The following is a press release issued by Change Our Name, Fort Bragg:
Change Our Name, a local 501c3 non-profit will distribute checks totaling $3000 to two Fort Bragg High School students beginning on Wednesday, June 26, at 7 p.m. in an award ceremony held at The Harbor Lite Lodge at 120 N. Harbor Dr. in Fort Bragg.
The essay contest invited students at FBHS to write on the prompt of their choosing, either: (a) The name of Fort Bragg High School should be changed or (b) The name of Fort Bragg High School should not be changed. The contest kicked off in February 2024.
The First Place essay was written by Darwin Marroquin who won $2,000 and the Second Place essay was written by Abilene Kamstra who won $1000. Mr. Marroquin will read his winning essay at the June 26 event. Due to a conflict in her schedule Ms. Kamstra will receive her prize money and read her essay at an event later this summer.
The three judges for this second annual contest, all educators and/or writers themselves and unaffiliated with Change Our Name, were:
Susan Lundgren is the immediate past President of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast and a well published author
Esmeralda Plasencia is a Community Outreach Specialist at Mendocino Land Trust, a Teacher Naturalist at Mendocino Woodlands Camp Association, and a graduate of Fort Bragg High School
Margaret Reiter a retired lawyer, formerly worked in the Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the California Attorney General.
Change Our Name is dedicated to educating residents to the need to change the name of the city of Fort Bragg since the present name, adopted in 1889, includes both an homage to the military Fort which helped wage genocide against the local indigenous population and Braxton Bragg, who enslaved 105 men, women and children on his Louisiana sugar plantation and later served as a General in the Confederate Army where he waged war against our country.
Change Our Name plans to continue this essay contest each each year until the name of the high school and our city have been changed. Fort Bragg Middle School and Fort Bragg High School remain the only public schools in the state of California honoring a traitor and enslaver, and a genocide. The city of Fort Bragg now stands as the only locality named for Braxton Bragg. Fort Bragg, North Carolina was renamed Fort Liberty on June 2, 2023 by order of Congress.
You can learn more about Change Our Name here: www.changeournamefortbragg.com
Wokeland by the sea.
And would like to ad: After the Civil War it was President Lincoln’s intention that the south be treated with kindness, justice and forgiveness. Apparently the name hater’s from somewhere else in Fort Bragg are not aware of this significant fact.
This thin veneer in your effort to dramatize a city name change tells readers more about you than your so-called history of the Civil war.
If you are offended by those of us who you label as Rednecks who are in fact mostly born and raised longtime locals then you might want to get some therapy.
You may also want to consider moving too or back to Marin county or some other WOKE community where you can be amongst your fellow travelers and feel safe.
MendoMaverick- I’m visualizing a local, like yourself, driving on liberal funded highways, going to liberal funded hospitals, living in a liberal state, and criticizing kids for writing an essay about the history of Fort Bragg, and then you holding a shotgun and passively throwing a veiled threat to leave Mendocino county. How much of a redneck can you get? 😂
Did you do a Heroic dose of the localy grown shrooms today?
Your visualization skills are severely distorted.
On second thought maybe some psychedelics might Improve your thinking.
A redneck? Thats a stretch.
How about a sane clear thinking conservative that despises distorting and erasing history just for the sake of feeling all warm and fuzzy.
I’m glad you agree with me on your deposition. You know history is everywhere and some history, unfortunately, gets erased. Braxton Bragg had no problems erasing native American history or erasing the history of his slaves. It’s ironic that Fort Bragg’s conservative minds are so concerned about erased history when they are the kings and queens of prioritizing which history gets approved and which history is woke.
Nobody is criticising the kids paper. Maybe the frivolous subject matter. So youve admitted youre not even local. The fuck you think youre doing, talking smack to the rednecks? Not only that, are YOU paying for all residents to change ALL their documents, birth certificates, pay for their TIME at the stupid DMV to get updated address on license and reg!?? No, youre not. WHO GETS TO…?? if the answer is US, youre really gonna have a REDNECK problem. I dont support or condone, nor was I involved in, any GENOCIDE EITHER. My closest friends and family are LOCAL natives. And even THEY think youre fucking high. ARE YOU?
By ‘Smack’, or do you mean retort? I did just that because this is the bases of dialogue and deliberation around a topic. You seem concerned about the costs of changing a name. It’s a valid concern but so is voting and it also costs money. Any change will incur costs when new legislation occurs.
