On the second Monday in October, Los Angeles will no longer celebrate Columbus Day — it's now Indigenous Peoples Day.
The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 to remove Columbus Day from its city calendar, following debate between Native American activists who say the holiday honors a man who committed atrocities against natives and Italian-American civic groups who argued that getting rid of the holiday is an affront to their heritage. Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937, pushed by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization. Los Angeles city employees will still have the day off as a paid holiday, only now it will commemorate "indigenous, aboriginal, and native people." Several major cities, like Seattle, Denver, and Albuquerque, have already replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
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