THANKSGIVING DAY NEWSLETTER #9, NOVEMBER 25, 2021, NATIONAL DAY OF GRATITUDE, MOURNING, AND ATONEMENT. And BLACK FRIDAY/BUY NOTHING DAY NOV. 26.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
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CONTENTS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING #9, 2021
James W. Loewen, Truth about First Thanksgiving
Cole’s Hill, Frank James, Massasoit
Matt Taibbi, the Pilgrims and the Taliban
4 essays from Popular Resistance.org
UAINE, Kisha James, 52nd Day of Mourning in Plymouth
Thanksgiving March to Free Indigenous Kids
Racism and Human Rights
Protest of Arresting Journalists of Wet’suwet’en
Day of Mourning #8, 2020 and others
Buy Nothing Day: OMNI’s 3 Newsletters
TEXTS
ITEMS ARRIVING AFTER NEWSL 8 Published
The Truth About the First Thanksgiving
James W. Loewen
Origin myths do not come cheaply. To glorify the Pilgrims is dangerous. The genial omissions and false details our texts use to retail the Pilgrim legend promote Anglocentrism, which only handicaps us when dealing with all those whose culture is not Anglo.
https://mronline.org/2021/08/26/the-truth-about-the-first-thanksgiving/
Cole’s Hill and the Story Behind This Week’s Indigenous “National Day of Mourning”By Joseph Nevins, co-author of A People’s Guide to Greater Boston Most people in the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving this week. Meanwhile, many Native Americans and their supporters.
Cole’s Hill and the Story Behind This Week’s Indigenous “National Day of Mourning.” By Joseph Nevins, co-author of A People’s Guide to Greater Boston. (I read this 11-29-20. --D)
Most people in the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving this week. Meanwhile, many Native Americans and their supporters will observe a “Day of Mourning.” These conflicting holidays are at the center of the ongoing struggle over the country we call the United States – how it came to be, and what it will become.
Like Thanksgiving, the Day of Mourning has its origins in Plymouth, Massachusetts, or “America’s Hometown” as the heavily-touristed town calls itself. In the entry below from A People’s Guide the Greater Boston, my co-authors, Suren Moodliar and Eleni Macrakis, and I tell a story of Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, where the first Day of Mourning took place and where indigenous activists and allies continue to gather each year on the fourth Thursday of November. Cole’s Hill is one of many sites that make up the book’s “Native Greater Boston tour.” The tour extends from the cities of Haverhill and Lowell, north of Boston, to sites in Boston proper and on the South Shore of Massachusetts, where Plymouth is located.
The following passage is an excerpt from The People’s Guide to Greater Boston
Cole’s Hill
In 1970, for the 350th anniversary of the 1620 arrival of English settlers in Plymouth, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts invited Frank James, a leader of the Aquinnah Wampanoag nation, to address that year’s Thanksgiving celebration. Also known as Wamsutta, James prepared a speech and submitted it to the feast’s organizers. On reading the text, the organizers presented James with an ultimatum: Read a radically revised speech written by the organizers or the invitation would be retracted. James chose his own words.
“We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.”
—Frank James, 1970
On the appointed day, James delivered his original speech before a gathering of hundreds of indigenous people on Cole’s Hill, inaugurating the first annual Day of Mourning. He did so in the shadow of a statue depicting the 1600s Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and directly across from the fabled Plymouth Rock. In his speech, reflecting the period’s national reawakening of Indian pride and militancy, James reviewed the history of indigenous-settler relations. Noting that the hospitality exemplified by the first “thanksgiving” dinner of 1621 was to be “the beginning of the end,” he observed that “before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.” In an aligned set of actions earlier that day, Russell Means and Dennis Banks, prominent national leaders of the American Indian Movement, led protestors to briefly take over the Mayflower II site, cover Plymouth Rock with sand, and disrupt the town-sponsored Thanksgiving parade.