I guess I have to have some sort of “local credentials” to comment on this. I’ve lived 24 of my 29 years on this Earth in Fort Bragg. Do you consider it just a coincidence that there such a massively dominant white population here? That name, by the very nature of commemoration, has invited latent white supremacy into this county. I apologize is fact might hurt your feelings, but it is a FACT that the indigenous tribes here were systemically driven out and placed in reservations; it is a FACT that the trees were clear cut and the ecosystem was left destroyed; it is a FACT that the KKK had prominence here in the early 1900s. Braxton Bragg was a slaver, genocider, rapist, drunkard, and a traitor. I genuinely do not understand how any of this comes off as even an attempt to erase history. Changing the name at this point isn’t even a step in any direction. It’s the f-ing starting line.
Redneck? Do you actually know where that condescending pejorative came from? Battle of Blair Mountain 1921 West Virginia, the largest labor strike (coal) in American history. The state and national government brought in airplanes to bomb and kill striking miners on Blair Mountain. How did the strikes identify each other? Red bandannas around their necks, and some of the minors were black men. Got it, you liberal historical moron?
“The Oxford English Dictionary finds derogatory usages for redneck—when defined as “a poorly educated white person working as an agricultural laborer or from a rural area in the southern United States, typically considered as holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes”—much earlier than 1921: 1891, 1904, 1913.”
Koepf – “Wokeland by the sea.”
Reactionary – “of a person or a set of views) opposing political or social liberalization or reform.”
Mr. Koepf: you are not standing on a strike line or fighting for more labor law protection. Lets not pretend we don’t know which redneck definition fits best you best.
And you, whomever you are hiding behind a chauvinistic term for your fellow Americans, pack your sniffy thoughts back in your pretentious head; identify yourself, and get the hell up out of your racist head. “Redneck” in the mouths and minds of the certain elites is as offensive as the N word is to blacks.
He’s a moron alright. And well on his way to pissing some people off!
This is called public discourse.
Public discourse is carried out by individuals who identify themselves, not people hiding behind thier pseudonymous masks. Recall the KKK?
“Public discourse means 👌any👌 public method or forum through which people can voice their opinions and concerns regarding decisions and the decision-making process.”
Your first two comments are SPOT ON.
REALLY…..hasn’t everyone seen the signs all around town…..the name change is OFF the table! And if you don’t believe it, put it to a vote, but that vote needs to be EVERYONE that has Fort Bragg address!
“dedicated to educating residents”
I dunno, “indoctrinating” may be more accurate. And though Fort Bragg, NC might now be Fort Liberty, it’s still a US Army military reservation township, one of the largest in the world. We all know what the US military has done, and still does, to contribute to the displacement and destruction of smaller ethnic populations around the globe. Changing a name is a rather empty gesture. Changing how it all operates will require some serious soul-searching.
(((who funded this?)))
Someone with more money than marbles?
The local Mendo woke brigade perhaps?
I wouldn’t expect these clowns to throw in the towel anytime soon.
They cannot tolerate not getting their way.
Why is Menofever promoting this?
I second that!?
I know you think you’re being clever, but I know what that (((dogwhistle))) is. Why does everything always have to go back to the Jews with you people?
These politics always lead to 3rd world living conditions wherever they take root and the majority pretends that there is nothing wrong.
Right, and Braxton Bragg along with his other Confederate generals didn’t turn the US south into a pile of burning rubble, and, in the process, sanctioned mass murder and blood shed on fellow Americans, so they and their elite friends could keep chattel slavery around for another generation. Yet, some how The City of F.B. is going turn into a 3rd world if the citizens vote to change the city name?
That was on President James Buchanan.
He could have stopped the war but allowed it to escalate and drag on.
“Buchanan’s attempts to appease white Americans by at times professing to take no side on slavery, and at others explicitly siding with slaveholders, inflamed divisions within the country and his own party in the lead-up to the Civil War. For this, historians consistently rank him as one of the worst U.S. presidents.” -At least Buchanan didn’t start an insurrection after losing an election.
How tf would you know what actually happened!? You werent there, none of us were! Do you understand everything you THINK? You may not even have HALF of your facts straight! And then to top it off, you out yourself by reflecting on 1/6 and announcing your stupid political affiliation. Youre nothing but a drama queen. A DIVA. A liberal arts FAILURE. You done hit your head son.
