It’s not about getting along

It’s about making sure everyone is free

In 1992, while teaching at the American Indian Heritage School in Seattle, I attended my first Anti-Columbus Day rally with my students and colleagues. If you didn’t figure it out from the school's name, my students were Native American (from various tribes), as were almost all of my teaching colleagues. I may have written before about how transformative my time at Heritage was, and learning the truth about Columbus and how his “hero” narrative impacted my students was only one small part of that transformation.

As an Italian-American who grew up in a largely Italian-Catholic working-class town in New Jersey, we celebrated Columbus Day. Really, what that meant was, we got off of school and we watched the Columbus Day parade that took place just over the bridge in NYC. I also recall memorizing “facts” about Columbus—starting in Kindergarten— like the names of his ships (really? that’s important?). The older I got the less I understood about the alleged heroism of Columbus. While I loved my Italian heritage I questioned why he was the dude we honored when there were so many other Italians and Italian-Americans that were much finer human beings.

Thus, in 1992, I allowed my newly-minted teacher self to learn from my teenagers. I was able to put aside any attachment I had to Columbus as The Italian Of Note and listened to the pain of my Indigenous colleagues who shared an entirely different take on this alleged “discoverer”. 

From that day on, I began to share the reality of what happened when Cristoforo and others came upon the lands of the Americas and the Caribbean. A great resource is Rethinking Columbus.

In 2009, I was invited to sing on the red carpet at the NYC parade and I promoted my performance by telling folks I was singing at the Italian-American parade (NOT the Columbus Day parade). It’s not actually that hard to find documents and resources that expose the truth about Columbus and the horrors he perpetrated; horrors which led to a genocide all thanks to the Catholic church’s Doctrine of Discovery. One simply has to be open to letting go of harmful tropes and embrace new information. The Dalai Lama once said, “If science proved some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.” I add this quote for two reasons: First, it shows humility, flexibility, and a willingness to learn and change—coming from a leader of a major world religion! And second, it doesn’t apply only to science/religion, it pertains to all areas of knowledge, including history.

As a peace educator and minister, I regularly encounter people who think that peace means, agreeing to disagree or finding a way to just accept other people’s opinions so we can move forward and get along. That is a fine idea if you are okay with how the world currently works. None of my peace education colleagues though, would agree that that is the answer. I fully understand that people will have different opinions about things since we are all the products of our conditioning. But, if your conditioning and thus your opinions are tied to the oppression or harm or suffering of others, then no, I cannot simply abide your thoughts. 

True peace can only exist when all forms of violence are removed and replaced with their antitheses. For everyone. Thus, if your ideology causes harm to others (physically or psychologically) then it serves all of us for you to rethink what you are clinging to. I say this especially to folks with privilege (however it shows up). Do better. And remember, none of us are free until all are free.

Check out this short teaching I gave a few years ago!