Protest vowed for Columbus day fete

Continuing enmity between members of AIM and some Italian Americans is on display at a news conference

By Mike McPhee
Denver Post

Organizers of this weekend's Columbus Day Parade clashed Monday with American Indian supporters, who say they will continue their annual protest of the Italian-American community's parade honoring Christopher Columbus.

Parade organizers held a news conference Monday, at which a Comanche Indian who flew in from Oklahoma told the media that "Columbus was not responsible for the 500 years of history" that followed his sailing from Spain to the Caribbean. Some claim Columbus was responsible for the "genocide" of American Indians that followed.

"Columbus never made it to the mainland (the United States) and never met an American Indian," said David Yeagley, who said he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in music composition, as well as a master's degree from Yale University's School of Divinity.

"The dominant image of this parade is that American Indians are opposed to anything white or European. I don't consider Columbus to be a threat to American Indians. I consider (CU professor) Ward Churchill to be more threatening to American Indians," Yeagley said.

Parade organizer George Vendegnia said it was Yeagley who called his organization recently and volunteered to come to Denver to address the protesters, who are led by the American Indian Movement (AIM) of Colorado. He said Yeagley was not paid.

The organizers expect several thousand marchers to begin staging at West 14th Ave. between Bannock and Elati streets at 7:30 a.m. Saturday for the 10 a.m. parade that concludes at Civic Center.

Protesters plan to meet

Friday night at Veterans Park at East Colfax Avenue and Lincoln Street for their "Four Directions March."

Three representatives of AIM, who said they were not invited but came to the news conference, challenged Yeagley as an extreme right-wing conservative whose writings attack the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the notion that "innocents" are being killed in Iraq.

"You wrote once that Martin Luther King Jr. was a 'blight' on American history and that women and children in Iraq should be destroyed so that they don't grow up to be terrorists," said Glenn Spagnuolo, who said he is an Italian-American but affiliated with AIM. "I think you've written a lot of hateful things."

Yeagley challenged Spagnuolo on AIM's threats of violence against parade marchers in previous years, and the gathering degenerated into accusations from both sides.

Organizer Vendegnia said the two sides had been trying to resolve their differences for at least 10 years with no progress.

"We want our day," he said. "They can have their day."