Statue of Massasoit, overlooking Cole’s Hill at dawn, 2010. Credit: Andrew Todd Phillips
Every year since, the United American Indians of New England have rallied at noon on the third Thursday of November on Cole’s Hill before marching through Plymouth Village Historical District and hosting a potluck lunch at the nearby First Parish Plymouth Church. Adding historical import to the meal is the fact that the church is built on the site of the original Plymouth Plantation and fort (built in 1621). Today the rally draws indigenous activists and allies from all over the Americas.![https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fig-25.2-1024x682.jpg]()
Day of Mourning, Cole’s Hill, 2018. Credit: Brynne Quinlan
Cole’s Hill overlooks Plymouth Harbor, home to the Mayflower II, a replica of the original Pilgrim vessel. It also features a town-sponsored plaque with a tersely worded statement explaining the significance of the National Day of Mourning as a “protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”
“What is this you call property? It cannot be the Earth for the land is our Mother nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belong to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him?” —Massasoit, circa 1630s
. . . .Every November, modern Americans wear Pilgrim hats for fun. The Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to escape fun. They were horrible people. A settler named Thomas Morton had the audacity to erect a Maypole and the Pilgrims burned his house down and had him “fett into the bilbowes,” i.e. put in leg irons. The ideal Plymouth male hated women but was aroused by pennies. He employed punishments like whipping, the “ducking stool,” and the cleft stick, which was a split piece of wood he’d cram on your tongue for lying, whispering in church, or other speech offenses.
The Pilgrim was the Anglo-Saxon version of the Taliban and his spirit — in the form of the censorious Yankee cheapskate who drove his sex impulse ten miles underground, in secret coprophilia sessions with paid ladies and gentlemen — lived on in America for centuries. This was before we even get to how he actually treated the indigenous population.
The catch was that the Pilgrims were escaping an even worse group of people, the English aristocrats of the sixteenth century. These were dandies in codpieces who wore the whitest possible face-powder, so no one would mistake them for someone who had to work outside. They’d made it the law of the land that everyone had to worship a faith created to legalize the urges of an obese hypersexualized serial killer of a king, who saw plots everywhere and beheaded a string of courtiers and brides. As Eddie Izzard would say, Thank you for flying Church of England, Anne Boelyn!. . . .
The following 4 items are from Popular Resistance.org (11-25-21). Be the people's resistance media!
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52nd National Day Of Mourning To Be Observed In Plymouth ![https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/BIQyNHx0C4gkszz5cxDlezcvOOE2thQhBqCtuPWITOxsYwtqamIapn9Mjh2-Bu6jthLxl5Tiw7B8gfmQr9P7B5c6VtGIh5_ZV4hEENY13uZN-s9YmK-ojGaFWZBw5G2G0rIV-5KVrCptpfnYPkwGH9WsUFJ6IA=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/natl-day-of-mourning-150x150.png]() By UAINE, Popular Resistance. According to UAINE youth coordinator Kisha James, who is Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the founder of National Day of Mourning, “We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies. Wampanoag and other Indigenous people have certainly not lived happily ever after since the arrival of the Pilgrims. To us, Thanksgiving is a Day of Mourning, because we remember... -more-
Thanksgiving March To Free Indigenous Kids From Immigration Cages ![https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/48SOGxa77jkOylbUVjhlaqwVophiyZ_CHAdoBzUxZEWbdlmSub9NVdfE8EdrjTdfWvy8xiksgLerzrmujVIjQtKN_pu36Z8a3d2c6BvFnRwXV255xIbRPY6b6quLhlUuGXD7uo4E=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-150x150.png]() By Last Real Indians. An informal group of Northwest Indigenous warriors, headed by veteran Native rights protector Sid Mills, announced last week they plan to join a march in Southern California to demand the release of Indigenous children from immigration detention facilities. The four-day event, called The March for Freedom, will begin in Los Angeles on the National Day of Mourning, known to non-Native people as Thanksgiving, and will end on Sunday, November 28, at the Otay Mesa Detention Facility in San Diego. “Thousands of children are separated from their families at the border every year and held in detention camps... -more-
