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Baltimore protesters toppled a Christopher Columbus statue and threw it in a harbor

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  texan1211  •  4 years ago  •  12 comments

By:   Little Italy (MSN)

Baltimore protesters toppled a Christopher Columbus statue and threw it in a harbor
While much of the country celebrated Independence Day Saturday, protesters in Baltimore toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the Inner Harbor, CNN affiliate WBAL reported.

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



Baltimore protesters toppled a Christopher Columbus statue and threw it in a harbor© Courtesy Louis Krauss

While much of the country celebrated Independence Day Saturday, protesters in Baltimore toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the Inner Harbor, CNN affiliate WBAL reported.

Louis Krauss, who shared video of the toppling, said there were at least 300 people gathered at the scene.

"After it toppled over the statue broke into several pieces, which were then dragged across the plaza and dumped into the Inner Harbor," Krauss told CNN.

The statue has stood by Little Italy for more than 30 years and is the latest to come down in recent weeks amid protests. Both crowds of demonstrators and local orders have removed other tributes to Columbus, Confederate leaders and other controversial figures representing racist parts of America's history.

Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott said in a statement he had previously suggested the statue be removed, according to WBAL.

"I support Baltimore's Italian-American community and Baltimore's indigenous community," the statement said. "I cannot, however, support Columbus."

CNN has reached out to the Baltimore Police Department for comment.

On Wednesday, the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, invoked his emergency powers to remove multiple Confederate monuments throughout the city, including a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Last month, a judge ordered the removal of a Confederate monument in an Atlanta suburb.

In other parts of the country, controversial symbols were toppled by protesters, including a group in Portland, Oregon, who pulled down a statue of George Washington last month and set its head on fire. In Richmond, Virginia, crowds took down the statue Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, a day after toppling a Columbus statue.


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Texan1211
Professor Principal
1  seeder  Texan1211    4 years ago

Isn't it just amazing how "woke" and intelligent these crumb bums are?

And where the hell were the police during all of this?

Standing down on some politician's orders?

 
 
 
Snuffy
Professor Participates
2  Snuffy    4 years ago

It's a crazy time we live in but then I think most generations had a lot of the same thoughts about how crazy their world was.

To tear down statues of Christopher Columbus,  to be upset about what his voyages did. 

But in all honesty if not Columbus then some other European was going to come to the New World. Removing Columbus does not change what would have happened anyway. European powers were looking for new ways to Asia and the rich trading so the America's were going to be found regardless of who did it. And the outcome would have been the same regardless of who did it. Europeans brought small pox that the indigenous population had never experienced and had no protections against. Europeans also had a technological advantage over the indigenous population that would have brought the same results. 

But by all means lets tear down statues of Columbus because he did a bad thing. I like the line from Laurence Bergreen. “You would think he set out with a goal to commit genocide or kill as many people as possible, but that actually wasn't his goal. He thought he was on a trade mission with China, which he didn't know where it was and he spent four voyages trying to find it and never did.”

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
2.1  JohnRussell  replied to  Snuffy @2    4 years ago
But in all honesty if not Columbus then some other European was going to come to the New World. Removing Columbus does not change what would have happened anyway. European powers were looking for new ways to Asia and the rich trading so the America's were going to be found regardless of who did it. And the outcome would have been the same regardless of who did it. Europeans brought small pox that the indigenous population had never experienced and had no protections against. Europeans also had a technological advantage over the indigenous population that would have brought the same results. 

There is some truth to what you say. But you dont create a reason to praise Columbus with statues, or to make him an "American" hero. He never set foot on soil that became the United States. 

======================================================================================

One of Columbus’s crew members,   Bartolemé de las Casas , became so disenchanted with the atrocities of the European conquerors that he turned on Columbus and his mission. Later, he became a Dominican friar, dedicating his life to exposing and opposing the brutalities perpetrated by Columbus and his men and attempting a more peaceful missionary colonization of the Caribbean islands. 

In 1542, de las Casas wrote a famous   book   about that era,  A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies   (“Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias.”) In it, he condemned the destruction caused by the Columbian voyages:

There are two main ways in which those who have travelled to this part of the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth. First, they have waged war on them: unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. Second, they have murdered anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance, or even of wishing to escape the torment to which they have subjected him.

