The Official Hell-Day Thread

Bodhi
Bodhi Members Posts: 7,932 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited November 2012 in R & R (Religion and Race)
Nas wrote: »
They call it Thanksgiving; I call your holiday Hell-Day
Cause I'm from poverty, neglected by the wealthy


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  • Bodhi
    Bodhi Members Posts: 7,932 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Thanksgiving Day remains a most treasured holiday in the United States. Work comes to a halt, families gather, eat turkey, and count their blessings. A presidential proclamation blesses the day.

    But we must never forget that the holiday pre-eminently serves political ends.

    Remember in 2003 when President George W. Bush flew into Bagdad on Thanksgiving Day to visit and celebrate with U.S. troops. He stayed a few hours and brought in a host of media photographers to snap his picture bearing a glazed turkey. No one ate the turkey, of course. It was cardboard, a stage prop.

    However, this exploitation of joyous thanksgiving began almost four centuries ago, with a mythology that dates back to the first Thanksgiving.


    Original Thanksgiving as depicted by Jennie A. Brownscombe
    Thanksgiving Day memorializes the Pilgrims’ survival of their first winter in New England. One hundred and forty-nine people had arrived in November 1620 aboard the Mayflower and were saved from starvation and disaster because the Wampanoug nation brought them corn and meat and taught them wilderness survival skills.

    This truly was an effort worthy of gratitude. And in 1621, Governor William Bradford of Plymouth proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving – not to the Wampanougs but to his fellow Pilgrims and their omnipotent ? .

    In Bradford’s view, the Christians had staved off hunger through their devotion, courage and resourcefulness. And to this day American politicians, ministers and most educators would have the people see it this way.

    Bradford’s fable is an early example of ”Eurothink” – a grotesque lie encased in arrogance. To Europeans, native people and other humans who were neither Christian nor white – no matter how much they helped – were considered undeserving of recognition. The heroic scenario of determined and righteous European settlers overcoming hardships and travails had no room for the others.

    Bradford’s tale has his Pilgrims inviting the Native Americans as guests to celebrate the Europeans’ victory over famine, an act of Pilgrim generosity as the settlers and their Wampanoug friends sat down to dine on bread, turkey and other treats. Since the colonists classified their dark-skinned, “infidel” neighbors as inferiors, they were asked to bring and serve – not share – the food.

    As the English pursued their economic goals in the 1620s, they increasingly turned to outright aggression against their Native American neighbors and hosts.

    Matters came to a head one night in 1637 when Governor Bradford, without provocation, dispatched his militia against his Pequot neighbors. With the Pilgrims seeing themselves as devout Christians locked in mortal combat with infidels, the officers and soldiers made a systematic assault on a sleeping Pequot Indian village.

    Bradford described the night of fire, pain and death: “It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same and horrible was the stink and stench thereof. But the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice and they [the militiamen] gave praise thereof to ? .”

    The colony’s famous minister, Reverend Increase Mather, rejoiced and called on his congregation to give thanks to ? “that on this day we have sent six hundred heathen souls to hell.” Mather and Bradford are still celebrated in school texts as colonial heroes.

    The 1993 edition of the authoritative Columbia Encyclopedia states of Bradford, “He maintained friendly relations with the Native Americans.” [p. 351] The authoratative Dictionary of American History states of his rule: “He was a firm, determined man and an excellent leader; kept relations with the Indians on friendly terms; tolerant toward newcomers and new religions.” [p. 77]

    The views of Native Americans were not recorded, but can be imagined.

    The Mayflower, renamed the Meijbloom (Dutch for Mayflower), continued to make notable voyages. In May 1657, it carried a crucial message to Amsterdam that the new Dutch colony of South Africa needed supplies as Europeans sought to gain control of another piece of the world.

    Along costal Africa, the renamed Mayflower also became one of the first ships to carry enslaved Africans to the West Indies.

