You don't agree with her, so you start insulting her and attacking her intelligence and motives. But you sound as if you are indicative of the very mind-set to which she objects: that of a radical zealot, who feels that a small Columbus Day parade is 'hateful and damaging.'
And before you try to play the 'I suspect maybe you harbor prejudice' crap on me, I'm a proud product of the Rez... where I learned to think for myself and to be suspicious of anyone who claims to be speaking on my behalf.
I'm curious: do any tribes, as a nation, protest this parade or are the protesters a smattering of unaffiliated tribal members and a larger collection of pseudo-activist wannabes? I live in Portland, Oregon, where we don't have a Columbus Day celebration/parade (that I'm aware of ) but do have a couple of other parades that tribes participate in (floats, etc.) - but I can't think of any parades that tribes protest. And protesting Columbus Day . . . what's the point? the tribes here go to court - and kick ass. There are many treaties which, under the U.S. Constitution, are the supreme law of the land; that is, they easily trump state laws. Of course those treaties memorialize many obligations and many of those are not honored by the U.S. without legal action. But I don't remember any promises about U.S. citizens not celebrating Columbus Day . . . and finally, if the author's daughter is "afraid of Indians" because of that one incident, then it is really because the author is failing to meet her obligations as a mother.
Comment By Rob Schmidt, 1-26-08I think some tribes ignore the Columbus Day holiday and celebrate a Native American Day instead.
It's crystal-clear, not "extremely debatable," that Columbus was a slave trader. It's somewhat debatable that he was a murderer and rapist. He probably let his men do the murdering and raping rather than doing it himself.
I suspect Corry's negative attitude toward Indians is why her daughter fears them. What has Corry done to educate her daughter about Indians? To counteract the scary impression the protesters allegedly created? Uh...nothing?
For more on Columbus Day, go to http://www.bluecorncomics.com/columbus.htm .
I lerned long ago that when I read a piece and am feeling it
is "well written" or balanced, it means my biases and the
author's agree. /Unless/ I am very very careful to use a
standard other than my personal feelings.
Corry repeats so many points ably rebutted by anti-Columbus
people, lawyers and protesters alike, that I am compelled
to ask the question why a competent, educated, passionate
writer would do that. I'm not saying she's a bad person,
nor that I am better than she is -- after all I am a
recovering racist so far from perfection.
I have temptation to write a very lenghy point-by-point
rebuttal, but past experience indicates it is a waste of
time, so I'll offer a thought experiment to help illuminate
the prejudice in the article.
Here's an example. I am not suggesting a moral equality
between my example and the Columbus parade, however the
emotions stirred in most people who read this example will
probably be simlar to those stirred in people who oppose
state-sponsored celebration of Columbus etc.
Imagine Denver has a parade to celebrate the state holiday
OBL day. OBL is an important figure in history because
he helped our country repulse the communist invasion of
Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. OBL was trained by, paid
by, and worked honorably with the CIA in this effort. OBL
is Arab, and many of the OBL parade organizers say the
parade is a celebration of Arab people, not a celebration
particularly of OBL himself, that is, Osama bin Laden.
In the parade which is supposedly not about celebrating the
terrorism of OBL or about celebrating attacks on the USA,
is a float. On this float is a scale model of burning,
smoking, World Trade Center towers next to the figure of
OBL himself with a "thumbs up". Even with this float, the
fiction that the parade celebrates Arab people and not
anti-US terrorism is repeated even by Good Democrats.
After a multi-year, multi-faceted effort to get the state
to stop sponsoring the OBL holiday, including entreaties to
City Council and the Colorado State legislature, protesters
sit in the street in the parade route.
I am not saying people should feel that Columbus Day and
OBL Day are morally comparable -- only to hold this in your
mind -- and re-read Corry's piece. Notice how she describes
the protesters and their legal team in this light. If this
fiction actually happened in America, we'd probably call
the protesters heros rather than shallow attention-seeking
arrest junkies.
Maybe you think it's entirely OK for news writers to disdain
protesters whom you disagree with and applaud those you
agree with. If you are like me, those authors who share my
disdain will seem "unbiased" to me.
