Photo: Chloe Abosch
BROOKLYN COLLEGE–The day after Columbus Day, a silent procession of students paraded through campus holding signs and banners that read, “Thx 4 Killing My Ancestors,” “Decolonize Puerto Rico,” and “No walls, no bans on stolen land,” protesting the holiday meant to celebrate the explorer.
Columbus Day has been a national holiday since 1937, but has grown controversial due to the historic effect that European colonization, due in part to Columbus, has had on Indigenous populations in America, not to mention the genocidal actions of Columbus on the Indigenous peoples he encountered after making his accidental discovery of the lands of the Western Hemisphere in 1492.