Anchorage Municipal employees are about to get another day off. The Anchorage Assembly plans to add Juneteenth and Indigenous Peoples’ Day to the employee holiday calendar, and take away a day honoring civil rights leader William Seward.
Read the ordinance and materials related to it here.
Currently, there are 12 paid holidays for municipal employees, in addition to the minimum 80 hours of annual leave that each employee is entitled to (many get more, depending on years of service). Employees also get sick, bereavement leave, and time off for voting.
In addition to the new benefit, however, the new holiday will add one more day when Anchorage citizens cannot access the services of their government, and where some workers who must clock in that day (plow operators, for example) will be awarded holiday pay.
Currently, the municipal offices are closed:
- New Year’s Day.
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day (third Monday in January).
- Washington’s Birthday (third Monday in February).
- Memorial Day (last Monday in May).
- Seward’s Day (last Monday in March) effective 2015.
- Independence Day.
- Labor Day.
- Veterans Day (November 11).
- Thanksgiving Day.
- The day after Thanksgiving.
- Christmas Day.
- One personal holiday.
The addition of holidays will be the subject of a public hearing at the regular meeting of the Anchorage Assembly on Feb. 21; meetings begin at 5 pm at the Loussac Library in the Assembly Chambers.
The ordinance, AO 2202-17, is sponsored by radical members of the Anchorage Assembly, including Austin Quinn-Davidson, Felix Rivera, and Meg Zaletel, and would go into effect April 1.
That would make this year’s Seward’s Day, March 27, the last time that Secretary of State William Seward, who served under President Abraham Lincoln and who is credited with the purchase of Alaska from Russia, from being honored by the Municipality of Anchorage.
Seward, who was a civil rights leader of his day, was instrumental in the ending of slavery in America, and hand-carried the Emancipation Proclamation to President Lincoln for his signature. When he was the governor of New York, he refused to extradite slaves who had escaped to his state from Virginia. His stance against slavery cost him greatly in his career as an attorney and lawmaker.
A statue of William Seward, seen above, stands in front of the Alaska Capitol, where leftists are known to adorn it with disrespectful items.
Juneteenth is a new-ish celebration that marks June 19, 1865, the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, slavery continued in the District and Territory of Alaska for generations after slavery ended in the South, as Tlingit Indians traded slaves in the Northwest Coast until the early 1900s. President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021.
Quinn-Davidson noted that it’s important to her to pass the ordinance during Black History Month, which is observed in February.
“In the spirit of celebrations happening across town this month, we are pleased to introduce a proposal to formalize cultural celebrations as paid Municipal holidays throughout the year.”
The ordinance also changes the current designation of Washington’s Birthday to President’s Day, the third Monday in February.
The addition of an extra day for employees to have off is expected to cost millions of dollars, but there is no fiscal note available as of yet. The ordinance adds a clause that permits it to avoid going through the personnel committee, which the Assembly says is dysfunctional.
How much more of this Woke BS can we stand. With all these Leftist dictating our lives… it’s getting more and more depressing.
No, keep it the way it is.
Can they please just focus on getting the streets plowed out? How about dumping snow in the inlet where it used to go, and where it’s going to go in a few weeks anyway? How about paying private contractors to drop their blades while en-route to their customers? How about handing out shovels to those who are at the Sullivan to dig out the “cookie dough” our government plows leave behind at the intersections of neighborhood streets and feeder roads and arteries?
Please stop the childish nonsense.
Isn’t it funny how all this radical leftist ‘virtue signaling’, which is exactly what these reprehensible moves by the ass-embly are, are actually signaling ANTI-virtue?
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It is profoundly wrong to have national holidays that celebrate or honor those who represent only a fraction —- a division — of the national population. But that is just part of the radical leftist political agenda, fostering and promoting division and divisiveness, which is exactly what these new so-called ‘holidays’ really are. As such, I will NOT honor them, and will have only contempt for them, and for those who promote them.
Juneteenth in reality celebrates the ending of illegal slavery in Texas. The Emancipation Proclamation was about two and a half years before but wasn’t enforced in a small southeastern section of Texas. When Union soldiers finally arrived and issued an order to follow the Emancipation Proclamation. The order read:
Head Quarters District of Texas
Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.
General Orders
No. 3.
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
By order of Major General Granger
F.W. Emery
Major A.A. Genl.
Juneteenth is a Texas issue, not a national one.
It is a TEXAS only holiday, due the above mentioned purpose.. AND HOW DARE they switch Seward’s day off to (He was a civil rights leader and helped end slavery by hand carrying the Emancipation Proclamation to President Lincoln) for EVERYONE. It’s been just recently many people want to add it as their holiday, but it IS a Texas ONLY holiday.. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is already a posted holiday which was originally called Columbus Day.. So why all the changing holidays..???