My point is that the article reflects a very clear bias
against the protesters and their cause. You can easily see
this by imagining a cause where you would be sympathetic
to protesters and re-reading the argicle. I conclude the
article is strongly biased by Corry's negative views of
people who are protesters, and people who oppose supporting
Columbus, not the riteous appeal to the emasculated
interpretation of the law offered in the article.
George:
Article? This is clearly an opinion piece (please READ the description of the blog this piece is drawn from at the end of the piece) and is clearly meant to be an opinion piece.
And your "analogy" has got to be one of the most despicable ones I've read in a long time.
And finally George, I know that you are much, much less than sincere in your "opinion" as you have not packed up your sorry kiester and moved back to Europe (or wherever it is your people come from). For, if you truly believe the pap you are spouting, then you are acknowledging you are complicit in Columbus' "crimes" by staying here as a beneficiary of such "crimes".
Oh please, RKR you need to cut crap. It seems to me that you are trying to claim an Indian identity as a means to defend obvious racism both yours and Jessica Peck Corry. That's the oldest trick in the book. and before you try to play that "old" I'm Indian and from the rez crap on me you need to really read what that white whiner Jessica Peck Corry has written. She has used a two year baby to try to elicit sympathy and justify her racist rant. This is just despicable. Any Mother who would stoop to this level has very questionable parenting skills. I agree with Gorge and also agree with Rob Schmidt's comment about the protesters "allegedly" scaring the baby.
Comment By george well, 1-27-08I apologize if anyone feels I tried to speak for them --
it was not my desire nor intent and I don't feel that is a
right thing to do.
I also apologize for holding an opinion piece to
the standards of a news article -- perhaps Corry's
professional-sounding writing fooled me a bit.
Corry doesn't seem to be a right-wing ideologue writing for
like-minded readers or I wouldn't have bothered responding.
She is not praising George Vendegnia's views of Native
Americans nor stating the views of the white power groups
who've endorsed the parade in the past.
Corry seems to be a middle-of-the-road person or even a bit
left of that. If I am right (only Corry knows for sure)
then I am called to challenge when someone who I imagine
values inclusivity and equality is writing this way. To me,
the world is in trouble when middle-of-the-road people show
such bias against American Indians and protesting allies.
One person has tried to strengthen their arguments by being
"from the Rez", and another has tried to weaken mine because
they assume I am euro-American. Unfortunately people's
background or even outright hypocrisy do not affect the
strength of their arguments. Debate nerds call this the
fallacy of ad-hominem and it is very popular on talk radio.
If someone who cannot see the sky tells you it is blue, that
does not make them incorrect, even if it might encourage
you to check for yourself. Similarly calling my analogy
despicable does nothing to weaken or invalidate it.
Someone who would be angry in the scenario I posed probably
is experiencing feelings similar to how people feel who
oppose Columbus Day. I am definitely not saying OBL and
Columbus are the same, only using the analogy as a vehicle
to help detect the writer's bias and understand how C-day
opposers might feel, whether people understand or agree
with how they feel or not.
You could take your little hypothetical a little further.
Lets say that OBL was the first of many. That it is five hundred years into the future, and we know then that OBL was just the first. And that his little sorie on his first voyage to America was just the opening act. That he came four times in total and each time with bigger and grander plans on how to enrich himself and enpower himself at the expense of the Americans.
That he came with weapons that we had no counter against. Weapons that seemed almost like magic and that both our buildings and our people fall down in a flash of light and noise whenever he commanded. That he used these weapons to conquer us. That he had himself named governor of our land.
Its five hundred years into the future. We live in a land that's mostly Arab. We, the original Americans are scattered in small groups across the land. Its the Arabs that largely control the wealth and power of this land. That those around us gladly proclaim America to be an Islamic nation, because its been that way ever since OBL showed the way for those first Arab settlers to come to our shores.
Now, picture that OBL float described above rolling down the street past you, just like it does every year. Now tell me how you'd feel about that float.
