Bravo, Mr. Fina! Some might say that you are the means to costing Santa Maria taxpayers $75,000 and your inferred collaboration with the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. This article (“Sailing away?” Sept. 1) also declares your efforts to “approach” the Santa Maria City Council and our local high school district. All of this cost and effort to remedy your personal annoyance of a trademarked logo of a ship. Bravo, Mr. Fina!
The article portrays your interpretation of this logo promotes the lingering effects of colonization. So much so that you’ve successfully engaged the Caltrans Office of Race and Equity, at unknown taxpayer expense, to open an investigation of how people are being affected by images, monuments, or logos on public roadways that may be sensitive to certain groups in the community. Bravo, Mr. Fina!
Here’s an idea to investigate, Mr. Fina. Make more good. All of us can do this—myself included. It’s culturally acceptable to effortlessly complain, criticize, and condemn. Yet we all at one time or another feel better and help others when we are respectfully acknowledged, appreciated, and accepted.
Let’s recognize and agree our world has problems. For every problem that we want removed, let’s find two solutions to replace it. Most people embrace improvement. Let’s make more good.
Mr. Fina, if you believe that a rendering of a ship, the name of a city, or any of its private and public organizations are connected to the historical records or legacy of Christopher Columbus and his 1492 migration to the New World facilitating numerous accounts of poor choices associated with colonization—that’s your choice. However, wouldn’t you also be speaking about the very fiber of our community?
Anyone from Philadelphia, “the city of brotherly love,” should recognize the many benefits of migration. Like Philadelphia, Santa Maria has a heritage of embracing migration. Our regional culture and economy are enriched from the irreplaceable contributions of migrant workers from around the world. I’m not speaking of just the agricultural impact. The economic engines of both the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians as well as Vandenberg Space Force Base exceed the economic impacts of the city of Santa Maria.
The Santa Maria Valley enjoys a community of workers in manufacturing, tech, the arts, commerce, education, health, as well as agriculture who are not native to this region. Migration works!
In the end, Mr. Fina—we are not preoccupied with or persuaded by the contrived impacts of anyone or of imagined colonialism. It’s a ship—not our identity. It’s a place—not our family. It’s 2022—not 1492.
Greggory Follett
Santa Maria
This article appears in Oct 13-20, 2022.