Can MRAK explain how adding one day, and removing another day will cost MOA $Millions? With the $81 Million over budget accounting system it should be a simple programming adjustment
Removing one while adding two, simple math tells us that the net is adding an additional holiday.
Actually, Frank, they are adding TWO days and removing ONE.
A net addition of ONE day.
And it does not cost the MOA government a single penny, as they do not, in fact, pay for the additional holiday.
It DOES cost the taxpayer that extra day off for Municipal employees, though, paying for nonexistent services on that day, no?
Currently, Columbus Day is not celebrated as a day ‘off’ for Municipal Employees, but, as replaced by Indigenous Peoples’ Day, it will be.
Add Juneteenth to the day ‘off’, while at the same time removing Sewards Day as a day ‘off’, that is where the net ONE extra day ‘off’ comes into play.
I understand that ‘new’ math may be somewhat disingenuous, but an addition of 2 days ‘off’ subtracting 1 day ‘off’ still leaves 1 day ‘off’ in the red column.
That is 1 day extra for those who do not understand archaic mathematics.
If we sack Peltola all employees of the muni get another paid day off, minus the Anchorage assembly whose members deserve nothing but a one way sled ride to Bethel.
This has nothing to do with honoring indigenous people, or freed slaves.
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It is all about dismissing, disrespecting, and destroying western/European culture and pretending that white people are oppressors.
It is the result of years of Critical Theory indoctrination.
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As if committing a disservice to the memory/accomplishments of Seward will erase injustices committed? Do two wrongs make a right in the mind of leftists? I guess so.
Shouldn’t that be up to a vote? Jackazzes.
And up go the taxes on homeowners one more notch!!
They are pushing well beyond anything that they can EVER recover from.
Having destroyed moderation in their ongoing effort to remake our reality into their preferred image of it, at all times seeking to deny an honest and fair-minded political solution through manipulation of elections, the time that they will reap destruction on the order of that which they have sown approaches. They hasten its arrival with little apparent appreciation or regard for that fact.
Why not just eliminate all holidays based on straight white people and their accomplishments?
Be easier and more honest.
They could add in place:
-Harvey Milk Day
-Che Guevera Day
-St George Floyd Day
-Lenin/Stalin Day
-Pol Pot Genocide Day
-Little Big Horn Celebration Day
-Spanish Flu Celebration (killed lots of whites)
-St Mary Peltola week.
While at it, legalization of the Purge. One 12 hour period every year it’s legal to hunt down straight white people on sight.
Tell me again, Porcaro, how Anchorage is a conservative community and “we’re better than this”. Your voting record says otherwise.
If they can hunt white people then I want a hunting day for politicians and lawyers. Fair is fair
Indigenous Peoples Day? As much as I love indigenous people, their form of government before western contact would best be described as Ethno Dictatorship. These mostly patriarchal dictatorships were reinforced by rituals of racial and masculine purity in almost constant warfare with one another. Is this what they want to go back to or what they are celebrating? And why doesn’t a single damn politician ask this?
Sounds like you are describing western civilization. Funny.
But he wasn’t he was stalking about the natives. And how cruel they were to each other. They would still be butchering each other and taking slaves if we hadn’t stopped it. Your welcome.
Like I said, just like Western Civilization. Just like the Germans, the Italians, the Slavs, the Russians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Iranians, and various peoples of the continent of Africa. You’re not a racist are you?
National native day is October 12th. I don’t know what mark on the calendar Alaska is going to do.
I forgot to add the Spanish and what they did to civilizations in Central and South America as well as some areas in North America. Yeah they sure did help out the native tribes they encountered.
The assembly continues to promote an unsustainable march to the economic cliff. The policies put in place in the last 8 years will largely be required to be ended in the nest 10 years. There is no way to tax the property owners enough to continue the fraud, waste, and collusion that has been instituted under these useless idiots. They will go away with huge economic benefit but Anchorage will be awash in debt and unsustainable programs.
Thank you Amy Demboski for working with these communists.
Of course they have to cancel William Seward! He is nobody worth commemorating. Wont be long and they will have a rope around his neck ripping down the statue so they can replace it with some “Hero wearing a pink uterus hat”. Does Berkywitz fit that description?
We already have ‘Indigenous Peoples Day,’ AKA people who immigrated here from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge. It’s called, ‘Columbus Day.’
Right, 40000 years ago johnny come lately.
More gravy for the Royal Court, the rest of us peons still have to work Juneteenth.
What day Is Native day?
National native day is October 12th. I don’t know what mark on the calendar Alaska is going to do.
Juneteenth is a farce but I approve of native day.
I can’t respect any holiday whose name is a reflection of the mangling and misuse of the English language. The word “Juneteenth” just reeks of laziness and ignorance.
