transformcolumbusdayalliance: transform columbus day

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Ms. .Johnson's letter was submitted on 9/15 to the Boulder Weekly, Colorado Springs Gazette, and Westword.

A different version with just a few changes in wording went to the Denver Post, RMN, and Boulder Daily Camera.

Published 9/30/04 in the Boulder Weekly.

Real Irish Legacy

Here comes yet another October when neo-Roman suburbanites will invade Denver with their convoy of conquest that celebrates Christopher Columbus, the slave-trading, Indian-killing founder of racist AmeriKKKa.

Now I wonder, will any of the thousands of celebrants who turn out every year for the St. Patrick's Day parade join their American Indian neighbors in resistance to this blatant incitement to genocide? Should we not? Much of what has happened to Native
Americans also happened to the Celts: colossal theft of land, genocidal butchery that murdered millions, destruction of social and national unity, colonial schools that forbade native languages, a diaspora that scattered us to the four directions, and denial of the
freedom to practice the earth-centered spirituality of our ancestors.

How brilliantly did that sea of Irish tricolors wave in the Colorado sun last March; the green bar of Catholicism and the orange bar of Protestantism united by the white bar of Peace to symbolize the hope for an end to the violence between the two. But unless the exiles of the Gaelic diaspora join with all people of conscience to stop Denver's very own anti-Native Orange Parade, we will forever appear united only in the white skin privilege of Euro-American colonialism.

Lauranna Johnson
Denver, CO