Ralph Cipriano: Revenge Of The Bambino and Chris Columbus: Philadelphia Councilman Squilla, 47 Italian-American Organizations File Civil Rights Suit Alleging Ethnic Discrimination Against Mayor Kenney

 Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net offers a piece on a lawsuit against Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney by Councilman Mark Squill and 47 Italian American organizations. 

You could call it the revenge of the Bambino; and Chris Columbus too. 

In U.S. District Court this morning, City Councilman Mark Squilla joined a coalition of 47 national and local Italian-American groups in filing a civil rights lawsuit against Mayor Jim Kenney. 

The lawsuit charges that by unilaterally dumping Columbus Day as a city holiday, and replacing it with Indigenous Peoples' Day, Mayor Kenney is guilty of discriminating against Italian-Americans and violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  

The lawsuit further argues that the mayor's executive order to cancel Columbus Day as a city holiday was only the latest in a "long line of divisive, anti-Italian American discriminatory actions" previously undertaken by Kenney.  

In addition to canceling Columbus Day, the lawsuit states, Kenney has stereotyped Italian-Americans in public rhetoric as "Cousin Guido" and "vigilantes." 

He's put the South Philly zip code where most Italian-Americans live last on the list when it comes to distributing city-wide COVID vaccines, the lawsuit charges. And for the final insult, Kenney targeted the Rizzo statue and the Columbus statue for destruction.  

"Mayor Kenney previously took unilateral actions against two iconic Italian American statues prominently displayed for decades within the City of Philadelphia," the lawsuit states.  

"First, the removal of the Frank L. Rizzo statue (in the middle of the night) from the plaza at the Municipal Services Building. And, second, the attempted removal of the 140 year-old Christopher Columbus statue from its longtime home at Marconi Plaza."

"No other statues in the city (amongst the many hundreds)," the lawsuit notes, "have been targeted by the Mayor." 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Councilman Squilla, 47 Italian-American Organizations File Civil Rights Suit Against Mayor Kenney Alleging Ethnic Discrimination | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog 

Washington Times Editorial On Renaming Columbus Day

The Washington Times offers an editorial on the Washington D. C. Council renaming Columbus Day.

In its latest spasm of virtue-signaling last week, the D.C. Council further burnished its far-left credentials by adopting “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” as a legal holiday, replacing Columbus Day, to be observed Monday, Oct. 14.

It was only a matter of time before the District followed the lead of about 130 other towns and cities across the country with liberal mayors and city councils that have jettisoned Christopher Columbus, who they characterize as racist and genocidal.

“Christopher Columbus enslaved, colonized, mutilated, and massacred thousands of indigenous people in the Americas,” asserts the resolution (without any documentation) introduced by D.C. Council member David Grosso. It would be quite a mean feat for a single man to do all that, if it were true. But it’s little more than character assassination and historical revisionism at their worst.

History records that Columbus was a deeply religious man, a devout Catholic often seen wearing the Franciscan habit. As Ben Broussard wrote in an August 2012 article for a Catholic group, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property about Columbus’ missionary zeal: “Upon his first encounter with the natives of San Salvador [an island now part of the Bahamas, where he first landed], Columbus concludes, ‘I recognized that they were people who would be better converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force.’” Columbus’ records also show he characterized the natives as “sweet and gentle.”

As to the claim the explorer “enslaved” the indigenous peoples he met, Mr. Broussard first notes that “slavery was already widespread among the native Indians when Columbus arrived.”

You can read the rest of the editorial via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/13/editorial-dc-push-for-indigenous-peoples-day-is-ba/ 

Celebrating Columbus

Today is Columbus Day and I expect to see a good bit of Columbus-bashing.

But as I'm half-Italian and I was born and raised in a predominately Italian-American neighborhood in South Philadelphia, I share the pride of Italian-Americans who know that the explorer who "discovered" America was an Italian.

Yes, despite the views of the politically correct, who once again this year will note that people lived here before Columbus, that others visited here before Columbus, and that Columbus brought slavery and genocide to the new land, I believe that Columbus did in fact discover America.

As Michael Berliner wrote in Capitalism magazine, "Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., to the growing, scientific civilization of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America."

And for that Columbus should be honored by all Americans.

You can read an earlier post on Columbus via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/08/christopher-columbus-deserves-to-stay.html 

Ronald Reagan: Christopher Columbus Was The Inventor Of The American Dream

Mark Antonio Wright offered an interesting and fair piece in National Review last year on the two views of Christopher Columbus, whom President Ronald Reagan called "the inventor of the American Dream."

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425389/christopher-columbus-hero-or-villain