Truth & Reconciliation, Part I: Reconciling the Wounds of Lynching

--by Sara

Unitarians are so deeply concerned with racism that my aunt, who spent eight years on the church's national board, calls it "our version of Original Sin." That concern expressed itself in a number of venues over the five days of General Assembly. Three of the talks, given by civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill and author James Loewen, spotlighted several things that white liberals grappling with America's racist legacy would do well to understand better. (This post presents the points of Ifill's talk. My take on Loewen's two talks will follow.)

Ifill, who is a professor at the University of Maryland law school, has a new book out called "On The Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century." (The book was published by Beacon Press, the UUA's own publishing arm, which is how Ifill came to be at GA.)

The first thing whites need to know about the legacy of lynching, Ifill told us, is that Americans -- both black and white -- are still carrying deep scars, which are clinging to us through the generations. Working for many years on voting rights cases throughout the South, she noticed that people in the towns she visited had never really let go of these events. "Everywhere I worked, I heard from my clients about lynchings. Invariably, they'd tell me about some horrific act of racial terrorism that had happened in the past." The practice of lynching ended decades ago; but even today, Ifill found that the memories are still as fresh as if they'd happened yesterday.

The next thing Ifill noticed is that whites and blacks in a community talk about lynching differently -- and have very different memories of what happened in their towns so long ago. "When I spoke with my [African-American] clients, I deliberately used the word "memories" -- even though my clients often weren't even alive when these lynchings happened. Still, I discovered that they 'remembered' details of the lynchings in great detail. They'd heard the stories directly from their parents as tales of how to survive life in the towns they lived in." Ifill was struck that "memories" were invariably extremely vivid, recalled with such specificity -- where the bodies were found, how the corpses looked -- that even people born years after the event thought they'd been there themselves, even though they knew it wasn't possible.

White people in the same towns, on the other hand, usually had very vague memories, even if they or their parents had been witnesses to the lynching. " The difference was striking between the two communities," she marveled. Nobody knew anybody involved. Usually, the lynch mob comprised "people from the next county" or "over the state line" -- people not from around here. (The people from the next county would usually point the finger right back.) Even when photos were available -- and, as Dave has noted, photos were very often available -- nobody recognized anybody. "They closed ranks, and never opened them," explained Ifill. "The lynching was not really about their community, so there was nothing to talk about."

Ifill noted that she'd seen this same denial mechanism in action in the late 1990s, when she was in South Africa as part of the UN Truth & Reconciliation commissions holding hearings to catalog the crimes of apartheid. "I couldn't find anyone who'd supported the regime," she recalled. "Either they didn't remember, or they didn't know -- it was just all very vague. Whites were living in a fantasy that they didn't know." Still, the truth and reconciliation process in Africa involved a level of candor she hasn't yet seen in the US -- but she believes it is necessary if healing is to occur.

Third, Ifill stresses: the work of reconciling ourselves to this history isn't something the government can do for us. We need to do it for ourselves -- town by town, person by person. These were local crimes committed by specific individuals: diffusing the responsibility will not heal the wounds. "I don't think we can have a national conversation on race," she mused. "But we can have lots of local ones."

The healing, she insists, will happen one town at a time. "In any town you recall with some nostalgia, there's most likely some alternative story about your town you haven't heard." As an example, she cites Hope, Arkansas -- Bill Clinton's home town. "Hope was the lynching capital of the entire south. I wonder if Bill Clinton's mother knew that?" Ifill pointed out that the glowing stories of "A Town Called Hope" that accompanied the cultivation of Bill Clinton's personal legend never included this fact. "I have to wonder: when do we start talking about this?"

The title of Ifill's book reflects the odd fact that throughout the South, lynchings more often than not happened on the courthouse lawn. It wasn't unusual for victims to be brought from jails many miles away to the county seat for the occasion. According to Ifill, "This was a deliberate choice of venue -- a statement that 'we are in charge of justice; we decide who is guilty and not guilty.'" Lynchings, like all other forms of terrorism, are message crimes; the choice of venue sent a clear message to black communities across the south that the only justice that mattered was mob justice; and appeals to law would be fruitless. (One of the lynchings she describes in her book occurred in the front yard of the judge's house: another message sent, this time to the judiciary, about who was really in control.)

Ifill then turned to the particulars of her book, which details her research into two particular lynchings in her home state of Maryland -- the 1931 execution of 23-year-old Matthew Williams in Salisbury, MD; and the 1933 lynching of George Armwood on the Maryland shore. She notes that silence within and between the white and black communities is one of the central themes of her book -- and breaking that silence is the first and hardest step in creating reconciliation. " A curtain of silence fell between the two communities after these lynchings -- a curtain of fear and shame. And that's the part that has to be broached in the 21st century, because it continues to live on."

