Christopher Columbus Inspires Parades, Protests, and Vandalism
By Thomas Behnke
The Columbus Monument in Columbus Circle, New York. Photo courtesy of Diderot.
Contemporary protests of Columbus Day decry how Christopher Columbus oppressed the indigenous peoples of the Americas, as did the wave of Europeans that followed in his wake. Following the recent demands for the removal of statues of Confederate generals from public areas, many Americans, Bronxites included, say that Columbus should be counted among the symbols of hate and oppression.
“It’s a farce,” Bernadette Santiago, a junior at Lehman said. “We are celebrating someone who is evil.” When asked about the holiday’s connection to Italian heritage she said, “shouldn’t it be a Spanish holiday, since he was commissioned by Spain?”
Ironically, the holiday, which began in 1869 in San Francisco and became a federal holiday in 1937, was initially seen as a way for oppressed and marginalized Catholics---especially Italians---to gain mainstream acceptance. Manhattan and the Bronx both hold annual Columbus Day parades. This year, CBS New York reported 35,000 people marched in the Manhattan parade while the Bronx Times stated that nearly 100 groups participated in the Bronx Parade.
During the Manhattan parade, a small group of protesters gathered in Columbus Circle to voice their objections to the celebration. The Bronx Columbus Day Parade was sparsely attended, perhaps due in part to sporadic bouts of rain. The Meridian attended it, and was offered the opportunity to sign a petition to keep the Columbus statues in the city, in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s call for a review of symbols of hate in New York. Bronx parade coordinator, Tony Signorile, as reported in the Bronx Times, stated that due to the controversy surrounding the review, the mayor would not be invited to this year’s parade. There was also a noticeable increase in police activity compared to past parades. Police dogs, numerous patrolmen and helicopters were a constant presence.
In addition to these protests, several acts of vandalism involving statues of Columbus have recently occurred. In Baltimore on Aug. 21, a statue believed to be the first in America erected in honor of Columbus was vandalized. No arrests were made. A YouTube video shows the statue being struck with a sledgehammer and protestors holding signs reading “racism,” “tear it down,” and “the future is racial equality.”
Statues were defaced in three separate incidents in the New York City area. On Aug. 29, at Columbus Park in Yonkers, a bust was thrown to the ground and destroyed. No arrests have been made. On Sept. 12, a statue of Columbus in Central Park had its hands painted red, and its base was spray painted with the words “hate will not be tolerated.” The perpetrator is still at large. On Sept. 25, a homeless man was caught painting the hand of the Columbus iron portrait in Columbus Circle, with pink nail polish. Daniel Kimery, 38, was arrested at the scene. He allegedly told police the nail polish represented “the blood on the Italian explorer’s hands.”
“The good and the bad of history, both should be studied and explored, but Columbus should stay in classrooms, not in monuments.”
- English literature major Duane Edmonds
When it comes to the past, however, much misinformation about Columbus discovering America is still taught in elementary schools. Children learn “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” and about the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. In truth, though he made four voyages to the Americas, Columbus never actually landed on the mainland. Throughout most of these voyages, he was convinced he was on the continent of Asia and had discovered a new route for the spice trade. After his first voyage he was appointed viceroy and governor of the Indies due to his belief that he had landed in India.
While most Lehman students who the Meridian spoke with do not view Columbus as a hero, neither did they support the vandalism. English literature major Duane Edmonds said, “We should have a civil debate, peaceful; I don’t agree with the defacings. The good and the bad of history, both should be studied and explored, but Columbus should stay in classrooms, not in monuments.”
Hurricanes Hit US as White House Keeps Pushing Climate Change Denial
By Deirdre Fanzo
From left to right, Hurricanes Katia, Irma, and Jose. Photo courtesy of CHIPS Magazine.
