“Fourth of He Lies”

NOTE: This is an edited re-posting from the year 2021. The events below occurred then, not today. There were similar events in other years. See: Monuments to White Supremacy July 4, 2020.

Also from the Great Plains Action Society: Decapitating Colonialism: White Supremacist Statues, Monuments, & Symbolism by Alexandrea Flanders.

I’ve come a long way from what I, a white person, was taught in school. About the heroes and battles that brought independence from the British. And just a sentence or so about taking over Indigenous lands, and the slave trade. All whitewashed and presented as acceptable. Even referred to as “Manifest Destiny”.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
— Declaration of Independence

The Terrible Origins of July 4th

The crown and the colonists were both determined to seize lands from native peoples and to continue enslavement. But their interests were also hostile to one another and war was the inevitable result. White settlers wanted full independence for themselves and no control over their actions at all.

The indigenous populations were nearly eradicated in the decades long quest for conquest. Expanding slavery was an integral part of those efforts against native peoples. Genocide could not be carried out completely nor could any accommodation be made with European nations in the quest to control land from sea to shining sea. That is why the settlers declared their independence.

The process of decolonizing ourselves is a difficult one. We have been cut off from our history and we don’t know where or how our people played a part. As we try to educate ourselves we may find it difficult to give up traditions that we have claimed as our own. Regardless of personal choices made on July 4th, the causes of the Declaration of Independence must be known and acknowledged. That is the beginning of true independence for Black people.
THE TERRIBLE ORIGINS OF JULY 4TH By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
July 3, 2021

NOTE: This event was in the year 2021, not today.

The Great Plains Action Society has organized gatherings at the Iowa State Capitol for several years on July 4th, referred to as the Fourth of He Lies. I attended these events and took the photos below. My Des Moines Mutual Aid community has been involved.

In 2021 the event was called Stop Whitewashing Genocide and Slavery. Bring Back Critical Race Theory & Remove Monuments to White Supremacy!

Indigenous Led | Great Plains Action Society I United States

On July 4th, stand with Great Plains Action Society, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Ní Btháska Stand Collective, Des Moines Black Liberation Movement, Humanize My Hoodie, Revolutionary Action Party, Quad Cities Interfaith, Iowa Coalition for Collective Change, and Des Moines Mutual Aid!

Join us on “Fourth of He Lies” to demand that the Iowa legislators remove whitewashed monuments to white supremacy in Iowa. Organizers will present a petition demanding that all racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, whitewashed historical depictions be removed from all state grounds and facilities. These monuments fall into the realm of hate propaganda and make folks feel unwelcome in public spaces. So, we need legislation that removes all monuments, murals, and depictions of white supremacist persons, acts, and ideologies from all Iowa state grounds and state-funded institutions.

Great Plains Action Society

More notes on Mutual Aid

I’ve been preparing for a discussion my Quaker meeting will have this weekend about Mutual Aid. At the end of this is a table of posts I’ve been writing to help me organize my thoughts. I am not satisfied with how this post has turned out, but these are notes, not a finished document.

Stepping back from the details, I’m reflecting on what I hope will happen as a result of this discussion. My hope is that we begin to use Mutual Aid to guide our work, both in our Quaker meeting and how we do our work in the community for peace and justice.

Mutual Aid requires a paradigm shift from a community of primarily White Quakers immersed in the capitalist economic system, white supremacy, settler colonialism and land theft, forced assimilation, foreign and domestic militarism, state sanctioned violence, punishment oriented criminal justice system, fossil fuel power, and whatever you call our political systems.

Wow!

The greatest obstacle will be to persuade Friends that we should stop participating in those systems. Although that is looking more attractive as these systems are rapidly collapsing now.

Capitalism is economic slavery. Capitalism has forced millions into poverty. Capitalism denies shelter, food, water, healthcare quality education, and the ability to build any wealth at all to millions of people.

There were White Quakers who were involved in the institution of slavery. Even those who did not claim ownership of enslaved men, women and children benefited economically. Continue to benefit.

I don’t think we have many years of civilization left. But I think a few years hence people will look back at this time in a similar way to how we look back on slavery.

Quakers also have their history of participation in the institutions of forced assimilation to atone for. This is a significant barrier between Friends and Indigenous peoples.