Race As A Factor In Human Rights Abuses By Camille Landry, Alliance For Global Justice. This section of our Human Rights in the U.S. 2021 Report will examine key areas of inequality and the ongoing human rights violations that characterize Black life in the U.S. that constitute violations of basic human rights. Because we are addressing human rights and not merely civil rights violations, this oppression is not an internal matter to be addressed only by the governments, processes or people of the United States, but rather a crime against humanity that is properly addressed and adjudicated upon a world stage. -more-
Violence And Intimidation Leave Bloody Imprint On Honduran Elections ![https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/q4La0GlKe-IRioEgCCmidaxTtdH5bK0lH9eIEofH9TTqyuYZeS3el-2Q-Uncj4MRsBX1kxwOT9Uih72FQMvIBjPIl1EMmWnRw4eKbOrCUasqJqZuOlzoDl15mroG9zFRRwcXXrkD1hA=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-4-150x150.jpg]() By Zoe Alexandra, Peoples Dispatch. On Sunday, November 28, 5.5 million Hondurans will participate in the general elections to elect the president, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 298 mayors, and 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament. The electoral process has been strongly criticized by members of the opposition and human rights organizations inside and outside Honduras due to the serious violation of the basic rights of the political opposition and the right of the people to a peaceful and legal electoral process. For Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, congresswoman of the Party for Liberation and Refoundation from the... -more-
Tudor's Biscuit World Workers Seek A Rare Fast Food Union ![https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/RILu0Cq_qyqcYdSBbIIe3BDKY3GF5FEipZ6zCvJWK5MWbdY_Hos1j8N14BuK-YZz1-gqtiyDoWnFBDq7vNxD6MU_N1XnwZXljux9avjAVAj4XGjEcEyqN_Q0tYhHBCCT1lm1BksuDRKWKLGuJOOjfhoO6Ct7Dm0=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-3-e1637778193364-150x150.jpg]() By Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Despite the political successes of the “Fight For $15” movement, actual unionized fast food restaurants are rare. Burgerville workers in Portland, Oregon recently reached an agreement on a union contract after a years-long effort, and Starbucks workers in Buffalo and elsewhere have scheduled union elections at a number of stores. Now, 25 employees of a Tudor’s in tiny Elkview, West Virginia are joining them in the vanguard of fast food organizing by seeking to unionize with UFCW Local 400. Yesterday, they filed for a union election with the NLRB. -more-
Let’s Find Alternatives To Striking ![https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/6rn99waeF_3VtWZW9AaY5PHKkteeYt50ETvbI-xOSL72puApcDbULg_hNcQD6E_anK5V2H5hNyy9sdBDNoPxdCnY-jcUfs8AYMGO6MgRbtGj5yjkO4EEwgS8CB95M90VovV8ymWis_12TEeDOfCJDCrwDvhv8KI=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-2-e1637775941336-150x150.jpg]() By Rasmus Hästbacka, Organizing Work. While the LO, TCO and Saco top officials suffer from consensus fundamentalism, opposition among the grassroots often suffers from a fixation on strikes. Among the grassroots labor movement in Sweden, a call for big strikes or even a general strike is often heard. Strikes were called in response to the current attack on the Swedish Employment Protection Act, low wages, and attacks on the right to strike. In 2019, an attempt was made to stage a symbolic strike to highlight the climate crisis. As far as we are aware, no workplace was shut down. -more-