On Oct. 23, Nicaragua announced it would join the Paris Agreement, a global pact to combat climate change, leaving the U.S. and Syria as the lone holdouts from the accord. The statement came five weeks after the Trump administration reaffirmed it would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, a decision first announced in June. Over this five-week period, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean islands and much of the mainland U.S. were struck by a series of record-breaking storms. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have caused billions of dollars in damage, and wreaked havoc on the lives of residents in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and many nations in Central America. Despite this devastation, the Trump administration continues to vehemently deny the existence of climate change, further isolating the U.S. from global efforts to address it.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris climate accord “Brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so.” This collaboration amongst countries was designed to lessen greenhouse gas emissions and seek clean power sources to prevent global temperatures from increasing to dangerous levels. In April 2016, then-president Barack Obama signed this accord. However, in June 2017, Trump declared his intention to rescind this decision on the grounds that it “disadvantages the United States.” However, many analysts argue that one underlying reason for his move was his administration’s very public climate change denial, and the political leverage this affords it with certain constituents.
Rabab AlAjmi, an environmental science and political science double major at Lehman, emphasized the political and economic factors behind Trump’s decision. “Countries run by capitalism...have pretty much swept [climate change] under the rug,” she said. This is precisely what Trump’s administration is doing.
“We need to take responsibility [for the planet] and think beyond our pocketbooks and our net worth.”
– Stefan Becker, Vice Provost for Academic Programs
It is in the administration’s best interest to deny climate change, as they have a history of mutual gain with corporate energy giants. Indeed, prior to assuming his current role, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil, one of the largest multinational oil and gas corporations in the world. ExxonMobil, under Tillerson, “gave $1.8 million this election cycle.” Trump himself owned stocks in the Dakota Access Pipeline, and though he sold them after his election, the investment reflects his values. According to the Washington Post, “three politicians Trump has appointed to relevant Cabinet positions have taken in large campaign contributions from the energy sector.” Policies supported by the climate agreement, as well as confirming the existence of climate change, would almost certainly limit industry profits---the capital gains of the current administration.
The administration’s denial of climate change, however, flies in the face of scientific consensus. “Man-made climate change is a concept that is accepted by 97 percent of scientists today,” AlAjmi said.
Indeed, the recent tight cluster of deadly hurricanes---Harvey, a Category 4 storm when it hit Texas on Aug. 25, and Irma, between Category 3 and Category 4 when it wreaked havoc in the Virgin Islands and Florida---is a “textbook case for what you would expect under climate change scenarios,” Stefan Becker, vice provost for academic programs at Lehman, told the Meridian. Harvey was considered the strongest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Irma usurped this title soon afterward, followed by Hurricane Maria, which caused great devastation in Puerto Rico and is regarded as the strongest hurricane of 2017 thus far.
In light of the evidence, Becker called Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord “unbelievable” and “reckless.” He added, “We need to take responsibility [for the planet] and think beyond our pocketbooks and our net worth.”
KKK Attempts to Recruit Lehman Students
By Eileen Sepulveda
Anti-KKK Graffiti. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
On Sept. 29, the Meridian received a letter from the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Addressed to the editor, the letter stated that the KKK was under “extreme fire for being a hate group.” This characterization, it said, was untrue, adding “we only wish to keep the white race pure as God intended.” The letter went on to ask students to join in protesting a new novel, “The Slave Players,” by Megan Allen, which it described as “loud-mouth literature” written “just to agitate the college educated who always think they have a better answer.”
Novel under attack by the KKK. Photo courtesy of Burning House Publishing.
According to Wilhelmina Mount, a representative of Allen’s publisher, Burning House Publishing, “The novel is a highly controversial one which slaps pretty hard at southern white supremacists. And they [the KKK] are also targeting others as well.” Mount told the Meridian, “Other media sources have also received the letter---but mostly in the South---and we have been receiving hate emails for several months now [from] about a hundred KKK fans who periodically send us lovely emails telling us that we are the haters, and not them.” Mount said, “They have labeled [Allen] as a traitor against ‘her own kind,’ and us as a publisher beyond redemption.”
Other CUNY colleges also received letters. Anthony Medina, editor-in-chief of York College’s student newspaper, Pandora Box, informed The Meridian that York College was also targeted. A mass email sent to all York students from Russell Platzek, Executive Director of Legal Services and Labor Relations at York College, stated that “multiple offices at York College, as well as other CUNY campuses, received a letter from a national hate group, advocating for the separation of the races.” It added that the letter “appears to have been carried out in a mass mailing format, not specific to York College in any way.” Platzek did not respond to the Meridian’s requests for further comment.