In both of the Maryland lynchings, Ifill noticed, nobody in either community ever talked about the lynchings after they occurred. Blacks would not speak of it openly, even among themselves; only the whispered warnings to their children perpetuated the community's horrific memories. On the other side of town, silence gave whites safety from prosecution, and insulated them from a difficult truth -- that a Christian, civil town could also be beastly and lawless. Newspapers would refuse to report on these events: residents in the Armwood case were simply advised by their local paper to "return to normal" as soon as possible.

The silence continued into the churches. In both black and white congregations, nothing would be said on Sunday. White clergy would not challenge the immorality of lynching; usually, ministers were adamant about not mentioning events at all, especially if their own members had been involved. (They were often in denial about their members' participation.) Black ministers similarly refused to talk about it: Ifill recalled one black minister whose only comment the Sunday after one of the Maryland lynchings was a short acknowledgement that "the community has suffered a strain."

And the strain lingers far more strongly than most people realize. "Trying to talk about these events takes a lot of courage," said Ifill. "We need to realize that "conversations about race" are not always public. They are inter-racial, intra-racial, private, and public. They need to happen within families, within churches, as well as in communities."

But, she cautioned, it's important not to underestimate the hostility that's provoked when people attempt to begin these conversations. She recalled a trip to the county museum while researching the Williams lynching. The curator told her that a well-loved local professor had made a presentation on the Williams lynching to the historical society about 10 years earlier. The curator had attended the meeting -- and recalled that it was very hostile. The idea that whites should be blamed or feel responsible for the lynching "just wasn't going to go over with this group," Ifill quotes the curator as saying. He stuck to the usual storyline: the lynching was the work of a few disgruntled whites, most of them from out of town. She later found the professor's account of the same meeting, which matched the curator's verbatim. The professor was shattered by the rejection of her story: she never really forgave or forgot the outrage she felt at that meeting.

What does reconciliation look like? Ifill offered many concrete ideas in her talk -- and includes many more in her book. For one thing, she says, we need to commemorate these events. "This history has largely been erased," she notes. "There are markers for all kinds of things in small towns -- but never for these events. Reparation is about repairing the harm -- and one way to do that is to acknowledge in the public space that these things happened." Other commemorations might include annual rememberance days, community scholarships, and special exhibits in local museums.

Ifill was emphatic that the reconciliation process is hard, and participants need to be gentle with each other. "Sharing the stories means pulling the scabs off. You need to provide psychological support to help people deal with what gets stirred up. It complicates the process, but it's part of it."

Most importantly, she says, we need to recognize the ways in which these experiences made our grandparents -- both white and black -- the way they are. "Many small-town Americans harbor experiences they've had to swallow and get on with. Truth and reconciliation is largely about putting down those burdens." The process goes more easily if we start by respecting and acknowledging the courage of people who went through these horrible events and survived. Sometimes it helps to have outside facilitators to start and guide the conversation -- people who can take the heat, help people work through the emotions, and then leave town when it's over. Ifill cites the Alliance for Truth & Reconciliation as one group that's helping facilitate this process for interested communities.

Ifill's experiences in South Africa also brought home to her how important it is to include local institutions in this process. Churches and businesses, cops and prisons, lawyers and judges, and doctors and hospitals all supported the infrastructure of apartheid; healing was not possible until these institutions examined their role, and began to actively find ways to restore the trust they'd lost with the country's black population. African-Americans are similarly wary of both public and private institutions; reconciliation must involve them, and encourage them to open new pathways to greater trust in the future.

It's probably not a coincidence that the last lynchings in the US occurred in the 1950s -- and that two generations have passed in silence, leaving the third one to begin the process of uncovering the truth and cleansing the wounds. This pattern is a familiar one to people who work with adult children of alcoholic or abusive families; and also those who have worked with families who were victimized by the Holocaust or the Japanese internments. The first generation survives, often in silence; to speak of these things is simply too painful to endure. The second generation is often aware of the terrible things that happened; but respects their elders' silence, even as they strive to reassert the "normal" life of the family.

In all these cases, it typically falls to the third generation to break the silence, and begin the process of reconciliation. In the case of lynching, that third generation is us -- the current cohort of white and black Americans who are seeking to heal the wounds of long-ago terror that still create vast chasms between us, and limit our vision of what a shared America might look like. Our ability to create that America in the future depends, completely and utterly, on finding the courage to confront the past -- to open up our overwhelming load of shared baggage, examine its wretched contents with honesty and courage, and then agree on ways of putting these things in their proper historic place -- always remembered but never perpetuated -- so we can all move forward with a lighter load.

The hate also rises

I'm a little late remarking on this, but the threats against Leonard Pitts really raise some disturbing issues:

A white-supremacist Web site angered by a Leonard Pitts Jr. column alluding to the murder of a white couple posted The Miami Herald writer's home address and phone number -- leading to threats against the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner.

When Herald Managing Editor/News Dave Wilson asked Overthrow.com to delete the address and phone number, site editor Bill White replied: "We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts' personal information. Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn't shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom."

