On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Council members voted to eliminate Columbus Day from the official calendar, replacing it with a day to commemorate indigenous peoples from all over the world. The day will continue to be a paid holiday for city employees. And while some Italian American groups opposed the measure as an attack on Italian heritage, the stark reality of how history has played out won the day.
Councilman Mike Bonin, the great-grandson of Italian immigrants, said he felt genuinely pained at having to disagree with Buscaino. But he argued that Columbus Day diminishes the accomplishments of his ancestors, who came to the U.S. to “build something and not to destroy something.”
“This gesture of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day is a very small step in apologizing and in making amends,” said Bonin, who represents coastal neighborhoods from Westchester to Pacific Palisades.
Christopher Columbus’ “accomplishments” continue to be taught in school with varying degrees of accuracy, and that “heritage” will not disappear because we stop having an official holiday. But there is still miles to go before we are able to begin to do justice to the much-forgotten legacies of the people who were already living in the Americas before the rest of us showed up.