Los Angeles votes to replace Columbus Day and will celebrate these people groups instead

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to replace Columbus Day on the city calendar with a day to commemorate indigenous people.

The second Monday in October, which officially became a federal holiday in 1937, will now be a day for “indigenous, aboriginal and native people” in Los Angeles – overruling the objections of Italian-American groups who wanted to keep Columbus Day, the Los Angeles Times reported. The important news? Whatever you call the day, city employees will get a paid holiday.

On Thursday’s “The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson,” Doc Thompson and Kal Elsebai debated whether or not Christopher Columbus deserves to be commemorated as well as how you can properly celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.

Doc’s tongue-in-cheek theory was that Columbus didn’t do anything that significant since people would have discovered the North American continent sooner or later. He also wondered why we don’t commemorate people like Jonas Salk, who discovered the polio vaccine, or Louis Pasteur, who pioneered early vaccines and the dairy pasteurization process.

Doc predicted that the change will be implemented statewide in the near future.

“In the end, what’s going to eventually end up happening … there will be an Indigenous Peoples Day in California,” he said.

To see more from Doc, visit his channel on TheBlaze and listen live to “The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson” weekdays 6–9 a.m. ET, only on TheBlaze Radio Network.