A couple of Republican Senators(James Lankford of Oklahoma and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin) have said they're in favour of allowing Juneteenth to be a federal holiday...so long as another holiday is cut from the schedule to keep costs down. Their holiday to remove? Columbus Day.
In response to bipartisan efforts to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and James Lankford have proposed eliminating a different federal holiday "in exchange."
The choice?
Columbus Day.
“We support celebrating emancipation with a federal holiday but believe we should eliminate a current holiday in exchange. We chose Columbus Day as a holiday that is lightly celebrated, and least disruptive to Americans’ schedules,” Johnson, of Wisconsin, said in a statement Wednesday.
Johnson and Lankford of Oklahoma will be seeking to amend a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Johnson said adding to the number of federal holidays would give federal workers an additional day of paid leave and increase the government's costs. He called his amendment a "counter-proposal that does not put us further in debt.”
Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, commemorates the end of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation had outlawed slavery more than two years earlier, but enforcement largely was a function of where Union troops had advanced. On June 19, 1865, federal orders finally reached — and were proclaimed — in Texas.
Efforts to make it a federal holiday have intensified amid the protests against racial inequality in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Columbus Day honors Christopher Columbus and has been recognized as a federal holiday since 1934. Originally, it fell on Oct. 12, but President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 moved it to the second Monday in October.
For many Italian-American groups and communities, it’s a day set aside to celebrate their heritage. But it has been a source of growing controversy in recent years because of the killing and enslavement of indigenous people in the Americas by European explorers and settlers.
Last year, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers by executive order designated Indigenous Peoples Day to run on the same day as the federal holiday. Earlier this year, Chicago Public Schools stopped recognizing Columbus Day entirely, instead giving students off the same day and calling it Indigenous Peoples Day, drawing objections from Italian American groups.
A spokesman for Johnson said the senator was not denigrating Christopher Columbus or making a value judgment about his legacy, only seeking to avoid increasing the number of federal holidays for cost reasons.
Their reasoning is that it's only lightly celebrated, mostly within the Italian community, and seen by many Americans as problematic and too inconvenient, so why not get rid of it?
So, NSG, what's your take on it?
Personally, i'd rather we rename Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day and have both of them as federal holidays, but I'll take this one for now. We can bring back the October holiday in a few years time.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:20 pm
by Thermodolia
I’m game. Not bad idea actually
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:24 pm
by Atheris
I'd get rid of Patriot's Day and leave Columbus Day alone.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:24 pm
by Greed and Death
I like Columbus day. You hippies are under arrest.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:26 pm
by Shrillland
Atheris wrote:I'd get rid of Patriot's Day and leave Columbus Day alone.
Well, Patriot's Day isn't a federal holiday, so you can get rid of it all you want.
Shrillland wrote: Well, Patriot's Day isn't a federal holiday, so you can get rid of it all you want.
Well, Memorial Day is a federal holiday that you can get rid of. We already have Veteran's Day.
I actually disagree. Memorial Day, (correct me if I'm wrong, although I dont think so) is celebrating/honoring those who died in war. It is not the same thing as Veterans Day.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:32 pm
by Voxija
Juneteenth should be a federal holiday, and Columbus day should be replaced with Leif Eriksson Day.
Thermodolia wrote:Definitely not the same thing. Veterans is for those who are alive, Memorial Day is for those who aren’t.
Then combine the two.
*looks at a calendar*
No can do!
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:55 pm
by Shrillland
Nobel Hobos 2 wrote:I would never miss an opportunity to ADD another holiday. I think it makes more sense to have extra holidays on Mondays, but meh.
Why trade when you can have both?
Right? But we'll take what we can get. Removing a holiday to celebrate a genocidal slaver to replace with one that celebrates the liberation of the enslaved is good enough for now.
Nobel Hobos 2 wrote:I would never miss an opportunity to ADD another holiday. I think it makes more sense to have extra holidays on Mondays, but meh.
Why trade when you can have both?
Right? But we'll take what we can get. Removing a holiday to celebrate a genocidal slaver to replace with one that celebrates the liberation of the enslaved is good enough for now.
Shrillland wrote: Right? But we'll take what we can get. Removing a holiday to celebrate a genocidal slaver to replace with one that celebrates the liberation of the enslaved is good enough for now.
Columbus wasn't genocidal or a slaver.
The record of his own crew says otherwise. Forcing the Taino to work in gold mines and killing them because there's no gold in the region and attacking villages, killing women and children while laughing about it is genocide, even if we remove all disease from the equation.
Shrillland wrote: Right? But we'll take what we can get. Removing a holiday to celebrate a genocidal slaver to replace with one that celebrates the liberation of the enslaved is good enough for now.
Columbus wasn't genocidal or a slaver.
i mean from all the talk about him, you'd think he would be in the same league as Beelzebub or Hitler.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:59 pm
by Middle Barael
I agree with the OG, I’d rather change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and keep it a federal holiday, AND have Juneteenth as a federal holiday. We don’t exactly need big parades to be paid for by the governments, so I don’t understand why having another federal holiday would need for one to be cut.
I understand that many Italian-Americans love Columbus Day (Though Italy as a nation did not yet really exist back then, and he didn’t even work for any of the Italian states), so we could also have a separate, non-federal Italian-Americans Day. This shouldn’t however be a federal holiday, since Italian-Americans aren’t as big of a group as African-Americans, nor were they oppressed nearly as much as African-Americans. Native Americans, and other BIPOC people.
For those who are saying to either get rid of Memorial Day or combine it with Veterans Day, while I agree that the distinction is subtle and trivial, it means a lot to veterans and veteran-families, so while to us non-veterans it may not seem important, we should respect the wishes of our veterans when it comes to their own holidays.
And to the people who want Leif Ericsson Day, while he deserves a holiday more than Columbus, he still didn’t do very much to deserve it. Vinland was located in Canada, not the US, and it only lasted for a few decades before disappearing and being forgotten.
Finally, I think we need to either formally make May Day a federal holiday, or move Labor Day to May 1st. Not only is May Day a seasonal holiday going back hundreds of years, it also is an important holiday for the labor movement, syndicalism, and especially for labor unions and the working class. It commemorates the Haymarket Affair, in which Police in Chicago in 1886 fired upon a crowd of peaceful protestors in support of the 8-hour-work day after a troublemaker in the crowd threw a stick of dynamite. Not only is this especially relevant in Post-George Floyd America, but it also celebrates the now standard 40-hour workweek and the work of labor unions all over the world. Either make Labor Day be on May 1st, or preferably make May Day a federal holiday (I say preferably because it gives workers more time to spend with their families, a major point of the Labor/Syndicalism movement)
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 6:00 pm
by Salus Maior
Just a reminder that Leif Ericksson also killed Native Americans.
The only difference is that he was driven off in the end.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 5:16 pm