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OMG, what? Let's get started. Today is what I like to call an OMG kind of day, where I'm hearing some stuff today and I am completely blown away, and it is absolutely amazing. So the first thing I heard that blew my mind was that Italian Americans up in New York are upset they are up in arms because the Department of Education in New York has decided that they are going to remove Columbus Day from the Education Holiday Calendar, and they're going to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Persons Day.
The Italian Americans are upset they are up in arms because they are saying that their rights are being infringed upon, and their young people are being just discombobulated, lack of better words, that their predecessor, Kirste Ver Columbus, is being taken off of the calendar and going to change the holiday to Indigenous Persons Day instead. And I am in shock and awe because I honestly, there are some days on the calendar that we celebrate that clearly people don't know about, they don't know why, they don't really do anything for it. So I'm wondering, have I been missing out on the Columbus Day parades and the Columbus Day festivities that everyone that's an Italian American that they've been celebrating all these years? Maybe I don't know any Italian people and that's why I haven't seen it or haven't heard it, but honestly and truthfully, guys, if it's a holiday and they call it Cat Boo Dog Day, you can celebrate it any kind of which way you want to.
So if you're feeling some type of way about the fact that they are taking Christopher Columbus' name off of the day, then when you go and talk to your children, you have that discussion with them, you break it down to the very last compound, but I don't understand the uproar of the name, and maybe if it was an MLK day, then I might understand. I'd be able to be like, oh man, no, they did not take away his day, but I think it's a different type of comparison because when you think about the atrocities that Christopher Columbus was a part of, then it makes sense that there would be consideration to take his name off of a celebration, because then what exactly are we celebrating? So that was the first thing that caught my eye, and I was like, oh, MG, but the next one, that one blew me straight up out of the water. Now this next one hit me like a ton of bricks.
I'm not even gonna lie to you, and I think the reason why it caught me so off guard is because this is something that has happened during the time period that I've been alive. Now granted, I wasn't an adult when this happened, but I wasn't an infant either, so I'm feeling like I should have heard something about this in school, I should have heard something about this on the news, and maybe it was on the news, and I missed it. I don't know, maybe it wasn't covered because I didn't live near where it took place, but there was a bombing of a black liberation group back in 1985. A bombing by the police.
A bombing, y'all, a bombing. They used a helicopter and dropped a bomb on the roof of a house in a neighborhood where people were living, where they knew children were actively there. They knew children were in that building, and the police dropped a bomb on this building. How come I didn't hear about this?
I am today's old hearing about the fact that Philadelphia's official day of remembrance for this particular situation is happening today, and I'm like, what do you, I don't understand. How did I miss this? How come this wasn't big talk? How come this wasn't current event worthy in school type thing, or is it because of the fragility of a certain group of people that you wouldn't dare mention that, kind of, on the lines of today, completely off track.
But today, my husband overheard our daughter's teacher, she's an online school, talking about the fact that the Native Americans, and she did not refer to them as Native Americans, she referred to them as Indians, that they had basically fallen on some hard times. They had some uneventful things happen, you know, and that's like a kick through the throat. Not just a chop, that's a straight up kick to the throat, the jugular. Do you hear me?
I'm like, huh? Okay, so back to the story. So I'm blown away because not only was this house destroyed that these people were living in, 61 other houses in this neighborhood were destroyed, and 250 people were left homeless. And so now how the information goes is that people had been complaining about this group because basically they were, initially they were called the Community Action Movement, and then later on they changed their name to just move.
And all the members changed their last names to Africa, and they had a back-to-nature type of philosophy, meaning they didn't kill the rats, and they were rats, because they also believed that food should go back to the earth, so they would throw their trash around, and the neighbors were complaining. And I'm thinking to myself, if I was a neighbor, and I complained about my neighbor because now there's rodents and snakes and whatnot in the neighborhood in our little area, because of what they were doing, I would not expect the police to drop a bomb on their house, because guess what guys? I live next door, yep, I'm right there, I'm right there. What in the world?
