The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: William Mckinley

  • Letters to the Editor: Vote No on Measure M and Remove McKinley

    Letters to the Editor: Vote No on Measure M and Remove McKinley

    One reader shares his opinion on Arcata’s statue of William McKinley

    The fight to remove the McKinley Statue from the Arcata Plaza has been a long fought battle. The McKinley Statue represents William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, who gave birth to U.S. imperialism through genocide and colonized over 7,000 islands in both the Pacific and Caribbean by instigating the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. Domestically, McKinley had a similar impact among the Native American community through breaking up several tribes, abandoning the African American community during times of race riots, and driving the U.S. into a depression.

    The current movement to remove the McKinley Statue was launched by Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples because the Arcata Plaza is the same site where indigenous peoples were sold into slavery. Grassroots activism, led by the Historic Justice Alliance, successfully pressured Arcata City Council to vote to remove the McKinley statue on Feb. 21, and began the removal process. Following the vote, a small group of reactionaries organized a petition to keep the McKinley Statue, which was approved for the Nov. 6 ballot as Measure M.

    So what does Measure M do? If Measure M goes to a “Yes” vote it would do several things. First, it would overturn the Arcata City Council decision and keep the statue. Second, it would prevent any future modification of the statue. Third, it prevents Arcata City Council from having any future say on the McKinley Statue despite being the original body that erected the statue. Lastly, if the statue comes down before Nov. 6 then the Arcata City Council is legally obligated to put it back up.

    For students, this means that the next step in removing the McKinley Statue is going to the local polls where we have the power to influence the policies that affect future students. Currently, the Vote No on Measure M campaign is endorsed by more than 40 community organizations, including the Wiyot Tribal Council. Students are encouraged to vote “No” on Measure M on Nov. 6 by registering to vote by Oct. 22 in Arcata at https://registertovote.ca.gov.

    Nathaniel McGuigan

    Regional Mecha Co-Chair Northern California Minister of Communication

    Humboldt PSL Email: nam449@humboldt.edu

     

  • Community doubles down on McKinley statue

    Community doubles down on McKinley statue

    Community straightens out Arcata City Council on removing McKinley statue.

    The Arcata City Council held a meeting at the Arcata Community Center on March 21 concerning the McKinley statue on the Arcata Plaza. Over 200 community members attended.

    The Arcata City Council voted 4-1 with one abstention on Feb. 21 to remove the McKinley statue from the plaza.

    The March 21 council meeting was an attempt to invalidate the recent vote and years of community protest against the statue in the town square.

    Council member Susan Ornelas put the ballot item on the March 21 council meeting agenda as part of a “no project alternative.”

    “I felt I could trust the citizens of Arcata to see this issue deeper than people have been projecting they would see it,” Ornelas said. “I thought I could trust people [to] see why [the statue] should be there.”

    Council member Paul Pitino spoke on the subject of a public ballot.

    “In reality, it is not going to be an option to have the statue remain in the middle of the plaza,” Pitino said. “I see we have this thing handled already. We don’t need a vote.”

    Mayor of Arcata Sofia Pereira also commented.

    “Given that we have already made a vote to move the statue, I believe that putting this to a vote doesn’t give us the information we need in a public process,” Pereira said.

    When Pereira opened up the public comment, 121 people were signed up to give a three-minute comment on the McKinley statue removal. Public comment lasted for over three hours.

    The first speaker during the public comment, Claudia Johnson of Arcata, said that the only people who should determine if the statue should be removed are the voters.

    “That statue was a gift to the citizens of Arcata and the city council is responsible for caring for it,” Johnson said. “Right now, [the city council is] not taking care of it.”

    Arcata resident Rob Hepburn has been the gardener at Veterans Memorial Park in Arcata for 15 years.

    “I’m a Vietnam combat veteran and that is why this is really important to me,” Hepburn said. “I know what happened in the Philippines. That started under the watch of McKinley. It started with an ideology called ‘manifest destiny,’ which in essence says that white men are determined by a God-given right to take the lands of non-white peoples and civilize them into imitation white men.”

