(Note: here, we don’t capitalize murderers’ names.)

This past Thursday at 1:00 PM, the Brooklyn College Puerto Rican Alliance walked silently from West Quad through East Quad, dressed in black, brandishing protest signs and flags from their home countries. They were joined by other Brooklyn College organizations including the Mexican Heritage Association, the Dominican Student Movement, the Anime Manga Corporation, the International Socialists Club, the LGBTQIA, the Black and Latino Male Initiative, and more.

Students and faculty alike rubbernecked and stared as these organizations collected in front of the library in silence, glowing with dignity. The Showmanship Coordinator (Javier “Carlos” Ortiz) stepped forward, brandishing a weighty Puerto Rican flagpole. He was flanked by Vice President Carlos Cabeza and President Isaiah Rivera (yours truly). Cabeza read from a rousing speech explaining the showcase. It was “Day of Dignity,” an anti-columbus Day protest in which students walked in silence to commemorate the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean slain by christopher columbus and his men. The Black represented both mourning and a rejection of white supremacy. The silence was a reclamation of the voices stolen all those decades ago when a colonizer sailed the ocean blue and destroyed thousands of lives, all in the interest of power. Cabeza urged us to call Columbus Day what it is: yet another instance of American colonialism, a holiday for a violent, narcissistic, psychopathic genocider. In other words, business as usual in AmeriKKKa.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ4UYk0DL-s/?taken-by=bc_pra

Following this speech, Rivera (myself) began a stirring spoken word piece entitled “Trick Questions for Columbus Day.” Here is the transcript:

Trick Questions for Columbus Day

Question: Which came first, the donald trump or the christopher columbus?

Question: When time travel is invented, who’s going to assemble every *sung* Boriqua, Morena, Dominicana, Columbiana, Taino, Lucayan, Arawak, Indigena that ever lived to go back to 1492 when a colonizer sailed the ocean blue so that they can burn him to ashes & scatter his remnants in a pot to grow a tree, then cut said tree down to make into toilet paper for the entire Mexican populace? How much Mexicano shit could a white sheet of christopher columbus toilet paper hold?

Question: Where can we put columbus’ worthless body so that it can stop poisoning the earth? Where can the plague decay? Six feet under doesn’t begin to dig deep enough. That’s too close to our ancestors’ dismembered bodies, & their remains don’t deserve to remain punished by the earth.  Where can you put a sack of white skin & bones when it doesn’t deserve to share the venerated soiled that it once soiled, colonized & drowned our ancestors with, the venerated earth where our ancestors sleep in contorted shapes & dismemberment? Where can you rid the earth of a body that doesn’t deserve to take up anymore space than it already has?

Question: Why do we have an American holiday for someone who never even stepped foot in American soil?

Question: Why are we praising someone who can’t tell the difference between Pocahontas & Aziz Ansari?

Question: What does it say about American values that we annually celebrating a psychopathic, egotistical, heartless, cruel, ignorant, pathetic serial killer?

Question: Why would anyone question why it’s a question that we want to abolish Columbus Day? Hep hep hooray! Let’s pop a bottle of Chardonnay for the homicidal maniac columbus today! Do we eat cake and play games for Hitler’s reign?

Fact: columbus never ‘discovered’ America; motherfucker got lost in the Caribbean, saw some brown people, thought “How fun would it be to break these savages’ souls?” and proceeded to facilitate decades of rape, torture, dismemberment, slavery and genocide.

Fact: columbus isn’t a hero; he’s a weak ass fuckboy with a god complex and shitty hair and a butter squash nose.

Fact: columbus day is an act of violence against every living person of color on American soil.

And no, little man, just because “those Tainos” are dead & gone doesn’t mean their descendants are, too. If us honoring our slain ancestors really bums you out man, you can make like your fave columbus & get lost!

Why do we protest?

RESISTENCIA

Because columbus won’t win

RESISTENCIA

Because we celebrate our ancestors every Indigenous Peoples Day

RESISTENCIA

Because our voices matter

RESISTENCIA

Because we will never shut up

Today, we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. Today, we uplift the narratives and voices of our people who were never given the chance to do so. Today, we love ourselves, because we matter, because we can, because we will never be destroyed.

Resistencia.

-IFR