    For these and other reasons, those opposed to oppression and favoring democratic values in the Americas have little to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. It stands as an affirmation of barbaric racial beliefs and actions that soon shaped the world’s most unrelenting genocide.

    What is worth giving thanks to is the alliance between Native Americans and Africans that sprang forth to resist the English, Spanish and other foreign invaders.

    In 1619, a year before the Pilgrims’ arrival in Massachusetts, 20 Africans were unloaded in Jamestown, Virginia, and traded for food and water. They were sent out to work in the colony’s tobacco fields as unpaid laborers.

    Enslaved and persecuted together, people of color fought back together, and often united in armed maroon colonies beyond the white settlements that dotted the coastline. But above all, this alliance initiated an American tradition of resistance to tyranny, a demand for self-rule and equality.

    Those ideas would appear centuries later written on a parchment celebrated on July 4, 1776.

    http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/24/the-real-thanksgiving-day/
  • whar
    whar Members Posts: 347 ✭✭✭
    William Bradford declare the Thanksgiving festival in 1621 in honor of the good harvest of that year. The guests of honor were Squanto, Samoset, and 90 other men from the Wampanoag tribe. There is no record of them being asked to serve the food. Though they did bring 5 deer with them to the feast which lasted 3 days.

    The Pequot war was started by the Pequot against the Wampanoag, Mohegans, Narragansett, and Algonquians. The Pequot traded mostly with the Dutch and these other tribes with the English. When a Dutch trading ship tried to ransom a Pequot merchant and ended up killing him the Pequot sought revenge. Unfortunately they killed an englishman name Stone and 7 others. Apparently to the Pequot all white people look alike.

    The English responded by demanding payment for Stone's murder. The Pequot refused. Eventually a band under a gentleman named Endicott confronted the Pequot at one of their villages again demanding payment. Delaying the english in negotiation the Pequot escaped into the forest with most of their goods and belongings. Endicott burned the remaining village and returned to Fort Saybrook.

    The Pequot then effectively lay seige to Saybrook killed 30 settlers, including women and children, and abducted 2 children which were ransomed to the Dutch.

    The English then raised a miltia in Hartford and rallied the various tribes in the area that help. These tribes already in conflict with the aggressive Pequot jumped at the chance to push back. This set the stage for the first massacre of native American by the Europeans in North America, the Mystic Massacre. While a savage attack on civilians it is a bit much to say "Matters came to a head one night in 1637 when Governor Bradford, without provocation, dispatched his militia against his Pequot neighbors". Also the Pequots at Mystic were not able to put up much of a fight since they had launched their warriors on raids against English villages.

    The Mohegan and Narragansett allies were stunned by the brutality of the English attack. Of the 600 or 700 Pequot at Mystic 7 will make into the forest to escape and 7 will be taken prisoner. All the remaining are killed mostly by fire inside their palisades.

    The Pequot are broken after this massacre. The remaining Pequot are pursued by the Mohegans and Narragansett. One more battle will be fought against the Pequot and the English called the Great Swamp fight. The last of the Pequot warriors that escape from this fight were hunted down by the Mohawks and the head of the Pequot's chief Sassacus is sent to the English.

    Though shocked by the English savage assault on Mystic the Mohegans and Narragansett go to great lengths hunt down the remaining bands of Pequots. Such a good job being down by all the combatants that the Pequot disappear as a political entity altogether. The last full blooded Pequot will die in 1889. The Pequot will fall to 66 people according to the census by the 1910s. Since the Pequot have had a resurgence. There are now 3 small reservation in Connecticut for the Pequot and several hundred decendants now live there. In the 80s the tribe started a successful bingo hall that lead to the creation of the Foxwood casino.
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    Nas wrote: »
    They call it Thanksgiving; I call your holiday Hell-Day
    Cause I'm from poverty, neglected by the wealthy
    off-topic: things like this are why i am not sure why people think Nas is so clever at writing rhymes