In December 2020, Ronnie James and I had the following email exchange:

Ronnie	I don’t know what you can do. The church is the church’s past, which is its future. It continues to see my people as obstacles in its endless conquest.
Jeff	I was not feeling worthy of participating in Mutual Aid but thanks to you, I’ve signup up again for this weekend.
Ronnie	You’re a good relative Jeff. To be blunt, there is too much damage that the church profits from and needs to protect to have any future there.
Jeff	I am afraid you are right.
Ronnie	I wish you the best. I imagine its a hard struggle.

Mutual aid work is not easy. It means forming lasting commitments to doing hard work collaborating with people even when we have conflict. And facing the heart-wrenching realities of the systems we live under. It is also deeply satisfying work that transforms us from being exasperated passive observers of the shitstorm we’re living in to inspired builders of the new world we desperately crave.
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Date	Blog posts related to Mutual Aid discussion
	Mutual Aid in the Midwest
12/31/2021	A Call for Quakers to Embrace Mutual Aid
1/2/2022	What I Don’t Know About Mutual Aid
1/3/2022	Notes to Myself
1/4/2022	Notes to Myself Continued
1/5/2022	Spirituality and Mutual Aid

Critical thinking

I recently wrote about evidence and faith. Faith in the very narrow definition of “blind” faith, basing beliefs and actions on an ideology in contrast to evidence and critical thinking.

Ideology is fueling increasingly violent culture wars today. I often find myself wishing people were better informed and thinking critically. Not in the sense of agreeing with me, but having views based on facts and evidence, when available, and informed by critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

sensemaking–the action or process of making sense of or giving meaning to something, especially new developments and experiences.

At the collective level, a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures and renders us incapable of generating the collective wisdom necessary to solve complex societal problems like those described above. When that happens the centre cannot hold.

Threats to sensemaking are manifold. Among the most readily observable sources are the excesses of identity politics, the rapid polarisation of the long-running culture war, the steep and widespread decline in trust in mainstream media and other public institutions, and the rise of mass disinformation technologies, e.g. fake news working in tandem with social media algorithms designed to hijack our limbic systems and erode our cognitive capacities. If these things can confound and divide us both within and between cultures, then we have little hope of generating the coherent dialogue, let alone the collective resolve, that is required to overcome the formidable global-scale problems converging before us.

Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, originally published by Medium, June 18, 2019

As James Allen writes here, “at the collective level, a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures.” I think Allen’s focus on shared cultural and value structures is important. We don’t rely strictly on facts to make sense of things.

Critical thinking is how many of us make sense of things new to us.

There are so many new things coming at us. Worsing environmental chaos and collapsing economic and political systems.

But some people choose to allow others to make sense of things for them. Theirs is a conscious choice to abandon critical thinking and embrace leaders who profess to share their culture and values. Authoritarianism can be attractive to these people. This explains the assault on democratic governance. Helps explain refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and reject mask mandates, support voting restrictions, etc.

I’m especially disturbed about recent, widespread attacks against schools and educators who teach about the history of slavery and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. We cannot begin to make progress toward reconciliation without acknowledging the truth.

Some people are saying they don’t want students to be disturbed by those histories. That is appalling, because there is much we should be disturbed by.

Banning books is especially disconcerting and antithetical to education and critical thinking. Other authoritarian regimes have banned books. I realize “other authoritarian regimes” implies ours is one.

Some people are terrified that kids will learn about racism.
Especially white people.
Especially that white KIDS might learn about it.
How would that affect a white child’s self-esteem, they say.
Imagine learning that racism existed in the United States.
A country founded by white people.
(Taken from brown people. Made largely profitable by the enslavement of black people.)
Wouldn’t that make white kids feel bad?
It’s a strange question.
First of all, wouldn’t it make the black and brown kids feel worse than the white kids?
After all, it was their ancestors who were brutalized and subjugated.
Second of all, what does history have to do with your feelings?

Moreover, how would one even teach American history without talking about racism?
This is the United States – a country that built much of its economy on the backs of black people kidnapped from their homes across the sea and then bought and sold here as property.
Not only that but the very land we stand on was once the domain of dark-skinned indigenous people.
People who were tricked, coerced and killed if they did not give up this land – if they did not move on to ever shrinking corners of the continent until they were almost all dead, assimilated or stashed away on reservations.
What would it do to a white child to learn all this?
Provide an accurate account of events, I suppose.

