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Preserve Columbus Day: It Is Our Heritage

Editorial

QUESTION #3: AN END RUN AROUND TOWN MEETING:

            In this year’s town election, voters will be asked to approve or reject a bid to establish October 12th as Indigenous People’s Day, superseding local references to Columbus Day (Question # 3).  In October 2020, this issue raised its head at fall town meeting.  A petitioner brought forth an extended resolution, representing it as, a “counter-celebration” intended to morally condemn Columbus Day, both internationally and domestically.   In essence, the resolution sought to turn the commemoration of Columbus’s discovery of America, an event directly linked to the founding of our nation, into a condemnation of European settlement on this continent.

            The resolution met strong opposition.  While opponents acknowledged the injustices done to indigenous people, they also recognized and objected to what was clearly an attempt to discredit the founding of the United States, by irreparably associating it with slavery and genocide. Columbus Day should be recognized because it was one of the most significant discoveries in human history, a discovery that ultimately led to a nation, which threw off its own chains of imperial oppression, sacrificed considerable blood and suffering to end slavery, and then saved the world from greatest white supremacy threat in history, the Third Reich.

            During the town meeting, the petitioner’s resolution was defeated but a follow-up resolution was immediately offered by one of the opponents, recognizing indigenous people’s day, but on a different date. The new resolution sought to celebrate it on March 4th, Andrew Jackson’s birthday. Jackson, as President, orchestrated the infamous “trail of tears” forcibly relocating the Cherokee people and other tribes west of the Mississippi river. This blatantly racist policy was initiated after a hard-fought debate in Congress, in which our own John Quincy Adams led the opposition.  It should be Jackson, whose name should be linked to racism.

This resolution was referred by Town Meeting to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee for review and action. The committee disingenuously ignored the resolution and with the Select Board’s ascent, exploited the referral to resurrect the original measure through an unprecedented end run around town meeting. This question is not by citizen’s petition. Some DEI committee members have openly admitted their intent is to confront Columbus Day. Is it really necessary to recognize one people by dishonoring another? Question # 3 was conceived in bad faith and should be rejected.

Submitted By Dennis Galvin

2 responses to “Preserve Columbus Day: It Is Our Heritage”

  1. A Curious Citizen Avatar
    A Curious Citizen

    Dennis,

    Almost three months ago in this post, you called Andrew Jackson a racist, in your conscious effort to stop Indigenous Peoples’ Day from being recognized in Westford and in the town’s calendars…

    Six days prior to that post, this exact website, which is likely moderated in part by you, posted a speech made by Donald Trump on March 15th, 2017, from the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s notorious mansion outside Nashville, Tennessee, on the day 250 years after Andrew Jackson’s birth…

    Donald Trump will be remembered as the worst President in American history, no doubt. Andrew Jackson is a noted racist. The two are irrevocably tied together. That much is true…

    Do you want to be remembered this way, and with these lowly men? The irony is not lost on us.

    Reply
    1. WRTC_WebAdmin Avatar
      WRTC_WebAdmin

      Response To Letter

      ​RE: Letter To The Editor “ End Run Around Town Meeting”
      Written by Republican State Committeeman Dennis J. Galvin
      ​ Response Written by Mr. Galvin

