Marinscope
At it’s Nov. 18 City Council meeting, Larkspur officials expressed an interest in at least looking at the idea of changing the name of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.
Mayor Catherine Way said the town is willing to “continue the dialogue process.”
Sir Francis Drake Boulevard stretches across Marin and is a major business thoroughfare. Drake’s name has been caught up on the Black Lives Matter controversy. The high school named after the 16th century explorer has already been axed. A new name for the high school has yet to be determined.
Five jurisdictions are involved in the potential renaming. A working group is collecting feedback and is expected to report back at the end of March.
When I wonder are people going to start calling for a change to the name of Columbus Day. Without denying Sir Francis Drake’s role in the slave trade in hia early career leading to justification perhaps in removing his name from certain monuments, He at least did rehabilitate himself in his later explorations by working with slaves against the Spanish sharing his wealth with them on those situations where they assisted each other’s ends. Columbus however, who never actually set foot in North America, gets a national holiday named after him despite his violent genocidal campaigns across the Carribean, motivated by greed in stealing the precious resoruces of local indigenous peoples, enslaving them and killing them when they refused to convert to the Catholic faith or give up Gold that they actually never had in the first place. Sir Francis had faults but he was never a genocidal killer. Columbus was so perhaps we should look at changing Columbus day to honour someone more worthy of such and honour.