{"id":347074,"date":"2018-02-06T20:13:29","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T19:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/san-jose-votes-to-remove-christopher-columbus-statue-from-city-hall\/"},"modified":"2018-02-06T20:13:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T19:13:29","slug":"san-jose-votes-to-remove-christopher-columbus-statue-from-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/san-jose-votes-to-remove-christopher-columbus-statue-from-city-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Votes to Remove Christopher Columbus Statue From City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Someone’s getting\u00a0evicted from San Jose City Hall<\/a>\u00a0in California after 60 years of residence: Christopher Columbus, who had\u00a0previously\u00a0occupied a place of\u00a0pride in the building’s lobby.<\/p>\n

Evidently recognizing that celebrating a figure known for racism, genocide and colonialism wasn’t a great look for a forward-thinking, progressive city, the City Council announced that\u00a0the statue will be removed and has six weeks to find a new place.<\/p>\n

The move was a response to an organizing campaign by the\u00a0San Jose Brown Berets<\/a>, a\u00a0Chicano service and activist organization. It’s part of their Decolonize San Jose program, which also aims to remove other monuments to colonialism and oppression in the city.<\/p>\n

Over the course of 2017, a growing wave of civic statue removals in response to outcry swept across the United States. Most of these statues were affiliated with\u00a0icons of the Confederacy<\/a>, with\u00a0civil rights advocates arguing that celebrating white supremacist heroes wasn’t consistent with the values of many communities. Some of the statues came down in the dead of night, quietly carted off by public works employees. Others were\u00a0actually torn down<\/a>\u00a0by crowds tired of waiting.\u00a0Some places are\u00a0renaming their buildings<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

But Native American and indigenous groups have also been fighting a long and bitter battle over altars to colonialism found in cities and towns across the United States. Aside from the numerous place names associated with Columbus and his ilk, a number of cities still have statues of the historic figure. Advocates argue that, much like Confederate statues,\u00a0these monuments should be relegated to history, not kept on display in buildings dedicated to public functions.<\/p>\n

San Jose’s decision to\u00a0remove this particular statue represents a big victory,\u00a0and it also sends a message to the rest of the United States: You, too can get rid of your Columbus statues — and circles, parks, streets and other place names — and strip\u00a0Columbus Day\u00a0<\/a>from your list of holidays.<\/p>\n

San…<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Someone’s getting\u00a0evicted from San Jose City Hall\u00a0in California after 60 years of residence: Christopher Columbus, who had\u00a0previously\u00a0occupied a place of\u00a0pride in the building’s lobby. Evidently recognizing that celebrating a figure known for racism, genocide and colonialism wasn’t a great look for a forward-thinking, progressive city, the City Council announced that\u00a0the statue will be removed and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-347074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}