President Donald Trump stood in front of the Six Grandfathers (now known as Mount Rushmore) last weekend to warn of a “left-wing cultural revolution […] designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
He lamented that so many monuments throughout the country–from confederate symbols in the South to colonizer statues in the North–were being torn down, and vowed to put an end to this movement.
It’s not working.
The day following Trump’s speech, a Christopher Columbus statue in Connecticut was decapitated. Another, in Baltimore, found itself at the bottom of a harbor. Here in Sacramento, demonstrators in Capitol Park torched, spray-painted and pulled down a statue of Junipero Serra, one of the most well known violent colonizers of northern California.
As we publish, California authorities are working to remove a massive Christopher Columbus statue from the State Capitol.
We take a moment to discuss the removal throughout the United States of both confederate and colonizer statues, and then move on to introduce the larger idea of decolonization–which is a lot more than just statue removal–to our listeners.
Want to learn more? Check out the National History Center’s Teaching Decolonization Resource Center. And do stay tuned in the coming weeks for expert guests to discuss how you can do your part in decolonizing your region.
Thanks for listening and, as always:
Patreon: patreon.com/voicesrivercity
Twitter: @youknowkempa, @guillotine4you, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune
And thank you to Be Brave Bold Robot for the tunes.
Comments
