So many people here defending Columbus...
Regardless of whether or not Columbus actually "discovered" our fair nation (that had numerous peoples already living in it at the time), he was undoubtedly involved in the rape of the West Indies and a participant in the slave trade.
Columbus established Spanish colonies that forced natives to surrender gold to the crown.
Columbus led an expedition against the Taino people of Hispaniola.
Columbus enslaved native people and sent them to Spain.
We rightfully deplore the continuing government support of Confederate statues, even those of common soldiers who did not own slaves. However, for some reason various folks here at DU continue to support statues and other honors for Columbus, a man who was actually a slaver.
http://www2.fiu.edu/~cookn/cuneo1.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/04/opinion/l-slavery-and-colonialism-make-up-the-true-legacy-of-columbus-866089.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus/The-first-voyage#toc25449
= new reply since forum marked as read
My ancestors would have treated him like they treated Captain Cook, ...**
On February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is murdered by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group.
In 1768, Cook, a surveyor in the Royal Navy, was commissioned a lieutenant in command of the HMS Endeavor and led an expedition that took scientists to Tahiti to chart the course of the planet Venus. In 1771, he returned to England, having explored the coast of New Zealand and Australia and circumnavigated the globe. Beginning in 1772, he commanded a major mission to the South Pacific and during the next three years explored the Antarctic region, charted the New Hebrides, and discovered New Caledonia. In 1776, Cook sailed from England again as commander of the HMS Resolution and Discovery, and in January 1778 he made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands. He may have been the first European to ever visit the island group, which he named the Sandwich Islands in honor of one of his patrons, John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich.
Cook and his crew were welcomed by the Hawaiians, who were fascinated by the Europeans’ ships and their use of iron. Cook provisioned his ships by trading the metal, and his sailors traded iron nails for sex. The ships then made a brief stop at Ni’ihau and headed north to look for the western end of a northwest passage from the North Atlantic to the Pacific. Almost one year later, Cook’s two ships returned to the Hawaiian Islands and found a safe harbor in Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay.
It is suspected that the Hawaiians attached religious significance to the first stay of the Europeans on their islands. In Cook’s second visit, there was no question of this phenomenon. Kealakekua Bay was considered the sacred harbor of Lono, the fertility god of the Hawaiians, and at the time of Cook’s arrival the locals were engaged in a festival dedicated to Lono. Cook and his compatriots were welcomed as gods and for the next month exploited the Hawaiians’ good will. After one of the crewmen died, exposing the Europeans as mere mortals, relations became strained. On February 4, 1779, the British ships sailed from Kealakekua Bay, but rough seas damaged the foremast of the Resolution, and after only a week at sea the expedition was forced to return to Hawaii.
The Hawaiians greeted Cook and his men by hurling rocks; they then stole a small cutter vessel from the Discovery. Negotiations with King Kalaniopuu for the return of the cutter collapsed after a lesser Hawaiian chief was shot to death and a mob of Hawaiians descended on Cook’s party. The captain and his men fired on the angry Hawaiians, but they were soon overwhelmed, and only a few managed to escape to the safety of the Resolution. Captain Cook himself was killed by the mob. A few days later, the Englishmen retaliated by firing their cannons and muskets at the shore, killing some 30 Hawaiians. The Resolution and Discovery eventually returned to England.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/captain-cook-killed-in-hawaii
not sure where it is, probably near Columbus Blvd, which heads straight from Fisherman's Wharf to the TransAmerica Pyramid Building...
its NEAR COIT TOWER...
I'm pissed about that. It means I have to buy snow tires. It means I have to shovel snow. And she was warned not to eat anything while in Hades. I mean, it's not like she didn't know any better.
Same here. 
Response to ExciteBike66 (Original post)
Hispaniola, Cuba, Bahamas, but not here....
[link:http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/09/us/columbus-landed-somewhere-else-maybe.html|
Poor Amerigo Vespucci gets left out in the cold.
So hold your tongue.
Also, my memory isn't so hot, but I think in grade school (in the 80s and 90s) the focus was on Columbus (and the "discovery" and not on a general Italian-American theme.
I did like the idea of an "Indigenous People's Day", but an "Italian-American Day" works as well and is at least consistent with how the holiday was originally created.
I'm not getting all aggravated over what was acceptable in the 1400. 
The Columbo statue (in Budapest, Hungary):
Response to ExciteBike66 (Original post)
Look around. There’s plenty of things (that actually matter) to be outraged about.