To be honest, there's probably an excess of stubbornness on both sides of this issues. If there's gonna be a dispute, I'll go side with the Indians. But it seems to me like there's an easy compromise.
Why not just have a Heritage Day holiday every Oct and a parade for that?
Or, put another way, why is that only Italian Americans get a public holiday and a parade. I'm a German American, so where's my holiday and parade. French Americans should have a day, as should Spanish Americans, and Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans and Philipino Americans and Kenyan Americans and Nigererian Americans and Egyptian Americans and ....
Well, you see the point. Why just have a holiday for Italian Americans? Why not have a holiday when everyone can celebrate their heritage? And of course Native Americans would be a part of that too.
Its an easy answer. That is if people on both sides are willing to give up being stubborn.
LLR your alternate-named parade is an idea that has been tried -- see the entry for the year 2000 here:
http://transformcolumbusday.org/chronology.html
and also about the 4-directions all nations march in 2001.
well...............having stumbled upon this "opinion", it pisses me off to think this stupid wench Jessica thinks those wild Indians got a little outta hand, she's lucky there was no mass violence(ending with her, probably blond haired, kid being scalped), because us "savages" have been ignored far too long...us natives have every right to be angry. and if it takes a little fake blood and some drums to prove a point so be it. We have had our land stolen, relocated (many dying along the way), rounded up and put on reservations, our women raped, my ancestors killed, been experimented on, financially f*****, and still being f***** to this day. all for the good of this country? but yet they come to us to use our native language to help win WWII. WTF?! the way i see it, our language should BE the native language of america. but yet, they stick us in boarding schools where we have our long hair shaved, put in button up shirts and ties, and are banned from speaking our native language. sorry my point of view may be jumbled and disorganized, but that's due to the fact that there is too much to show that native americans have been used and abused....and ppl get pissy cause some indians protested. well there is another protest goin on today, called the Longest Walk II, and officials are already starting to try and stop that. that's all i gotta say...SAVAGES UNITE! and in case u didn't know...i'm proud to be a savage....savage: "from Anglo-French salvage, savage, from Late Latin salvaticus, alteration of Latin silvaticus of the woods, wild, from silva wood, forest."
NOW OF COURSE WE NOW UNDERSTAND THAT THE ILLEGALLY OCCUPYING COLONIAL POWER THAT IS NOW KNOWN AS THE united states of america MAY THINK BEING "of the woods" AN EVIL THING, BUT WE OURSELVES UNDERSTAND THIS AS BEING A VERY NATURALLY CONNECTED WAY TO EXIST AND FOR THE MOST PART UP UNTIL THE ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OF LANDS THAT WE BELONGED TO; "of the woods" WAS A VALUED AND RESPECTFUL WAY OF LIVING; A WAY OF LIVING THAT ALLOWED US TO EXIST IN RELATIVELY HEALTHY COMMUNITIES FOR QUITE SOME TIME. OF COURSE IF YOU ARE A MORE "PROGRESSIVE" "GOOD-INDIAN" MAYBE YOUR IDEALS FALL SOME WHERE CLOSER TO THE BELIEF THAT BEING UNCIVILIZED (QUITE LITERALLY "un city living) WAS A NEGATIVE WAY TO EXIST. ACCORDING TO YOU ANYTHING SHORT OF ACHIEVING THE LEVEL OF SUCCESS THAT THE COLONIZER HAS DEFINED FOR AND OF US IS A FAILURE. WE, ON THE OTHER HAND, BELIEVE THAT TO NOT ACCEPT THE MAINSTREAM MODEL OF SUCCESS MAY BE A LITTLE MORE ALONG THE LINES OF WHAT OUR ANCESTORS FOUGHT AND DIED FOR OUR PEOPLE TO CONTINUE DOING. TO CONTINUE BEING INDIGENOUS, TO CONTINUE BEING OUR RESPECTIVE PEOPLES.
NOW LET US TAKE A LOOK AT THE CURRENT DEFINITION HOWEVER JUMBLED AND MISLEADING IT HAS BECOME DUE TO IT'S MANY UPDATES: SAVAGE: not domesticated or under human control : UNTAMED b : lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings
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