It’s not just the history of racism these children are learning, but they’re starting to think that racism is WRONG.

And that’s a problem because it has an impact on how we view the modern world today.

So if we teach the history of racism, how do we justify saying that it ever ended?
How do we not admit that it merely evolved into the status quo?
That’s really the issue.
Not the past but the present.
It’s not the racism of the antebellum South or even the pre-civil rights period North of the Mason-Dixon line.

IF YOU’RE AFRAID KIDS WILL LEARN RACISM IS BAD, PERHAPS PUBLIC SCHOOL IS NOT FOR YOU By Steven M. Singer, Gadfly On The Wall, October 20, 2021

July 4 Nexus

nexus a connection or series of connections linking two or more things

There are so many concepts and much history related to July 4th.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
— Declaration of Independence

The crown and the colonists were both determined to seize lands from native peoples and to continue enslavement.
THE TERRIBLE ORIGINS OF JULY 4TH By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
July 3, 2021

The crown and the colonists were both determined to seize lands from native peoples and to continue enslavement. But their interests were also hostile to one another and war was the inevitable result. White settlers wanted full independence for themselves and no control over their actions at all.
The indigenous populations were nearly eradicated in the decades long quest for conquest. Expanding slavery was an integral part of those efforts against native peoples. Genocide could not be carried out completely nor could any accommodation be made with European nations in the quest to control land from sea to shining sea. That is why the settlers declared their independence.
The process of decolonizing ourselves is a difficult one. We have been cut off from our history and we don’t know where or how our people played a part. As we try to educate ourselves we may find it difficult to give up traditions that we have claimed as our own. Regardless of personal choices made on July 4th, the causes of the Declaration of Independence must be known and acknowledged. That is the beginning of true independence for Black people.
THE TERRIBLE ORIGINS OF JULY 4TH By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
July 3, 2021

The news reminds us of the political rally of the previous guy at Mount Rushmore, July 4, 2020. A perfect example of LANDBACK. Native people blocked the highway to Mount Rushmore because the monument is on Native land. Several of my friends were there. In 1980 the Supreme Court confirmed the land belongs to the Sioux. Compensation of $2 million dollars was offered. But never taken.

“What Mount Rushmore has always represented is a system of power and oppression and white supremacy, because they take a sacred place and carved the faces of white men who are responsible for our colonization and our demise,” (Lakota activist) Nick Tilsen said.
Lakota activist: Mount Rushmore key in move to regain land. When then-President Donald Trump visited Mount Rushmore last year for a fireworks display, Lakota activist Nick Tilsen saw an opportunity to advance the Land Back Movement By STEPHEN GROVES Associated Press, March 24, 2021

The above are connected to a gathering at the Iowa State Capitol this afternoon from 1 – 3 pm, Stop Whitewashing Genocide and Slavery. Bring Back Critical Race Theory & Remove Monuments to White Supremacy!

On July 4th, stand with Great Plains Action Society, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Ní Btháska Stand Collective, Des Moines Black Liberation Movement, Humanize My Hoodie, Revolutionary Action Party, Quad Cities Interfaith, Iowa Coalition for Collective Change, and Des Moines Mutual Aid!

Join us on “Fourth of He Lies” to demand that the Iowa legislators remove whitewashed monuments to white supremacy in Iowa. Organizers will present a petition demanding that all racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, whitewashed historical depictions be removed from all state grounds and facilities. These monuments fall into the realm of hate propaganda and make folks feel unwelcome in public spaces. So, we need legislation that removes all monuments, murals, and depictions of white supremacist persons, acts, and ideologies from all Iowa state grounds and state-funded institutions.

LANDBACK and Quakers. A case study

The idea of “landback” — returning land to the stewardship of Indigenous peoples — has existed in different forms since colonial governments seized it in the first place. “Any time an Indigenous person or nation has pushed back against the oppressive state, they are exercising some form of landback,” says Nickita Longman, a community organizer from George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The movement goes beyond the transfer of deeds to include respecting Indigenous rights, preserving languages and traditions, and ensuring food sovereignty, housing, and clean air and water. Above all, it is a rallying cry for dismantling white supremacy and the harms of capitalism. Although these goals are herculean, the landback movement has seen recent successes, including the removal of dams along the Klamath River in Oregon following a long campaign by the Yurok Tribe and other activists, and the return of 1,200 acres in Big Sur, California, to the formerly landless Esselen Tribe.
Returning the Land. Four Indigenous leaders share insights about the growing landback movement and what it means for the planet, by Claire Elise Thompson, Grist, February 25, 2020

There are several reasons I’ve been praying, studying, and writing about LANDBACK. Most importantly my Native friends have told me the best way to support them is by doing so. Those who work for justice often hear we need to follow the leadership of the communities impacted by injustice. It is often not clear how to go about doing that.

