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Bowing to pressure from a group of “woke” high school activists, the Portsmouth City Council voted to cancel Columbus Day.

For years, the seacoast city known for its liberal politics has recognized both Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day on the same date — traditionally October 12. But at Monday night’s council meeting, students with Portsmouth High School’s We Speak club for social justice activism complained that accommodating Columbus Day and the history it celebrates was intolerable.

Olivia Annunziata Blaisdell, with We Speak, called the dual celebrations inadequate and insulting. Emily Stokel, another student with We Speak, said it was time to stop honoring Columbus.

“Continuing to celebrate Christopher Columbus, who committed serious atrocities and massacres among the indigenous populations he encountered is unjust and cruel,” Stokel said.

Mayor Deaglan McEachern said the vote was about honoring the people who came before the city was founded 400 years ago. Portsmouth was home to Abenaki and Wabanaki people.

“We are a nation of immigrants, but it’s good to remember there were people here before us, especially here in Portsmouth,” McEachern.

Critics wondered why the city could not continue to observe both days, why one had to be embraced and the other excluded.

City Councilor Beth Moreau was the only no vote on the measure, saying she feared the change would be a disservice to the city’s Italian American residents.

“Christopher Columbus is a symbol of the important role Catholics have played in this country going back to before the founding,” said Michael McDonald, communications director with the Catholic League. “Attempts to cancel Columbus Day are more than just canceling the legacy of some 15th Century explorer. It sends a message to Catholics that they have a diminished role in the American experience.”

Columbus was adopted as a patron for Catholic Italian immigrants in the 1880s. The Italians connected to Columbus as they sought to be accepted as Americans. In the 1920s, Columbus Day celebrations were at times violently opposed by the Ku Klux Klan due to its hatred of Catholics.

Opponents of Columbus Day claim celebrating Europeans arriving in the New World is tantamount to celebrating slavery, bigotry and genocide. Activists like Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The 1619 Project, have gone so far as to claim the true founding of America should be dated to the arrival of the first African slaves brought to the continent.

Historians note, however, that slavery, ritual human sacrifice and even cannibalism were practiced by the peoples of the Americas before Europeans arrived. In fact, the Abenaki and Wabanaki are believed to have taken the land they inhabited by violently driving out tribes affiliated with the Iroquois. 

There is no text to the resolution, as the council was voting on the We Speak request to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. The matter was introduced as a motion from the council to vote on as an action item.

The Order of Sons and Daughters of Italy in America has been working for years to save Columbus Day from cancellation. The group says the holiday is about celebrating the best in America.

“Columbus celebrates the beginning of cultural exchange between America and Europe. After Columbus, millions of European immigrants brought their art, music, science, medicine, philosophy and religious principles to America. These contributions have helped shape the United States and include Greek democracy, Roman law, Judeo-Christian ethics and the belief that all men are created equal,” the group states.

In an attempt at accommodation earlier this year, state Rep. Jess Edwards (R-Auburn) sponsored legislation declaring August 9 Indigenous People’s Day, to coincide with the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Progressive activists opposed it, insisting –as the Portsmouth students did — that eliminating Columbus Day was their priority.

“We can’t be honoring violence,” said Asma Elhuni, a leading member of the Granite State’s progressive BIPOC community.

McEachern understands people might have different opinions about keeping the celebration, but he said removing Columbus Day does not harm Italian Americans.

“It doesn’t take away anything from anyone to recognize that to be a nation of immigrants means there were people here before us,” McEachern said.

The New Hampshire legislative session has just begun, and already New Hampshire Democrats are making social/cultural issues their front and center issues.

Democrats began their legislative takeover with a largely-symbolic vote to ban firearms from the House chamber, an issue that generated political heat but, supporters and opponents acknowledged, has had virtually no impact on how the House conducts business.

Democrats have also filed multiple bills expanding the legal use of marijuana.  And the new Democratic Speaker of the House, Steve Shurtleff, has declared that total pot legalization “is going to pass” in New Hampshire, despite pledges of a veto from GOP Gov. Chris Sununu.

There are at least two bills to ban plastic shopping bags and/or drinking straws, both being pushed by Democrats.

And on Wednesday, Democrats held hearings on a bill to remove Columbus Day from from the state’s official calendar and replace it with Indigenous People’s Day.  Similar bills have repeatedly failed in the past. In fact, Rep. Wayne Burton (D-Durham) the sponsor of the bill, admitted the chances it will pass are “not particularly good.”

“Not all are meant to pass. Bills are meant to be educational,” he said.

So if it’s not going to pass, why bring it up? And so early in the session, with so much media coverage? Do Democrats really want to define themselves as the party of gun bans, pot and Indigenous People’s Day?   There are more than 100,000 Italian-Americans in New Hampshire. Do Democrats think they support getting rid of Columbus Day in the name of political correctness?

GOP House Leader Rep. Dick Hinch told NHJournal: “This same proposal came before the legislature last year and was sent to interim study, and out of that study came a recommendation that the bill not be refiled in the future. In my mind, that ship has sailed.”

“I think it’s crazy,” State Senator Lou D’ Allesandro (D-Manchester) told NHJournal when this issue came up during the 2018 gubernatorial debate (Molly Kelly was a “yes.”) “They can have an ‘Indigenous People’s Day’ some other day. We’ve had Columbus Day a long, long time, and we see it as a day honoring Italian-Americans and our culture. Trying to get rid of Columbus Day is an affront to Italian-Americans everywhere,” D’Allesandro said.

But D’Allesandro, a third-degree Knight of Columbus and moderate Democrat, isn’t the target audience for this message.  Young, progressive voters who back Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke and Elizabeth Warren are.

