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Feud Over Race And History And The Installation Of A 'Symbol Of White Supremacy'
Bay Area city feuds over the installation of a 'symbol of white supremacy' downtown
The installation of a commemorative bell in downtown Gilroy last week was intended to mark the city's 150-year anniversary, but it's instead become the center of a feud over race and history. “Those bells represent the destruction and domination of Native American people,” Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman Valentin Lopez told KPIX. “Those missions represent slavery, they represent brutality, whippings, rape, breaking up families.” The El Camino Real Mission Bell, recently installed atop a green pole on the corner of a small alley and Monterey Road in the historic garlic town's center, was protested by several groups, including the ACLU. But those concerns were ignored by the city, according to Lopez.
At a council meeting on January 10, nine people spoke out against the bell. The council also received over 40 emails in opposition, according to the Gilroy Dispatch. But the issue was not discussed at that meeting and not added to the council agenda. During the meeting Councilmember Rebecca Armendariz proposed postponing the installation, but after an interruption from Mayor Marie Blankley and a quick thumbs up/thumbs down vote, the mayor announced the motion had failed and the issue would not be added to the agenda. Armendariz later told NBC Bay Area that the bell was a "symbol of white supremacy, a symbol of oppression, a symbol of genocide that you need to walk by in our downtown."
The El Camino Real is a 600-mile commemorative route connecting the 21 Spanish missions in California largely following what is now U.S. Route 101 from San Diego, through San Francisco's Mission to Sonoma. From the establishment of the first Spanish mission in San Diego in 1769, through Mexican independence and U.S statehood in 1850, Native Californians were persecuted, massacred and enslaved by European settlers. It's believed that 16,000 Indigenous people died throughout the state through disease and genocide.
“It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was. A genocide," Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Native American heritage center in Sacramento in 2019. "There’s no other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books. And so I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”
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Originally Posted by VikLevaPatel
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