flyingears
Yesterday, I was thinking about the upcoming Columbus Day when I received an email from a friend who is from Nablus in the West Bank. It was really sad and frightening.
Essentially, Israel and the United States have been creating and maintaining a situation (part of which is cutting off all aid to the Palestinian government, outright theft of money from banks in the West Bank, and all the usual things that go along with the occupation) that is successfully producing an incredibly dire and desperate life for Palestinians. One of the goals of these policies is Palestinians fighting Palestinians, so that the U.S. and Israeli governments can point and say to the world “look, Palestinians don’t want peace. It looks like we’ll just have to maintain the occupation (while continuing to enlarge and build settlements in the West Bank, construct the wall, and confiscate more land)”.
Anyway, the email was about how difficult it was to see and feel what is happening and trying so hard to help and not knowing what will come of it. Like I said, I was really saddened and angered by it and wanted to share something about it with someone out there.
And then, later in the day, I realized for the first time who Pitkin Street (a street not far from where I live) is named after: Frederick Pitkin. A lot of folks probably already know this, but I didn’t and, since it’s not too removed from Columbus Day, I want to share it. Pitkin was a lawyer who moved to Colorado where he became a wealthy mine investor. He was one of the rich Euro-Americans who managed to take a portion of the San Juan Mountains, an area that made up about a quarter of reservation land in which many Ute people had already been confined, from the Ute people who were living there. Shortly after Colorado became a state, Pitkin became governor. A few years later, in relation to the Ute people in Colorado near the White River (in present day Rio Blanco County), he wrote: “My idea is that, unless removed by the government, they must necessarily be exterminated.” He writes a few sentences later: “The advantage that would accrue from the throwing open of 12,000,000 acres of land to miners and settlers would more than compensate all the expenses incurred.”
I wonder how many streets and buildings and other parts of our city and campus are named after people like this?
Essentially, Israel and the United States have been creating and maintaining a situation (part of which is cutting off all aid to the Palestinian government, outright theft of money from banks in the West Bank, and all the usual things that go along with the occupation) that is successfully producing an incredibly dire and desperate life for Palestinians. One of the goals of these policies is Palestinians fighting Palestinians, so that the U.S. and Israeli governments can point and say to the world “look, Palestinians don’t want peace. It looks like we’ll just have to maintain the occupation (while continuing to enlarge and build settlements in the West Bank, construct the wall, and confiscate more land)”.
Anyway, the email was about how difficult it was to see and feel what is happening and trying so hard to help and not knowing what will come of it. Like I said, I was really saddened and angered by it and wanted to share something about it with someone out there.
And then, later in the day, I realized for the first time who Pitkin Street (a street not far from where I live) is named after: Frederick Pitkin. A lot of folks probably already know this, but I didn’t and, since it’s not too removed from Columbus Day, I want to share it. Pitkin was a lawyer who moved to Colorado where he became a wealthy mine investor. He was one of the rich Euro-Americans who managed to take a portion of the San Juan Mountains, an area that made up about a quarter of reservation land in which many Ute people had already been confined, from the Ute people who were living there. Shortly after Colorado became a state, Pitkin became governor. A few years later, in relation to the Ute people in Colorado near the White River (in present day Rio Blanco County), he wrote: “My idea is that, unless removed by the government, they must necessarily be exterminated.” He writes a few sentences later: “The advantage that would accrue from the throwing open of 12,000,000 acres of land to miners and settlers would more than compensate all the expenses incurred.”
I wonder how many streets and buildings and other parts of our city and campus are named after people like this?
posted by matt iv at 1:01 PM
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