When Somerville, MA (and progressive Democrat) Joe Curtatone dumped Columbus Day last October, he used language that resonated with these voters, calling it an “issue a lot like the Confederate flag.”

When Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he defended Catholics and their place in American public life.  “If this election is decided on the basis that 40 million [Catholic] Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser,” Kennedy said during his campaign, rejecting the suggestion of a religious test for public service.

Fast-forward to today where likely 2020 POTUS candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is suggesting exactly that.  As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Harris questioned a judicial candidate’s fitness for the bench due to his membership in the Knights of Columbus.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” Chuck McGee, head of the Concord, NH Knights of Columbus, told NHJournal. “These are the struggles that Catholics are subjected to, it’s what we experience.  Our religious beliefs are under attack.”

Questioning a public servant’s religion may be ugly and perhaps even unconstitutional. But could it also be smart Democratic primary politics in the key First-In-The-Nation state of New Hampshire?

In prepared questions for Brian Buescher, a nominee to the federal bench in Nebraska, Sen. Harris called the Knights of Columbus an “all-male society” and demanded “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”

She also attacked the Knights for supporting traditional marriage and asked “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?”

Buescher, a lifelong Catholic, answered: “I do not recall if I was aware whether the Knights of Columbus had taken a position on same-sex marriage at the time I joined at the age of 18.”

Sen. Harris’s implication is clear: If you believe the Catholic Church’s teachings on abortion and same-sex marriage, you may not be fit to hold a public office like a judgeship.  And she’s not alone. Sen. Mazie Hirono, another Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the Knights of Columbus “extreme” and asked Buescher if he would “end his membership to avoid any appearance of bias.”

“It’s very troubling. It’s a matter of singling out members of Catholic faith,”  NH State Deputy for the Knights of Columbus Glenn Camley told NHJournal. “Many other faiths, including Islam, have similar teaching on life and marriage. It’s not the theology. They’re making an example out of Catholics.”

Camley joined other KoC members, including the national leader Carl Anderson in pointing out that their organization was formed in part to confront anti-Catholic bigotry from organizations like the KKK.

In a message to his membership on Thursday Anderson said “such attacks on the basis of our Catholic faith are hardly new.”  He rejected the notion that the Knights are upholding some unusual view or alternative dogma that might raise questions about their organization. “Simply put, our positions are now, and have always been, Catholic positions.”

In other words, Sen. Harris’s criticism of Judge Buescher is a critique of every traditional, practicing Catholic in New Hampshire. And it’s a critique Catholics like NH state representative (and Fourth Degree Knight) Walt Stapleton have come to expect.  “So anti-Catholicism raises its ugly head in American politics—what else is new?” the Claremont Republican told NHJournal.  “Sen. Harris’s pejorative questions for a Catholic nominee certainly reflect that.”

Several commentators, including Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, have pointed out that Harris’s approach could be viewed as unconstitutional. “There is no place for a religious test like this in our country,” Rev. Rivers said. “Our constitution forbids it and elected leaders should know better than to try to impose it.”

But elections aren’t won or lost on constitutionality. They’re won with votes. Practicing Catholics in New Hampshire may have a legitimate complaint about Sen. Harris’s views, but will they hurt her in the First-In-The-Nation primary voters?

“No, it won’t hurt her,” Democratic State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro told NHJournal.  D’Allesandro, viewed as a key player in the New Hampshire Democratic POTUS primaries, is a Third Degree Knight himself, but he doesn’t see a political downside for Sen. Harris. “The day when the Catholic Church played a major role in our elections has passed.”

The data appear to back him up.

According to a 2014 Pew Research survey, New Hampshire is one of the most secular states in the country. Fewer than half of all residents ever attend a worship service and only 33 percent of Granite Staters say religion is important in their lives.  And while Massachusetts may be considered a hub of Catholicism, just 26 percent of New Hampshire residents call themselves Catholic. The largest religious identification in the Granite State?

“None.”

And that’s the state as a whole. In a UNH poll of Democratic primary voters in the 2012 cycle, 61 percent said they rarely/never attend church. Only a third of white Democrats nationwide believe in the biblical concept of God, according to a Pew Research Survey taken last year, far below their GOP counterparts.

Steve Krueger, president of the Boston-based group Catholic Democrats, doesn’t agree. He called the statements by Sens. Harris and Hirono “unfortunate.”

“I was speaking to one of our Michigan members and he was extremely upset,” Krueger said. “Non-Catholics don’t realize how much the Knights of Columbus are a part of our Catholic community.”

“Our supporters are very liberal,  very Catholic and–the party should remember– strong Democrats.”  Krueger points out that, while New Hampshire is secular, “a small shift in the Catholic vote in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016 would have made Hillary Clinton president today.”

But to get to the swing states in November, you have to win early primary states like New Hampshire.  And in a state where the Democratic candidates for governor took the most extreme pro-choice positions—including support for taxpayer-funded, late-term abortions—it may make more sense to confront the Catholic church than reach out to its members. However unpleasant practicing Catholics in the Granite State might find it.

“Our order has a strict no-politics policy,” Camley says. “We have Republicans, Democrats, Independents. We’re just a group of Catholic men trying to help the community. We do food drives, we support the Special Olympics.  We’re not ‘extreme.’ We’re your neighbors.”

But they’re not likely Democratic primary voters.

How far has the political landscape shifted since the JFK era? Kennedy, who won the 1960 NH Democratic POTUS primary with 85 percent of the vote, was himself a Fourth Degree member of Bunker Hill [MA] Council No. 62.

The voters who will pick the Democrats’ 2020 nominee, on the other hand,  are secular, they’re pro-choice and they’re pro-gay-marriage.  Being anti-Catholic isn’t necessarily a bug for Sen. Harris. It could be a feature.