When you write in CAPITALS you sound extra convincing to the readers and fulfill the title of my comment feed. Two for one.
Shame on those people.
Leave history alone.
Emphatic’s need to go away, seek mental counseling.
Alright Mrs/Ms Lundgren, Plasencia, and Reiter if last names have such devious pasts deeds then let’s look into your family pasts. Every sitting board member and volunteer of change our name should change their last name to none to hide history and end the past tyranny of ancestors whether documented or undocumented, we all know our origins have blood of others on our hands no matter the religious or atheist background. So change your names is a passion project that should be done by people willing to change theirs to none as in no past or just like a good politician we’ll bury it deeper than 6 feet and place dozens of obstacles to get to the root of it.
Fort Bragg California
Forever and Always
Women often didn’t choose their names but were bestowed the names based on likely the paternal side of the family tree. Women, historically, were largely second class citizens in the US. Women often were forced to change their last names to appease their husbands on wedding days. Women have been forced to change their names for centuries prior. Most native names were replaced by Christian names (post manifest destiny) and immigrants from Ellis Island had to Anglicize their foreign surnames to get into the US. Equating a change in a municipal name by popular vote and demanding the vocal supporters to change their last names to prove a misplaced principle is nonsensical and in bad faith. Some people don’t feel the name F.B. represents their values especially when the man behind the name was a high ranking mass murdering raider from the south sowing chaos into millions of people’s lives. Also there is no Fort anymore at Fort Bragg. It’s mostly a misnomer at this point too.
Being a super liberal, not necessarily ‘woke’, and a US Army veteran who actually spent time at Ft Bragg, I oppose both locations being renamed. Everyone take a Valium and dismount (off your high horses).
If we erase all bad history, how are we supposed to learn from the past and avoid doing the same exact thing?
There are these things called books that contain scribbles of ancient knowledge. These relics can be found at your local public library or, if you feel confident, perhaps you can browse the internet for sourced material if you feel extra expedient. The Germans don’t need to maintain swastika statues in German cities to remember the “bad” history. They can read books and scholarly journals from students and professor from all over the world using records, photographs, biographies, and archeological discoveries.
And meanwhile, youll be out toppling statues, defacing and or VANDALIZING everything that OFFENDS you. Will you stop to recognize that YOU are OFFENSIVE? And obvs PROJECTING some MAJOR insecurities. You can obtain some assistance with that and i think its confidential. Regardless, this virtue signalling will get you no where in these parts. We will feed your emotions to our local sharks. We dont care if the name of OUR town OFFENDS YOU. But please. Faafo!
OFFENSIVE, to whom? You perhaps? I think you might be confused on who is projecting. I think if anyone is vandalizing anything it is your keyboard being abused at your incessant use of the shift key.
Please, somebody, slap me on the side of my head to stop my laughing. People afraid to use their real names in a crusade to change the name of a town? Dorothy, I must be in Mendocino.
“No matter what testimony remains to come in the final session (or sessions), the creation of the Committee was a stroke of political genius.” Larry Bensky
“No matter what testimony was given, the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Sondergerict was a stroke of genius.” Michael Koepf
You could be calling for help, but you certainly seek negative attention. This isn’t your first online rodeo of vile attention seeking. Your contempt for others is clear as day. I’m sorry to hear you are so sad. You even went as far to double down on your own comment thread like being first in line to spout your gibberish nonsense at a well intentioned article and then decided to come back into line to spout even more gibberish to see if someone would respond. F.B. deserves better.
Blah blah blah and more narcissistic gibberish.
Is that you Non-Fiction?
Is this me?
Yep. Larry Bensky. Another left wing wacko speaks from the grave. Unmask thyself, and let us have a real public debate. Face to pretty face in public. And, did you know that attributing false quotes in print to another is legally actionable?
More veiled threats seems to be your party trick once all your other gibberish runs its course.
I am a supporter of name change. I think this town deserves a better name. I think it’s being done right with education events and discussions over time. From the looks of it, this may not be the place for civil discourse, but I welcome a respectful discussion or argument against change.
I’m sick and tired of this woke county
Along with 90% of everyone else. And not to forget, Jim Jones was as woke as one gets.
Define woke?