Other college newspapers around the country were also targeted. C.S. Hagen reported in North Dakota’s High Plains Reader on Oct. 11 that two college newspapers---Valley City State University’s Viking News and North Dakota State University’s the Spectrum---had received an identical letter from the KKK “asking for help.” Valley City State University’s Viking News, and North Dakota State University’s the Spectrum were the newspapers targeted. Jack Hastings, editor-in-chief of the Spectrum, told NPR, “First off, the presence of a group such as the KKK surprised me, but now they’re targeting college campuses. Seeing this delivered to our office is upsetting to me.”
The letter was postmarked Florida, the state ranked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (partnered with Propublica) as having the second largest number of hate groups in the U.S. While Florida has 63 out of a total of 917 hate groups operating in the U.S., New York has an estimated 47, putting it at No. 4. According to Propublica, “Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the New York City Police Department report a recent uptick in bias incidents and hate crimes. But with thousands of police departments failing to report alleged or even confirmed hate crimes to the FBI, we lack foundational information about many such crimes occur in any given year, where they might occur the most and least, who the targets of such crimes tend to be, and how this has changed over time.”
In New York, other hate campaigns have recently been carried out by mail. According to an Oct. 4 article in the New York Daily News “Anonymous hate mail filled with slurs and emblazoned with a swastika was mailed to nine city businesses...in Brooklyn and Manhattan, including three law firms, an international financial firm, a jewelry store, a Starbucks, a kosher meat market, and a bakery.” The article added that these attacks are under investigation by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office, and that they are aware of “this and similar letters that have been sent.”
One reason the KKK might have chosen to recruit via letters, Mount pointed out, is “The KKK national member site, together with Stormfront, their national media site, have both been crashed, leaving them without a channel of communication, so extremists have taken to the mails.”
Professor Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told the Meridian “The Loyal White Knights (LWK) has been active for years in pamphleting to get publicity, and is one of the largest Klan groups in the nation...Among the LWK’s ‘positions’ is [sic] stopping immigration, Sharia law, and ‘white cultural genocide’.” He added, “Still, the Klan network overall of which LWK is a subset has only several thousand members.”
Lehman English professor Crystal Curry told the Meridian she believes that Donald Trump “laid the groundwork through his rhetoric for these kinds of much more perverse things to like spill out into the mainstream…and so a lot of this recruitment started during his campaign.” Curry, who researches alt-right narratives, also emphasized the ideological connection between their racism and misogyny. A white female novelist like Allen, she said, “would be the perfect person” for the KKK to target because they also blame women for ending the era they idealize when white men “ruled the household.” In their ideology, she said, “it’s basically women’s fault you can’t ‘genocide’ people [of color]…These are the kinds of narratives you find in people who are nostalgic for the Third Reich.”
Michael Sullivan, Director of Campus Life, reported that the case of the letter sent to the Meridian was being handled by Public Safety. Deputy Director of Public Safety Gregory Nigri told the Meridian that, “the KKK letter was shared with the Chief of CUNY Public Safety, William Barry, who reached out to the university community to inquire whether any other campuses received similar letters.” Two other CUNY campuses, he said, received similar letters, and Public Safety believes that the letter is “benign.”
Medina observed, “I think it’s ultimately disturbing that this group of people believe they have any right to express their discriminatory methods through any means.”
Xiomara Vazquez, a Lehman freshman who moved to New York from Puerto Rico three years ago said she felt disturbed by the KKK’s self-promotion. “Their existence is just proof that there is much to work to be done in this country. With a president who condones this behavior, we have seen that they have been feeling more ‘free’ to come out in to the open. I feel it is an affront to the values of our diverse campus and for what the city of New York stands for.”
A copy of the letter sent to the Meridian was not available for publication due to the ongoing investigation by CUNY Public Safety, but an identical letter to the one received can be viewed here.