      ​In a recent letter forwarded to the Westford Republican Town Committee website, an unidentified author was critical of my April 2023 letter to the editor published in the Westford CAT. The letter referenced my suggestion to establish Indigenous Persons Day on March 4th. I selected that day, because it was the birthday of President Andrew Jackson, who was an undisputed racists and personally responsible for the forcible relocation of the Cherokee nation from South Carolina to Oklahoma. The trek by these native Americans, in which several hundred died, is known in history as “the trail of tears”.
      ​I am happy that this unknown critic concurred with my assessment about Jackson’s racism. The critic also said that my failure to acknowledge the racist links between Trump and Jackson, was an “irony” that was not lost on both the writer and his friends. Since we are talking about irony, I would like to offer some irony of my own. Consider the genesis of the racist smear against Trump. It was the Democrat Party, a party, that in recent years, has been very quick to point the finger of racism at anyone who disagrees with them. I would submit that the historical relationship between Andrew Jackson and the Democrat party and not Donald Trump is the source of the real irony:
      • Andrew Jackson is the founder of current Democrat party. He founded this party to resist any efforts to limit or end the institution of slavery in the United States. Jackson opposed critical public works projects and the creation of a national bank because he feared that these would increase the power of the Federal government and ultimately result in a challenge to the institution of slavery, which did occur in 1861.
      • It was a large faction of Jackson’s Democrat party, that seceded from the Union in 1861 plunging the nation into a bloody civil war in which over one million Americans died. It was Jackson’s party that became the Confederacy and it was the Republicans led by Abraham Lincoln that ended both the rebellion and slavery in the United States.
      • After the Civil War, it was Jackson’s Democrat party that instituted the “Jim Crow” laws, not only in the south but across the nation imposing racial segregation as the official policy of the United States.
      • Jackson’s Democrat party received a boost in 1912, when another racist Democrat Woodrow Willson gave birth to the “progressive wing”, a wing that to this day advances racist eugenics. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and an affiliate of Wilson’s, launched the “Negro Project” and sought to reduce the black population of the United States largely through the use of abortion. She gave speeches about her approach to the Ku Kux Klan and even Adolf Hitler was interested in her ideas.
      • Hallowed President Franklin D. Roosevelt remained true to the spirit of Jackson’s Democrat party by passing the Davis Bacon act in 1931, which gave labor unions the right to exclude black workers from union membership.
      • It was Jackson’s Democrat Party that resisted the passage of the 1965 US Civil Rights Act, which only succeeded because of the support offered by Republicans in the House and Senate, under the leadership of Senator Minority Leader Everett Dirksen.
      • It was Jackson’s Democrat Party, under the disastrous leadership of Lyndon Baines Johnson that initiated the ill-fated War on Poverty in 1966, displacing black families through urban renewal, undermining family life through the expansion of Aid to Dependent Families (AFDC) and driving manufacturing jobs out of the United States through oppressive tax policies. These combined to disrupt black community life and ultimately plunge many into poverty (sounds like another trail of tears). Many black leaders ( Robert Woodson, Thomas Sowell) believe these programs devastated black America.
      • It was Jackson’s Democrat Party, who under the leadership of President Bill Clinton enacted the Violent Crime and Control Law Enforcement Act of 1964, which was designed to remove “super-predators’ from our streets. “Super-predator” was a code word for young black males and thousands were incarcerated for minor crimes as a result of this legislation, creating a dramatic racial imbalance in the nation’s prison population.
      As to former President Donald Trump and his alleged racism, this myth has been perpetuated almost entirely by the Democrat Party and is intended for the consumption of the mindless lemmings, who make up a large portion of its ranks. There is absolutely no substantive evidence that can support an allegation that Donald Trump is a racist. There is nothing in his statements, his policies or his background, which can support such an allegation.
      However, let’s look at our incumbent President Joe Biden, who has been a fixture in Jackson’s Democrat party extending back to its old segregationist days.
      • Biden has publicly admitted on several occasions that he admired and was mentored by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Kux Klan and one of the Senate’s leading proponents of racial segregation.
      • In 1993 it was Biden, who led the effort to adopt the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act to remove what he called “super-predators’ off the street. This bill resulted in sending thousands of young black men to prison for non- violent crimes
      • In 2020, while running for President, Biden chose to callously appropriate the identity of black America by claiming that if black voters didn’t vote for him, they weren’t black.
      • Also in 2020, Vice President Kamala Harris directly accused Biden of being a segregationist, who supported anti-busing programs which deprived her of educational opportunities because of her color.
      As I think it is plain to see the primary institution responsible for constructing, maintaining and attempting to preserve the structure of systemic racism in the United States has been in fact the Democrat party. It is ironic how members of that party feel compelled to lecture people about systemic racism. I will concede one thing, their history demonstrates that they probably know more about that system, having constructed it. To conclude, I guess the best way to end this discussion lies in the simple axiom that “people in glass houses should not throw stones.”

      ​Dennis Galvin
      ​Representative
      ​Mass Republican State Committee
      ​
      ​

      Reply

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