NAJA Calls For Refocus Of News Coverage Of Wet’suwet’en And Arrests ![https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/IH0g_seEYJI2Bg1bQRRYzP7KUqqs6HdPRWl1fATjPNH6-oTiXrMO1IbQj_b42yo6uFCKYJUqScNYZXFLVbEXkZ1x840RJNS-8qUHHsMB3CRO-LM1HDHeumjE8biAZB9wWcWWBY_yzueZmuwGu1m6p_rwXSPVyY_KdswFmKu6=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-1-scaled-e1637773578386-150x150.jpg]() By NAJA News Room. The Native American Journalists Association condemns the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for standing in the way of news gathering and storytelling by arresting journalists on Wet’suwet’en Yintah. We are also deeply concerned that the news attention on Indigenous people occupying and using their traditional unceded territory only sees heightened media attention when there are police raids and arrests. NAJA recognizes the right of sovereign Indigenous nations to invite journalists to their unceded territories and to embed for fair, accurate, truthful storytelling and news gathering for public consumption. -more-
Two Most Widely Used Pesticides Likely Harm Majority of Endangered Species ![https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/GsT5u72fFC4vhIiOeSjM9vTAohFWVYKIpWWTpYHM4M46s99-WRvZW-oAA6CtcbFTe2JowEiUHb8Z9ql_48C4ZyovtF2pVTUwkcR41cI1H0rB0ziHrnfgWulRbYLQNkdk9PDlFov6=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-150x150.jpg]() By Nathan Donley, Center for Biological Diversity. The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that the endocrine-disrupting pesticide atrazine and cancer-linked pesticide glyphosate are each likely to harm more than 1,000 of the nation’s most endangered plants and animals. The finalized evaluations found that use of the herbicide glyphosate is likely causing harm to 1,676 of the plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Atrazine is likely harming 1,013 protected species. “It’s no surprise that these chemical poisons are causing severe harm to imperiled wildlife since U.S. use exceeds 70 million... -more-
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addressing human rights and not merely civil rights violations, this oppression is not an internal matter to be addressed only by the governments, processes or people of the United States, but rather a crime against humanity that is properly addressed and adjudicated upon a world stage. -more-
Violence And Intimidation Leave Bloody Imprint On Honduran Elections ![https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/q4La0GlKe-IRioEgCCmidaxTtdH5bK0lH9eIEofH9TTqyuYZeS3el-2Q-Uncj4MRsBX1kxwOT9Uih72FQMvIBjPIl1EMmWnRw4eKbOrCUasqJqZuOlzoDl15mroG9zFRRwcXXrkD1hA=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-4-150x150.jpg]() By Zoe Alexandra, Peoples Dispatch. On Sunday, November 28, 5.5 million Hondurans will participate in the general elections to elect the president, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 298 mayors, and 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament. The electoral process has been strongly criticized by members of the opposition and human rights organizations inside and outside Honduras due to the serious violation of the basic rights of the political opposition and the right of the people to a peaceful and legal electoral process. For Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, congresswoman of the Party for Liberation and Refoundation from the... -more-
Tudor's Biscuit World Workers Seek A Rare Fast Food Union ![https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/RILu0Cq_qyqcYdSBbIIe3BDKY3GF5FEipZ6zCvJWK5MWbdY_Hos1j8N14BuK-YZz1-gqtiyDoWnFBDq7vNxD6MU_N1XnwZXljux9avjAVAj4XGjEcEyqN_Q0tYhHBCCT1lm1BksuDRKWKLGuJOOjfhoO6Ct7Dm0=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-3-e1637778193364-150x150.jpg]() By Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Despite the political successes of the “Fight For $15” movement, actual unionized fast food restaurants are rare. Burgerville workers in Portland, Oregon recently reached an agreement on a union contract after a years-long effort, and Starbucks workers in Buffalo and elsewhere have scheduled union elections at a number of stores. Now, 25 employees of a Tudor’s in tiny Elkview, West Virginia are joining them in the vanguard of fast food organizing by seeking to unionize with UFCW Local 400. Yesterday, they filed for a union election with the NLRB. -more-