Who thinks of this? Who thinks to drop a bomb on a house with people and especially children? I'm so blown away by this. An aerial bombing by helicopter.
Not only that, but they also shot up the house with 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Now, remind you now, they knew there were children in this house, and they did that anyway. Now, some of the other stuff that I read was that they did go through the neighborhood and tell people, you need to evacuate, you need to evacuate, and they did this a couple of times telling people in the surrounding area you need to evacuate, but still, to me, that's a sting operation. And you target that house, you pull those people, you extract them, and then I get to go back to my house.
Now that you drop a bomb on this house, and now I'm homeless, OMGOMG. I can't even begin to tell you how I've struggled to wrap my mind around this today, you know? And then on top of that, they drop the bomb, they fire into the building, the house is on fire, it's just falling apart because they bombed the place. They waited an hour, an hour before emergency responders were called in.
Is that not evil? If that's not even, I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. So in that house, 11 people were killed, of the 11, five of them were children.
To add insult to injury, last month. Now, let's back up. This all happened in 1985. Last month.
Now this is 2021. Did I already say last month? Last month. The bones of two of the five children were discovered to have been held in the anthropology collection at the University of Pennsylvania.
But more specifically, by a man, by the name of Alan Mann, he was a professor emeritus of anthropology at the school. He had been enlisted by the city's medical examiner, Nurbak, in 1985, to help them identify the remains of these children. And he held on to those bones without permission for decades. Since 85.
That, to me, is the utmost, and disrespectful, despicable, I can't even come up with any better words to describe it type of behavior. So you get called in to help identify the remains of some children from a bombing situation. And not only was he holding on to them, but these bones were being actively used in classes. Without the permission of the family, the organization, no, when I say the organization, I mean move because they were like a family.
Everybody changed their name to the same last name. So it's like one big family. But without permission, without knowledge, they've been using these bones since the 80s. And it's just coming out now that these are the bones of two of the children from this bombing situation.
When I tell you that completely rock my world, because I'm a mother, and I'm thinking, dog, it's hard enough that if you lose a child, man, that's a seriously tough pill to swallow. But on top of that, you lose your child and there's nothing to show of your child. You just know that your child was in that building, and they perished under the rubble and in the fire, all of that good stuff, right? That happens.
And then come to find out, this far down the line, that their remains are actually around. You could have put your children to rest the proper way. But no, no, you didn't get that opportunity. Because somebody else thought that this would be a great opportunity for people to learn about this.
To learn about excavating, I guess, remains. I can't even imagine how they would even, how they brought it up. But undoubtedly, however they mentioned it, they must have mentioned where these bones came from or whatever for it to then be made known that, hey, wait, wait, wait. So you mean to tell me these bones belong to children that were in this bombing, but nobody from that group even was made aware?
What? The last straw for me was that the only person held criminally liable in this entire situation, up to this point, has been one of the only two members who managed to get out of their life. One of the people who got bombed was held criminally liable. That makes my heart hurt.
Alright, well that was today's episode of Tweak Trends. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. If you were anything like me and today you're old when you first heard about this bombing, I challenge you to go out and read up more on it.
The name of the organization is MoveMOVE and the situation happened back in 1985 back in West Philadelphia. So check it out, look it up, learn a little, enlighten somebody else, help them to see that this was in the 80s and this happened to a group of African American people. And so when people try to challenge others on what's right, what's wrong, what's okay type thing, and when black people are saying, hey look, we are not being treated fairly. And there are situations like this out there.
I don't understand how anybody can stand up against that statement and say otherwise, you know, it's there, it's right there. You just have to go and look it up. You have to go look at it and see it. Because you know, this isn't the only time that black people have been bombed, that you know, they've been taken out for whatever reason.
And so I just challenge you today. Going into your weekend, pick up a book, go online, just look up some stuff, learn a little. Broaden your horizons. Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Tuesday.