Indigenous solidarity activists counterprotest Columbus statue event featuring Trump speech

This year Indigenous Solidarity Day fell on Oct 12. A "National Columbus Day Association" event found themselves upstaged by an Indigenous protest, and by a warning from an antifa videographer that their fancy statue would by torn down by protesters. Donald Trump gave the event's (presumably recorded from Oct 9) keynote speech, and that's when an anti-Fascist journalist showed up.

In his Nov 9 proclaimation (which may have been hgis speech played at the statue), Donald Trump went so far as to condemn pro-Indigenous activists who are educating the world about the true nature of Christopher Columbus. Trump had the nerve to whine "Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy." Well, the legacy of slave-trading, mass murder, and genocide NEEDS to be undermined! Increasingly Indigenous activists and their friends are seeking to bring about exactly that.

Trump also blustered threats against protesters who pull down statues in that same proclaimation, but the same threat last summer did not keep the Columbus statue in Baltimore from being pulled down, nor did his bluffs keep statue of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln from being pulled down by protesters in Portland, OR on Nov 11. Trump impotently tweeted "Put these animals in jail, now" without having any effective means of doing so assuming these protesters were reasonably well disguised. Statues are falling again, and there's nothing Der Fuhrer can do about it.

At Union Station, both the pro and anti-colonizer events were relatively small, but for years the pro-colonizer events went off with only occasional disruptions. No longer is this the case. The main protest againt the colonizers included representatives of a number of influential progressive groups, and the previous night they projected the words "Decolonize Union Station" high on the walls of Union Station. This was a small rather than a mass protest, but any presence of protesters at any Columbus statue has got to make police and right-wingers nervous these days.

Columbus statues in Baltimore and elsewhere have been forcibly yanked down during mass protests, like what happened to the Albert Pike statue right next to MPD's headquarters. Whether a statue teardown succeeds (like Pike) or fails (like Andrew Jackson) depends on whether the police choose to fight, and if they do, the outcome of the fight between the cops and the protesters providing security for the team physically setting the ropes and pulling the statue down. Cops in Baltimore were NOT able to keep their Columbus statue from being torn down and thrown in the harbor on July 4. A portion of it was later pulled from the water.