Prison Radio
Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall

“Thanksgiving Must Die.”

Every year, for what seems like an eternity, the bane of my existence appeared like a banshee in the night: Thanksgiving. Haunting me, taunting me, like some sort of curse upon my life. Reminding me of all my relatives who have suffered the ultimate crime. The genocide of nearly 50 million Indigenous people of Turtle Island, renamed North America, and wholesale theft of their land. The indentured slavery of oppressed, poor Caucasian people of Europe. And the kidnapping and enslavement of nearly 40 million Black people of the African continent.

Reminding me that we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us. Thanksgiving for what? For giving poverty, disease, pigs, flies, and death? Are we to be thankful for giving the world a hell on earth? Revisionist history told by the conqueror. Now, narratives and pictures of peaceful looking pilgrims and Native peoples breaking bread and eating corn and Turkey on a white cloth picnic table. Now, narratives and pictures of gleeful looking Northern and Southern Caucasian slave owners with enslaved African servants standing nearby. Always standing. Happy Thanksgiving!

Every year, for what seems like an eternity, the bane of my existence appeared like a banshee in the night. Thanksgiving, the Washington Red Skins, Florida state Seminoles, and the Kansas city Chiefs are playing football today. America’s new greatest pastime, replacing baseball and lynchings. Racist slurs, defamation, and caricatures of Native and Black people educating the world to the use of those dirty words: redskin and n****r.

The pale one seeks to make Thanksgiving universal. Disappearing the Native nations, like they disappeared the Native nations. Replacing old tiny white supremacy things at Thanksgiving with glossy commercials of we-are-the-world Thanksgiving family dinners. Roots eliminated. All together now, happy Thanksgiving. In order for the world to live, Thanksgiving must die.

From the belly of the beast at Prison Radio, I am Shakaboona. Thank you for listening.

(Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.