'The start of a new era': Iconoclasts rewarded with an Indian statue after tearing down statue of Christian missionary
The iconoclasts who unlawfully torched and toppled the Sacramento statue of a historic Spanish missionary in 2020 were rewarded Tuesday with a substitute evidently palatable to those antipathetic to the region's Christian heritage.
Where the statue of Junípero Serra once stood now stands the likeness of Miwok elder William J. Franklin, an Indian elder known in some circles for preserving traditional dances.
Jesus Tarango, the chair of the Wilton Rancheria tribe in Sacramento County, said, "Today's unveiling signifies the start of a new era here in California at our state Capitol — one where we stop uplifting a false narrative and start honoring the original stewards of this land," reported the Associated Press.
Despite Tarango's insinuation that the truth has prevailed, the initiative to replace the Serro statue appears to have been largely premised on blood libels and falsehoods.
What's the background?
Junípero Serra was the first Catholic saint canonized on American soil. A statue was erected in his honor near the California Capitol in Sacramento in 1965, commemorating his work not only as a Christian missionary who had a hand in establishing California's 21 Spanish missions, including the nine built during his lifetime, but also as an advocate for Indian rights.
Despite Serra's track record for standing up to the Spanish military on behalf of native peoples and defending Indian property rights, leftists and other revisionists have long characterized Serra as a villain, taking issue in particular with his evangelical efforts.
Democrats fully embraced this antipathy toward Serra, accusing the missionary of overseeing "enslavement of both adults and children, mutilation, genocide, and assault on women" in a piece of legislation that Gov. Gavin Newsom ratified on Sept. 24, 2021.
Omitting any mention of a possible spiritual context for Serra's work or his proposed native bill of rights, AB 338 alleged that the missionary, responsible for bringing Christianity to multitudes of Indians, had a leading role in the "devastation" of native communities in the state.
The legislation, which Newsom claimed served to underscore the state's "values of inclusion and equity," deleted the legal requirement that the Serra statue be maintained.
Evidently tired of the smears against Serra, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco noted in a September 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed, "None of that is true."
"While there is much to criticize from this period, no serious historian has ever made such outrageous claims about Serra or the mission system, the network of 21 communities that Franciscans established along the California coast to evangelize native people. The lawmakers behind the bill drew their ideas from a single tendentious book written by journalist Elias Castillo," wrote the prelates.
"Serra was a complex character, but he defended indigenous people's humanity, decried the abuse of indigenous women, and argued against imposing the death penalty on natives who had burned down a mission and murdered one of his friends," they continued. "How we choose to remember the past shapes the people we hope to be in the future. We can think of no better symbol for this multiethnic state committed to human dignity and equality than to place two statues at the California Capitol — one celebrating the living heritage of California’s indigenous peoples, another reflecting the faith and leadership of their defender St. Junípero Serra."
The archbishops evidently failed to convert the revisionists.
Toppling history
During the 2020 BLM riots, radicals inflicted billions of dollars of damage across the country. During the destructive campaign, hundreds of statues and historical monuments were toppled, including Serra's statue in Sacramento's Capitol Park.
KXTV-TV reported at the time that hundreds of demonstrators had swarmed the statue, spray-painted it, attempted to set it on fire, then used heavy-duty tow straps to pull it down.
Bishop Jaime Soto, the head of the Diocese of Sacramento, said in response, "The group's actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California's past, but this act of vandalism does little to build the future."
"The strenuous labor of overcoming the plague of racism should not be toppled by nocturnal looting. Dialogue should not abdicate to vandalism," added Soto.
A statue with the iconoclasts' blessing
State lawmakers, tribal leaders, and activists celebrated the unveiling of the eight-foot bronze statue of Miwok leader William Franklin Tuesday in the park where Serra's likeness once stood.
KXTV indicated that Franklin strived during his lifetime to revive traditional Miwok and Nisenan songs and dances. In addition to being a member of the California Native American Heritage Commission, he also worked to establish the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
At the groundbreaking ceremony last year, his grandson Louie Brown said, "He's going to be happy that he's out here in the park amongst the trees because he was an outside type of guy."
"Finally, the California Indian people will have a monument here on the Capitol grounds for all those visiting to know that we are still here," said Assemblyman James Ramos, the Democratic lawmaker behind AB 338. "We're here because of the resiliency of our elders and ancestors."