I’ve been a bit apprehensive about trying to get Friends involved with LANDBACK because many Friends have trouble dealing with the history of Quakers’ involvement with the forced assimilation of Native children. Many white Friends have trouble dealing with Quakers’ history related to enslavement. Many white Friends are uncomfortable with their white privileges today.

So I was very grateful to receive a response to something I’d written about LANDBACK from my friend and fellow Quaker, Marshall Massey, which you can read here: Marshall Massey on LANDBACK – LANDBACK Friends

I wrote the following case study, hoping to give an example of the implementation of the ideas related to LANDBACK.

This is a link to the PDF version of the LANDBACK case study, Wet’suwet’en and Quakers.

Monuments to White Supremacy July 4, 2020

Following are excerpts from a blog post I wrote about the gathering on July 4 last year related to white supremacy and monuments to white supremacy.

Statues to Confederate soldiers are monuments to White supremacy. These White men committed treason by seceding from the United States, and going to war to preserve the institution of slavery. They were clearly saying White culture is superior to all others.

Another campaign of White supremacy was the theft of Native peoples lands and the cultural genocide from forced assimilation of more than 100,000 Indigenous children. This occurred in White run boarding/residential schools and was the epitome of White supremacy. Forcing native children to give up their ways, and try to learn how to fit into White society. The trauma related to forced assimilation that affected the children and their relatives has been passed from generation to generation and is felt by those living today.

Systemic racism in the U.S. today is the interconnected web of ways White supremacy continues in our society.

As I have learned more about Indigenous peoples, it is clear to me we would not be in this rapid spiral into deepening climate chaos is we had lived within our ecological boundaries, as Indigenous peoples have always done. Another way we are all suffer because of White supremacy.

Besides the Confederate statues, pioneer monuments are also displays of White supremacy.

The earliest pioneer monuments were put up in midwestern and western cities such as Des Moines, Iowa and San Francisco, California. They date from the 1890s and early 1900s, as whites settled the frontier and pushed American Indians onto reservations.
Those statues showed white men claiming land and building farms and cities in the West. They explicitly celebrated the dominant white view of the Wild West progressing from American Indian “savagery” to white “civilization.”
Think Confederate monuments are racist? Consider pioneer monuments by Cynthia Prescott, The Conversation.

Pioneer statue, Iowa State Capitol grounds, Des Moines, Iowa

My friends Christine Nobiss and Donnielle Wanatee organized the event at the Iowa State Capitol on July 4th, 2020, regarding removing the Pioneer statue on the grounds there.

Following are rough notes I took from Christine Nobiss’s remarks.

Christine Nobiss: As an academic, as an Indigenous person, as an organizer railing against monuments to White supremacy, whether they be statues, murals or entire buildings.

As an organizer, rail against statues, murals, buildings, spaces
Uprisings George Floyd
Movement to taking these statues down
Concerns about safety of my people, the safety of black people, people of the world majority when taking statues down.

Is it our job to take them down?

In reality, in the best sense of how all this is occurring, the best thing would be that they would just be taken down. The states would see these as human rights violations, symbols of hate speech that leave out and single out portions of the populations and make them feel unwelcoming spaces.

So it wold be the duty of the state and Federal governments to see these as symbols that glorify of slavery, ethnic cleansing, land theft and so many violations of human rights.

But that’s not happening, is it?

So it is, again, up to people on the ground to do it, to make this happen.
But I don’t want people to get hurt.

I would like to see legislation, I would like to see us push for the ancestors of these people who put them up take them down.

They put them up, they should take them down.

S.A. Lawrence-Welch: I have to concur. I believe in the power of the people. We need to start holding the government accountable for the atrocities that have occurred, are still occurring, and these monuments that remind us day after day that this has happened. You know that taking them down we are not erasing history, we are acknowledging the actual stains on our history as a nation.

