Today in the United States, the second Monday of October, is a holiday, but one which is hotly disputed. According to the federal government it is Columbus Day, celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. But to others, especially Native Americans, it is Indigenous People’s Day – celebrating the people who lived in the Americas for centuries beforehand. Rather than “discover” America, as is the popular myth, Columbus merely arrived in what is now the Bahamas, and began over five centuries of genocide against the Indigenous inhabitants. As soon as Columbus landed, he and his crew began enslaving, murdering, torturing and raping the Taíno people who lived there. Travelling to Haiti, Columbus then began forcing the Indigenous people to mine gold, and chopping off the hands of any who did not collect enough. But it was an impossible task as there was almost no gold in the area. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Taínos on Haiti had died: either by murder or suicide in desperation. Within just a few decades, only 500 remained. However, Indigenous people in the Caribbean and elsewhere did resist both Columbus and the other colonisers who came subsequently, and continue to do so today. Indigenous People’s Day celebrates this resistance, and was first proposed in 1977. South Dakota became the first US state to celebrate it in 1990, and every year more states, cities and institutions make the switch from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
Learn more about Indigenous resistance from the US to Chiapas, from Guatemala to Scandinavia in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/indigenoushttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1552796941572117/?type=3
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“Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.”
— Emma Goldman, “The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation”, Anarchism and Other Essays (via philosophybits)
Growing your own food is like printing your own money. The best place to start changing the world is with the dirt under your feet. Radical gardening can save the world.
Art credit: CJ bell @ disorganizedjoy
Image description: A four panel comic. Panel one shows a green bell pepper cut in half with the caption “This is a green pepper. It cost 75¢ at the grocery store.” Panel 2 shows a row of pepper plants growing under the sun with the caption “inside the pepper are enough seeds to make hundreds - even thousands more peppers ” panel 3 shows a computer with an FBI anti piracy warning on it and a phone screen open to a music app with 2 plays left. The caption reads “In a world where nothing comes free and it’s profitable to control what people copy and create,” panel 4 shows a thriving garden, complete with community area and a free produce basket, and he caption reads “gardening is a revolutionary act.” End image description