Why is one a farce and the other not? Personal prejudice?
Imagine black people saying Juneteenth is good but native day is a farce.
The problem with intersectional bingo is the group with the lowest political clout loses. That and it’s morally and intellectually vapid.
So you want to honor a day that supposedly slavery was disallowed in Texas? What does that have to do with Alaska or any other state? The star of the show was the emancipation proclamation. If you were going to make an emancipation proclamation day then that would be historically correct. But to the second part of your question, yes I believe natives deserve all they can get. They got here first and we came over and slaughtered them and ruined their civilizations, stole their land and told them where they could and could not go. Seems to me like we owe them something and if that’s something is a bottomless pit so be it.
You always ignore the part about natives waging war on each other, trading in slaves, and many participating in the most barbaric types of torture.
A close look at history of this continent shows the indigenous people committing all kinds of barbarism on each other long before we got here. Hard as it is for you, white people don’t have a monopoly on this.
But acknowledging this requires a level of intellectual honesty.
Curious what you want to do with all the white people who have been here for generations? Send us back to Europe? Genocide? Sell us into slavery? Subjugation to natives?
You’re often big on outrage and butt hurt. Your PRACTICAL solutions?
All you’re capable of is bullying and insults. Yes I know native history. All of it.i want you to say your sorry.
I need to keep Seward’s Day. It’s very important!
We may see the predictable torrent of inappropriate criticism of the Anchorage Assembly. However, voters knew they were electing a group of Marxist social-justice warriors bent upon revising history and dividing our country by victim status. It makes no sense to criticize an assembly that performs exactly to the expectations of the voters who elected them. They should actually be commended for keeping promises. If there is a problem it is with our next-door neighbor voters. Think about that before you say “good morning” to them. And, to those who failed to vote, that in itself is a vote.
There is a very strong chance that most of those sitting on the Assembly were not legitimately elected to their positions, but got there via a methodology whereby vote tabulators are utilized manipulatively for selections such as these, in a process that has been being refined for over two decades. However this overcome, we need to seek unity, not division like they are pushing.
Agreed. It is curious how Bronson won by a slim margin, so slim I would have predicted the opponent would have demanded an examination of the votes. But it didn’t happen. He quietly walked away.
What might we have found if we dug?
A reasonable question. We ALL deserve answers, as well as accountability on election integrity issues.
The problem is the districts. Gerrymandering guarantees that leftists will be elected. An empty water glass with a (D) following their name would get elected the districts represented by Constant, Zalatal, or Dunbar (formerly).
The rest of the city needs to get out there, talk to neighbors/friends and let them know to look at the candidate’s records before simply voting for the incumbent. A swing of a few votes will make a difference. I know I am going to work against the leftists getting votes in my district.
These people haven’t been taught real history. Seward worked closely with Lincoln and was an advocate for ending slavery. If the US didn’t buy Alaska from Russia, Alaskan natives would have lived under Stalin who probably would have killed them. I doubt he would have protected them from Japanese invaders during WWII either, who would have killed them. Lots to be thankful for on Seward’s day.
I’ll drink to that holiday! Pass the smoked salmon and Schlitz. Lots of Schlitz.
This is all to re-write history and rid the world of democracy. Go back and read about the Tavistock group in the UK that started all of this after WWII. This group, led by a man named Rees, admired Germany and wanted fascism and hated the democratic system. So they set out to divide the populations into groups delineated by race, sex, skin color, etc. So we got identity politics and critical race theory and grooming. There is a book out about this group and it reads like descending into a nightmare. Then you wake up and see the nightmare is real. Time to re-educate the next generation so we can mend the city, state, and the country.
All these comments and nobody mentioned how the assembly plans to avoid going through the personnel committee because they think it is dysfunctional???
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Can both sides use this logic?
And Seward’s Day is a STATE holiday, so the municipal worker will still get Seward’s Day off, the assembly just want to call it something else. Idiocy exemplified.
We are the Anchorage Assembly and we wear every hat except the answering your phone call hat. Except for that, we do it all! Employees may attend (if reproductive cycles permit). Outgoing convenient phones calls are optional because “Covid”/Darth Vader.
I am an Alaska native. Leave us alone. We are just American Citizens and don’t need your help or recognition. You are idiots. I think I’ll call my team the Redskins or Braves because it honors the early Americans. Yes, you are idiots.
Yes the left is and I salute you and your views. Well said
The only sensible comment so far. We are paying these jackasses to come up with more paid holidays that only public employees will benefit from.The people in Alaska at that time in history were far separated from the lower 48 and it’s troubles, as we still should be.
Amen Neil. Enough of these left wing nuts trying to dictate everyone’s lives and trying to justify theirs.
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