Chris Gallardo, a Wilton Rancheria government relations staffer linked to the statue initiative, said, "What this statue is replacing, the pain and suffering under Serra, it's a huge blessing," reported the Sacramento Bee.
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Report: Democrats’ Reparations Crusade Could Cost Your Household Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars
Reparations talk was at the forefront of 2020 Democratic platforms, and states and localities have adopted their own versions of the policy.Gun groups ready for showdown after Newsom doubles gun taxes and adds new limits on where and how Americans can exercise their 2A rights in California
Just hours after introducing penalties for California schools that protect children from LGBT and identitarian propaganda, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled taxes on guns and introduced new limits on Second Amendment rights in the state. According to the governor, who has ruled out a 2024 presidential run, the 23 gun control bills he ratified Tuesday "will make our communities and families safer."
Gun groups have already taken legal action, stressing that the new laws are "unconstitutional."
While some Democrats in the state are in denial about their constitutionality of their initiatives — even after having their ban on large-capacity magazines struck down last week by U.S. District Court Judge Benitez — Newsom has acknowledged that the new gun control legislation might similarly be short-lived.
Among the state's new penalties and restrictions on law-abiding gun-owners is Democratic Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel's AB 28, which imposes an 11% excise tax on guns and ammunition sold by gun manufacturers and dealers. According to the governor's office, this tax will take $160 million annually out of the pockets of Americans keen to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
The 11% tax, which will be added atop existing 10%-11% federal excise taxes on guns and ammunition, will go into effect in July 2024.
Senate Bill 2, also ratified Tuesday by Newsom, sets out subjective language concerning who can carry firearms in public and vastly grows the number of "sensitive public spaces" where guns are prohibited, such that every park, every hospital, all public transportation, any place that sells alcohol, libraries, churches, banks, zoos, and various other places are now effectively gun-free zones — at least where law-abiding citizens are concerned.
Furthermore, SB 2 requires not only that California residents be 21 years old as opposed to 18 in order to obtain a concealed carry permit but also that applicants provide character references and agree to have their social media pages and publicly available statements reviewed.
Despite Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino's contention that SB 2 is "constitutional and consistent with the Supreme Court's guidance in the Bruen decision," the Los Angeles times indicated this law could nevertheless result in a Supreme Court fight.
Newsom has himself acknowledged that the laws may "mean nothing if the federal courts are throwing them out," reported NPR.
"We feel very strongly that these bills meet the [new standard], and they were drafted accordingly," added Newsom. "But I'm not naive about the recklessness of the federal courts and the ideological agenda."
The California Rifle and Pistol Association and other pro-Second Amendment groups filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month challenging SB 2, suggesting the legislation is the latest in an ongoing effort by California politicians to "eviscerate the very right to be armed in public that the plain language of the Second Amendment secures and that our forebears uniformly understood to preexist any constitutional text."
"California's newly passed Senate Bill 2 ... turns the Bruen decision on its head, making nearly every public space in California a 'sensitive place' (in name only), and forbidding firearm carry even after someone has undertaken the lengthy and expensive process to be issued a concealed handgun license ('CCW permit') under state law."
Extra to SB 2, AB 28, and over a dozen other bills, Newsom ratified:
- SB 452, which requires all semiautomatic pistols sold in the state to use microstamping technology whereby unique identifiers are etched into expended cartridges for easier tracking by law enforcement;
- AB 455, which allows courts to prevent individuals participating in mental health diversion programs from possessing or buying guns;
- AB 725, which changes the definition of a firearm to include the frame or receiver of a weapon;
- AB 732, which beefs up the process by which guns are confiscated from convicts; and
- AB 92, which makes it a felony for convicted violent felons to own or buy body armor.
Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, stressed that "these laws will not make us safer," reported NPR.
"They are an unconstitutional retaliatory and vindictive response to the Supreme Court's affirmation that the Second Amendment protects an individuals' right to choose to own a firearm for sport or to defend your family," said Michel. "They are being challenged, and the second they are signed, the clock starts ticking towards a judgment striking them down."
Kris Brown, the president of the gun control group Brady, lauded the new laws, saying, "Several of these bills aim to address the supply side of the gun industry with policies that will mandate the use of merchant category codes for firearm retailers, require important training for firearm dealers and their employees, and crack down on the production of ghost guns. All of these initiatives will help prevent firearms from landing in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them."
