Akm Shehabuddin Kisslu: New York City’s Columbus Day Parade returned after being canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. New York’s annual Columbus Day Parade –is the world’s largest celebration of Italian-American culture and heritage. Thousands of people gathered in Manhattan on Monday to mark New York City’s 78th Annual Columbus Day Parade.
. Cheering crowds lined up behind metal barricades along Fifth Avenue, Over 100 groups participated in this year’s parade, including over 20 marching bands, 18 floats and dozens of performance groups walking along the parade’s route, running from 44th Street to 72nd Street. people at street corners along 47th to 72nd street, there were selling Italian flags to bypassers.
The Grand Marshal of this year’s parade is Tom Golisano, the founder of Paychex and a philanthropist.
The holiday began as a celebration of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. Last year, President Joe Biden signed the first presidential proclamation declaring the holiday Indigenous Peoples Day, a day that focuses on the contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples and remembers the nation’s failed promises to them. State lawmakers have introduced a bill that would change the public holiday of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. The bill summary states “Indigenous People’s Day reimagines Columbus Day and changes a celebration of colonialism into an opportunity to reveal historical truths about the genocide and oppression of indigenous people in the Americas, to organize against current injustices and to celebrate indigenous resistance.”
Columbus Day was designated as a national holiday in 1934 and became a federal holiday in 1971 on the second Monday of every October. In recent years though, it has drawn controversy from people who say the holiday celebrates exploration that led to the mistreatment of indigenous people.