This latter policy has been instrumental in suppressing the native leaders, and, indeed, given that the Spaniards normally spare only women and children, it has led to the annihilation of all adult males, whom they habitually subject to the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals. 

On his 1493 return to Europe from the first voyage, Columbus wrote a famous   letter   to Ferdinand and Isabella (who had sanctioned the expedition), recounting the timidity and naivité of the Taíno people, and offering his patrons “slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped,” in return for the ships and resources required for a second voyage:

They have no iron or steel, nor any weapons; nor are they fit thereunto; not because they be not a well-formed people and of fair stature, but that they are most wondrously timorous… such they are, incurably timid… They are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as noone would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts…

…Their Highnesses may see that I shall give them as much gold as they may need, with very little aid which their Highnesses will give me; spices and cotton at once, as much as their Highnesses will order to be shipped, and as much as they shall order to be shipped of mastic… and aloe-wood as much as they shall order to be shipped; and slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped. 

What followed were the infamous slave raids of 1495, during the second voyage. As the historian Howard Zinn   described   in   A People’s History of the United States , Columbus could not find as much gold on the conquered Caribbean islands as he had hoped, and so chose to round up a greater number of native slaves for export to Europe instead:

Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor. 

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load on to ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route.  
 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
2.1.1  JohnRussell  replied to  JohnRussell @2.1    4 years ago

Whether something like what happened with Columbus and the natives might have happened anyway with some other explorer, why did we (the U.S.) construct monuments and statues to this man?  In light of what he did, it was very misguided. Take them all down. 

 
 
 
Snuffy
Professor Participates
2.1.2  Snuffy  replied to  JohnRussell @2.1    4 years ago

I also believe that it's wrong to judge a person from 500 years in the past against the morals of today's world. Columbus was the first documented European explorer to to the New World and his actions and discoveries started the European migration to the America's. As he was the start of all of this I think yes he should be celebrated. Not as a holy man or even the greatest of men,  but the first of his kind and should be remembered as such.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
2.1.3  JohnRussell  replied to  Snuffy @2.1.2    4 years ago
As he was the start of all of this I think yes he should be celebrated.

He is the history books as a major figure of the era of exploration. That is all the "celebrating" he deserves. 

 
 
 
Dismayed Patriot
Professor Quiet
2.1.5  Dismayed Patriot  replied to  Snuffy @2.1.2    4 years ago
I also believe that it's wrong to judge a person from 500 years in the past against the morals of today's world.

He was judged at the time by his fellow crew members as John points out. His conduct and treatment of the native populations he encountered was horrid even by the standards of that time.

"Columbus's government was characterised by a form of tyranny," Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen the document, told journalists. "Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."

"Because of their gross misgovernance, Columbus and his brothers were arrested and imprisoned upon their return to Spain from the third voyage."

 
 
 
Snuffy
Professor Participates
2.1.6  Snuffy  replied to  JohnRussell @2.1.3    4 years ago
That is all the "celebrating" he deserves. 

Some may say that.  My opinion is that the statues should remain up until there is a democratic agreement to remove them.  I do not agree with mob rule and I do not agree with how some of them have been torn down.  If there is a vote, my vote would be to keep it up.  But follow a democratic process, not mob rule.

 
 
 
MonsterMash
Sophomore Quiet
3  MonsterMash    4 years ago

This is no longer about taking down monuments and statues, it's about taking down the United States by left-wing anarchist cheered on by the Democratic party.

 
 
 
charger 383
Professor Silent
4  charger 383    4 years ago

what was the cost of the destroyed property?  

 
 
 
Ronin2
Professor Quiet
4.1  Ronin2  replied to  charger 383 @4    4 years ago

I really don't think the leftist radicals care about cost, ownership, public or private really matters to them in the slightest.

Wait till they figure out that Ford and GM were alleged Nazi collaborators. 

I can see the protests the forced sale of Ford Motors to get the name changed. If the protests don't work, the rioting, vandalism, and arson of cars and plants. 

Could be very fun times coming with these leftist assholes, and their Democratic enablers.

 
 

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