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Newsom ratifies law penalizing California school boards that refuse to expose kids to state-approved racial and LGBT propaganda
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is set to debate Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in November. In the meantime, he appears keen to continue transforming California into the leftist antithesis of Florida.
Whereas Florida prioritized freedom over fear during the pandemic, Newsom's administration issued various mandates and all but shut down the state's economy. Whereas the Sunshine State protects children from sex-change mutilations and irreversible hormone therapies, California is now a "refuge" for those seeking confusion-affirming medical interventions. Whereas Newsom ratified a law enabling judges to keep men who prey on grade-schoolers 10 years their junior, between the ages of 14 and 17, off sex-offender registries, DeSantis signed a bill making sexual battery of a child a death penalty offense.
In his latest contrastive effort, Newsom has ensured that parental pressure and conscientious educators won't get in the way of state-approved LGBT and identitarian propaganda finding its way into the hands of 5.9 million K-12 students in over 1,000 districts throughout California.
Newsom — whose state routinely ranks among the lowest on the CATO Institute's "Freedom in the 50 States" index — ratified California Assemblyman Corey Jackson's AB 1078 on Monday, ensuring that questionable library books, textbooks, and other curricular materials that contain "inclusive and diverse perspectives" cannot be dropped from circulation in schools.
School boards will now also face financial penalties if they reject works of leftist agitprop that extol the "contributions" of non-straights and various other favored identity groups.
Jackson's bill glossed over the various reasons why certain works of LGBT propaganda have been removed in schools farther afield, providing instead a blanket accusation that restricted access to classroom and library materials featuring non-straights constitutes both discrimination and unlawful censorship.
The stated purpose of this legislation is to help California create "an equitable learning environment where all pupils, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) pupils and Black, Indigenous, and other pupils of color feel welcome, including through honest discussions of racism, the history of slavery in our society and in California, and the diversity of gender and sexual orientation that reflects the lived reality of those pupils."
AB 1078 goes into effect immediately.
State Assemblyman Josh Hoover (R) characterized the bill earlier this month as "just another example of Sacramento stepping in and telling local school districts what they can and cannot do."
"This bill is government blackmail to our locals," said state Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R).
"From Temecula to Tallahassee, fringe ideologues across the country are attempting to whitewash history and ban books from schools," Newsom said in a statement. "With this new law, we're cementing California's role as the true freedom state: a place where families — not political fanatics — have the freedom to decide what's right for them."
Newsom's mention of Temecula is in reference to the debate earlier this year over the inclusion of activistic content pertaining to a statutory rapist in the Temecula Valley Unified District's elementary school curriculum.
TheBlaze previously reported that Dr. Joseph Komrosky, TVUSD president, and other governing board members expressed concerns in May about Harvey Milk's inclusion in the social studies curriculum piloted by teachers in the district and approved by the California Department of Education.
"My question is why even mention a pedophile?" Komrosky asked.
Temecula board members further stressed there had been a lack of parental input concerning the implementation of the new social studies curriculum for elementary schools.
Notwithstanding Newsom's rhetoric about familial input on "what's right for them," the governor demonized those who took issue with the material about Milk and forced school board's capitulation with the threat of a $1.5 million fine, reported the Associated Press.
Tony Thurmond, the Democratic state superintendent of public instruction, suggested Monday that "AB 1078 sends a strong signal to the people of California — but also to every American — that in the Golden State — we don't ban books — we cherish them. ... Rather than limiting access to education and flat out banning books like other states, we are embracing and expanding opportunities for knowledge and education, because that’s the California way."
One of the books Democrats have defended keeping in school libraries is Maia Kobabe's "Gender Queer," which reportedly contains the following: "'I got a new strap-on harness today. ... I can't wait to put it on you. It will fit my favorite dildo perfectly. You will look so hot. I can't wait to have your c**k in my mouth. I'm going to give you the b***job of your life, then I want you inside of me."
Another child-targeted work of LGBT that schools will likely be unable to drop is Alex Gino's "Melissa," which contains the following: "She had since read on the Internet you could take girl hormones that would change your body, and you could get a bunch of different surgeries if you wanted them and had the money. This was called transitioning. ... You could even start before you were eighteen with pills called androgen blockers that stopped the boy hormones already inside you from turning your body into a man’s."
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California Democrats Admit It’s Unconstitutional To Ban Gun Ownership
Gun control advocates keep telling us that there is 90-plus percent support in polls for expanded background checks, but the support is much less solid than the media and gun control advocates would have you believe.
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