Let’s Find Alternatives To Striking ![https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/6rn99waeF_3VtWZW9AaY5PHKkteeYt50ETvbI-xOSL72puApcDbULg_hNcQD6E_anK5V2H5hNyy9sdBDNoPxdCnY-jcUfs8AYMGO6MgRbtGj5yjkO4EEwgS8CB95M90VovV8ymWis_12TEeDOfCJDCrwDvhv8KI=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-2-e1637775941336-150x150.jpg]() By Rasmus Hästbacka, Organizing Work. While the LO, TCO and Saco top officials suffer from consensus fundamentalism, opposition among the grassroots often suffers from a fixation on strikes. Among the grassroots labor movement in Sweden, a call for big strikes or even a general strike is often heard. Strikes were called in response to the current attack on the Swedish Employment Protection Act, low wages, and attacks on the right to strike. In 2019, an attempt was made to stage a symbolic strike to highlight the climate crisis. As far as we are aware, no workplace was shut down. -more-
NAJA Calls For Refocus Of News Coverage Of Wet’suwet’en And Arrests ![https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/IH0g_seEYJI2Bg1bQRRYzP7KUqqs6HdPRWl1fATjPNH6-oTiXrMO1IbQj_b42yo6uFCKYJUqScNYZXFLVbEXkZ1x840RJNS-8qUHHsMB3CRO-LM1HDHeumjE8biAZB9wWcWWBY_yzueZmuwGu1m6p_rwXSPVyY_KdswFmKu6=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-1-scaled-e1637773578386-150x150.jpg]() By NAJA News Room. The Native American Journalists Association condemns the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for standing in the way of news gathering and storytelling by arresting journalists on Wet’suwet’en Yintah. We are also deeply concerned that the news attention on Indigenous people occupying and using their traditional unceded territory only sees heightened media attention when there are police raids and arrests. NAJA recognizes the right of sovereign Indigenous nations to invite journalists to their unceded territories and to embed for fair, accurate, truthful storytelling and news gathering for public consumption. -more-
Two Most Widely Used Pesticides Likely Harm Majority of Endangered Species By Nathan Donley, Center for Biological Diversity. The Environmental NAJA Calls For Refocus Of News Coverage Of Wet’suwet’en And Arrests ![https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/IH0g_seEYJI2Bg1bQRRYzP7KUqqs6HdPRWl1fATjPNH6-oTiXrMO1IbQj_b42yo6uFCKYJUqScNYZXFLVbEXkZ1x840RJNS-8qUHHsMB3CRO-LM1HDHeumjE8biAZB9wWcWWBY_yzueZmuwGu1m6p_rwXSPVyY_KdswFmKu6=s0-d-e1-ft#https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/11/1124-1-scaled-e1637773578386-150x150.jpg]() By NAJA News Room. The Native American Journalists Association condemns the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for standing in the way of news gathering and storytelling by arresting journalists on Wet’suwet’en Yintah. We are also deeply concerned that the news attention on Indigenous people occupying and using their traditional unceded territory only sees heightened media attention when there are police raids and arrests. NAJA recognizes the right of sovereign Indigenous nations to invite journalists to their unceded territories and to embed for fair, accurate, truthful storytelling and news gathering for public consumption. -more-
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CONTENTS: OMNI THANKSGVING DAY NEWSLETTER #8, 2020(Not a day for giving thanks by all US citizens not even to Europeans: Native Americans and educated, thoughtful, ethical European Americans join the millions of people around the world who, considering this a Day of Egregious Hypocrisy, Mourn.)
A Day of Mourning 2020 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/11/thanksgiving-day-newsletter-8-national.html
A Native American Point of View
About Face: Veterans Against the War
2019
400th Anniversary 2020
Another Native American POV
White Nationalism
Black Friday Buy Nothing Day
Amazon Workers
War Resisters League
Rain Forest Actions Network
Making Connections
Native Americans and Palestinians
Thanksgiving Day 2019
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-day-day-of-mourning.html
BUY NOTHING DAY 2021: REBUILD, RECLAIM, RECYCLE, REDESIGN, REDUCE, REIMAGINE, REINTERPRET, REINVENT, REMAKE, REMEMBER, REORGANIZE, REPAIR, REPLACE, REPRIORITIZE, RESPECT, RESTORE, RESTRUCTURE, RETRENCH, RETURN, REUSE
OMNI BUY NOTHING DAY NEWSLETTERS 1-3
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/omni-buy-nothing-newsletters-1-3-nov-24.html
BND is also another niche in resistance to the climate catastrophe.
END DAY OF REMEMBERING AND MOURNING #9, NOVEMBER 25, 2021
Day of Mourning, Cole’s Hill, 2018. Credit: Brynne Quinlan
