I told the French tourist I met in a bar that he had it all wrong
He said that the United States was founded by criminals kicked out of Europe
Later, I read about forced labor in Virginia imposed on British criminals
Deported British criminals condemned to indentured servitude in the United States
Who bought land and settled upon serving out their sentence
I told the French tourist that it was Pilgrims seeking freedom in the New World
He didn’t know that America was a Protestant colony
That began in the east and conquered the west
Despite all those Spanish Catholic city names already in the west when they got there
The settled land, missions, and mansions confiscated upon their arrival
Colonists defined the Indigenous Peoples in categories deported from European philosophy,
The Pilgrims’ descendants wrote peace contracts with fraudulent intent
Breach of contract, broken word, and the deported First Nations are defined as criminals
Forts, armies fighting to keep the broken peace treaties on the warpath
And yet each year we fondle the Thanksgiving story about Pilgrims and benevolent Indians
British Protestants founded the new colonies in the name of African blood
And enslaved African human beings laid the bricks of Jefferson’s Monticello
Who, in turn, wrote them out of his Declaration of Independence
While European criminals stole, sold, bought human lives and established these United States:
Conceived in slavery and dedicated to the proposition of disparity: of, by, and for criminals
David Fekete 