Students Drop Truth on Rochester's Columbus Day Parade

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Not even the occasional downpour could deter a crowd of Rochesterians from turning out Saturday to celebrate their Italian heritage in the first annual Columbus Day Parade. Neither did that rain stop a small group of students from marching on the sidewalks beside the parade and distributing half-sheets of paper to the crowd with the bold heading: "Columbus Day Isn’t a Celebration for Everyone." These sheets briefly told the history of Columbus’ voyage to the Americas, highlighting aspects of the greed and slavery that ensued.

“The sheets of paper included an excerpt from historian Howard Zinn’s 'A People’s History of the United States,'” said one of the students who requested his identity remain anonymous. “Our presence at the parade was meant to inform the crowd of just what it was they were celebrating.” Beyond their presence at the parade itself, the same students made their message known to a broader audience an hour before the start of the parade by dropping a home-made banner from a bridge over 490 near Cobb’s Hill, which read: “Celebrate Columbus, Celebrate Genocide.”

The students were well received for the most part, and their interactions with the crowd were positive. “Most people replied with a ‘thank you’ and a smile,” said one of the distributors. According to www.columbusdayrochester.org, planning for next year’s 2008 Columbus Day Parade is scheduled to begin next week. The student group intends to initiate a similar plan as that parade approaches.

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Now that you’ve read a vague account, which might be fit to appear in the Rochester D&C or some other corporate media outlet, I am going to take my editorial liberties to share some more truthful information as to what we (the students in the above story) were doing Saturday at the Columbus Day Parade.

It is relatively well known within the progressive community that America’s past is not exactly based on “liberty and justice for all.” From chattel slavery to present-day attacks on immigrants and the poor, injustice seems to be an unavoidable consequence to America’s so-called progress. Yet in most cases, we don’t celebrate such tragedies; we sidestep and pretend they didn’t happen (some would say this is a worse approach). But Saturday’s parade took one of the most disgraceful pieces of our history and somehow managed to further its exploitation.

Upon reading the official parade website and learning that Salvatore’s Pizza, one of the head sponsors of the event, would be distributing coupons from their Hummer window, which “entitle the bearer to a sheet pizza + one topping for $14.92, in honor of the year that Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World,” it became clear how necessary our message was. Rather than attract celebrants to join in the celebration, Salvatore’s Pizza was selling the celebration to the people—-for profit. This is exactly what Columbus did when reporting back to Spain after his haphazard discovery of the West Indies.

Joining Salvatore’s in the parade were many elected government representatives, such as Mayor Duffy and County Executive Maggie Brooks, and District Attorney Mike Green (who shamelessly used his presence at the parade to further his re-election campaign). This would cause any rational person to then ask: how can we trust our elected officials when, rather than question injustices of theft and genocide, they insist on celebrating them? Are these representatives then fit to represent the people of Rochester? They certainly were not representing me on this day.

Perhaps I don’t have the greatest understanding of the business world (or political world for that matter, though they seem to have merged in recent years) and its relation to ethics, but to propagate a day that should be held as a black mark on our historical calendar as not only a day worthy of celebration, but also as an opportunity to be used for personal, political, and monetary gain, is one of the most perverse and disrespectful acts I can imagine. I was and am still offended. This is why we did what we did on Saturday.

So, if you want to create a community where such patriotic Americanisms of “liberty and justice for all” ring true in the society to which they speak, it is up to you—-the reader of this article, the disempowered, the lower, middle, and upper class of conscious America—-to fulfill your civic duty. If you agree, I’m glad. I’ll see you at next year’s parade.