It is incredibly uplifting to see this uprising happen, but to decentralize the White superiority narrative I think that we need to work as people of the world majority, especially in these United States, to dismantle the government as its known now by influencing and having them follow our lead.

Christine: I am not saying I want to rely on them. I’m saying lets make them do it.
I would love the nation states to recognize all the wrongdoings that are perpetuated and how they are responsible for the daily historical trauma of people that have to look at these and be reminded of what’s happened in this county. And look our whitewashed history because that history is not the truth, that is absolutely not the truth of this country was founded at the point of a gun for the sake of free land and free labor. That little sentence just basically barely describes the amount the violence and terror that people have had to deal with for centuries. All of these statues are monuments to that. They are basically irresponsible acts to put these up. Its not the truth and I believe they are human rights violations. They are symbols of hate speech.

Photo gallery from this event: Monuments 7/4/2020 – LANDBACK Friends

#NoMonumentsToWhiteSupremacy

Stop Whitewashing Genocide and Slavery

Bring back critical race theory and remove monuments to white supremacy in Iowa. July 4, 2021. 1 – 3 pm. West terrace Iowa State Capitol

Stop Whitewashing Genocide & Slavery!!!
Bring Back Critical Race Theory & Remove Monuments to White Supremacy in Iowa!

We have an event planned for July 4th at the Capitol Complex and we would love to see a mass turnout to support the BIPOC struggle in Iowa. If your organization would like to join our coalition and co-host, hit me up ASAP and send me your logo.

Don’t be a bystander to white supremacy. Fight back!

Join us on “Fourth of He Lies” to demand that the Iowa legislators remove whitewashed monuments to white supremacy in Iowa. Organizers will present a petition demanding that all racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, whitewashed historical depictions be removed from all state grounds and facilities. These monuments fall into the realm of hate propaganda and make folks feel unwelcome in public spaces. So, we need legislation that removes all monuments, murals, and depictions of white supremacist persons, acts, and ideologies from all Iowa state grounds and state-funded institutions.

In response to police brutality and racial injustice, monuments to white supremacy are being removed all over the country but People of the World Majority are being forced to put their safety on the line to carry out this long-overdue purge. Folks have been shot, arrested, and targeted. We are an Indigenous-led coalition who do not want any more People of the World Majority to put their bodies on the line so this is a permitted event with the intent of making the state–the colonizers–do their job.

To start, we insist that the following statues and mural be removed from the Iowa State Capitol Building and grounds.

On the West Lawn, there is a 15-foot bronze statue on a large pedestal that stands in front of the Iowa State Capitol Building. According to the Iowa State Government website, the statue depicts “The Pioneer of the former territory, a group consisting of father and son guided by a friendly Indian in search of a home. The pioneer depicted was to be hardy, capable of overcoming the hardships of territorial days to make Iowa his home.” The father and son settler invaders are standing tall and proud, looking west, as the “friendly Indian” sits behind them in a less powerful, dejected position.

Inside the capitol is a piece that overwhelmingly encompasses this sentiment called the Westward Mural, which covers a massive wall. The artist writes that “The main idea of the picture is symbolical presentation of the Pioneers led by the spirits of Civilization and Enlightenment to the conquest by cultivation of the Great West.” He also speaks about overcoming the wilderness with plowed fields–as if the current Indigenous inhabitants, such as the Ioway and the Meskwaki, had not already created capable and efficient land management systems.

On the South Lawn, there is a Christopher Columbus Monument that was celebrated in 1938 by five thousand people who showed up for the dedication of the statue on Columbus Day. The statue was put up just a couple years after the Columbus Club of Iowa successfully lobbied to have Walker Park renamed to Columbus Park and have a Columbus monument placed there.*This is a peaceful event led by Indigenous Folx. Please do not take actions that will put Brown and Black folx in jeopardy.

Great Plains Action Society

Some of my photos from last year’s event
Monuments 7/4/2020 – LANDBACK Friends

The Terrible Origins of July 4th

NOTE: This event was in the year 2021, not today.

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Stop Whitewashing Genocide & Slavery!!! Bring Back Critical Race Theory & Remove Monuments to White Supremacy in Iowa!

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Stop Whitewashing Genocide & Slavery!!!
Bring Back Critical Race Theory & Remove Monuments to White Supremacy in Iowa!