    Hepburn ties the Philippine-American War to Vietnam War.

    “The results in the Philippines were 250,000 civilian deaths. Massacres in the Philippines were precursors to the My Lai Massacre and other massacres in Vietnam,” Hepburn said. “That is why I feel so strongly that this statue should not be in a place of honor in the center of Arcata. The legacy of imperialism and racism needs to stop here. It needs to end with us.”

    Arcata resident Joanne McGarry stands for peace on the Arcata Plaza.

    “McKinley invaded the Philippines and Hawaii,” McGarry said. “He does not stand for peace. I want a peaceful plaza.”

    McKinleyville resident Maureen Kane also made a statement during the public comment.

    “If we are to have peace, we must openly and knowingly acknowledge all of our wrongdoings so we can ask to be forgiven,” Kane said. “Atrocities occurred in our town square.”

    Allison Lundahl, a Humboldt State student pursuing a masters in social work, spoke at the meeting.

    “I encourage [the city council] to include historical trauma [and] the impact of the symptoms of colonialism in your CEQA report,” Lundahl said.

    CEQA, or the California Environmental Quality Act, is a California environmental statute requiring state and local governances to comply with environmental guidelines.

    Tia Oros Peters of the Seventh Generation Fund in Arcata spoke next.

    “I request that the city council open every council meeting recognizing that we are on Wiyot territory as a right of indigenous peoples, recognizing the sovereignty and determination of the Wiyot people,” Peters said.

    Peters also requested the council to stand firm in their decision.

    “We should not be having this meeting,” Peters said. “You already voted to remove the statue.”

    At the end of public comment, the council agreed to honor their earlier decision to remove the McKinley statue from the plaza.

    “At this point, I’m saying I would just continue with what we’re doing,” Ornelas said. “I’m sorry we took all of this time.”

     

  • People of Arcata share what they’d like to see in the plaza

    People of Arcata share what they’d like to see in the plaza

    Arcata City Council votes to take down the statue of past President William McKinley on Feb. 21. Lumberjack reporter Dajonea Robinson asked the people of Arcata what they’d like to see in place of it.

  • Stick it to the statue!

    Stick it to the statue!

    By | Philip Santos

    Don’t be silly. Smashing a statue will never change the past. What’s done is done; history is history, right? The problem with this sentiment is that which history is history depends on who you ask. If you ask an average citizen why the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on civilians in Japan, their response would probably be: “To win the war.” Turn to someone else and they might say, “It was to send a message – that we will do this to you if we want to.” Those are two versions of an infamous event that are very different from one another, yet both can be true either separately or simultaneously.

    Statue1_Web.jpg
    The statue of former United States president William McKinley stands in the middle of Arcata Plaza. The statue was erected in 1906 and has been at the center of controversy. Photo credit: Diego Linares

    Statues memorialize people and events which will always remind us that one thing can have a variety of meanings. How do we reconcile the fact that the Founding Fathers are seen primarily as the harbingers of democracy by some, yet are simultaneously documented as perpetrators of genocide? I’m just a simpleton student working on my undergrad, but I think I have an idea: find a way to tell the truth. While truth is complicated, that is no justification for promoting a lie. And most statues are liars. A statue is lying when it’s preserved in a way which forwards a fraction of its historic context. Most statues meet this criteria. So how do we get a statue to tell the truth? We supplement the story by bolstering one-sided narratives with previously erased histories. Where there is a statue of George Washington, let it be known that he was also known as “town destroyer” by the Iroquois Confederacy. Where there is a statue of William McKinley, let it be known that he authorized the annexation of Hawaii, and Guam, and Samoa, and Puerto Rico.

    Statue3_Web.jpg
    The statue of former United States president William McKinley stands in the middle of Arcata Plaza. Photo credit: Diego Linares

    When we take the time to understand that history is complex, it becomes easier to understand the same is true of us. We are complex, more than simple terms like “racist” or “liberal.” Statues are no different, but unlike us they cannot speak for themselves, which is why we need to take the rest of history and stick it to the statue.