Elsewhere on the Roanoke, Va.-based site, the N-word was used to refer to Pitts, who's African-American. He won a Pulitzer for commentary in 2004. His column is syndicated by Tribune Media Services.

White's reply to Wilson was posted on Overthrow.com, as was Wilson's e-mail message to White -- leading the Herald editor to also get some nasty responses from white supremacists. But Pitts has received most of the messages.

When reached today by E&P, Wilson said some of the messages were "thoughtful" but others were "very unsettling" in nature. "We did refer some of them to our legal representatives," added the Herald editor. "Our first concern is for Leonard, and we have been in close contact with him."

You may recall the case that sparked this brushfire: the right-wing brouhaha over a particularly heinous black-on-white crime for which no evidence of a bias crime is known to exist, though what we've seen in play is a classic far-right technique for muddying the public perception of what constitutes a hate crime. And Pitts had the matter pegged:

Pitts, in the early June column that set off Overthrow.com, wrote about the brutal January murder of a white couple in Tennessee. A group of African Americans were charged with the crime. "(I)f the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I'd be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse," wrote Pitts.

But Pitts also noted that the supremacists and conservative bloggers who pushed the murder case into the national spotlight were examples of white people who "put on the victim hat" and allege that black crime against whites is underreported.

"Black crime against whites is underreported? On what planet? Study after study and expert after expert tell a completely different story," wrote Pitts, who's syndicated by Tribune Media Services .

Pitts concluded: "I have four words for ... any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized. Cry me a river."

The chief player in all this -- Bill White, the neo-Nazi former National Socialist Movement leader responsible for sparking the 2005 riots in Toledo -- has a real track record of fomenting hate and threats: he was one of the gleeful participants in the far right's celebration of the murderous assault against the family of the Illinois judge who put Matt Hale away.

He also is known for claiming that he has social connections to major right-wing media figures, particularly at the Washington Times, where he claims to be friends with Robert Stacy McCain and Fran Coombs (see more about them here and here). He once wrote the following in an Internet forum:

This is amusing. First, Stacy McCain is a pretty good friend of mine, Francis Coombs is a big fan of our website, and I've had lunch with his wife at an American Renaissance conference. Stacy, at least, is not anti-Jewish -- they all come from that weird part of the "far right" that buys into race theories but has a weird admiration for Semites. I once suggested to Mrs Coombs that the Washington Times should more virulently criticize the Zionist Entity, and she told me that several Jewish columnists -- Charles Krauthammer, Norman Podhoretz and AM Rosenthal, among others -- had threatened the Moonie organization if they ever took an anti-Zionist stance. Wes Pruden, who is in charge of the Times, however, is an extreme Zionist, and I have cussed him out violently for his extreme pro-Jewish views. People who know him tell me they can't understand his love of the Zionist state.

In any case, the SPLC has been trying to get these guys fired for years now. Stacy, in paticular, wrote a front-page story exposing how the SPLC made up the Y2K militia threat in order to con a multi-million contract out of the Clinton government, and has been on their shit list every since.

Anyways, read on, as the homosexual Jewish lobby rails against some of the few good folk still writing in an American newspaper:]

...

If they wanted to go after Stacy's FreeRepublic postings, they should have done it in a timely manner (this is all about a year and a half old) -- and just attacked him, since he's a little guy and the bigger guys at the Washington Times are political and not particular brave, and thus always willing to throw the little guy overboard if they think it will save their own asses.]

[You can read the cached version of this missive here.]

Rob Redding has been diligent in following up on this aspect of the threats. In addition to reporting on the connection, he obtained a clarification of sorts from McCain:

McCain, who has been linked to a pro-slavery group in the past, admits to knowing White.

"I first encountered Bill White who was, at that time, head of something called the Utopian Anarchist Party. He later, I believe, changed the name of his group to the Libertarian Socialist Party," McCain wrote in an emailed response. "In the past few years, Bill has associated himself with neo-Nazism. I have no explanation for this bizarre turn, except as a continuation of his tendency toward radicalism.

"The 'link' you assert is non-existent, and is irrelevant to anything happening in 2007" to Pitts, McCain wrote in an another emailed response. "That kind of thing is completely wrong. Opinion journalism should be provocative, and provocative opinions will necessarily generate strong disagreement, but disagreeing with someone's opinion should not lead to death threats, slurs, etc."

This is actually true as far as it goes. I first encountered White in the 1990s when he was indeed involved in various kinds of anarchism and libertarianism, though even then he clearly operated on the fringe and was a dangerously unstable character. McCain's judgment then was evidently as impaired as it is now.

More to the point, you'll note that nowhere does McCain indicate that he no longer considers White fit company -- he just makes clear that he himself disagrees with White, which is a small comfort, I suppose.

What's much harder to explain, exactly, is why White hasn't been charged with making threats against Pitts. It is difficult to read White's words and not comprehend them as an exhortation to violence and a threat against Pitts.

This is not a free-speech issue. Threats and intimidation are crimes in every state, and a crime by its nature is not a form of protected speech. I'm not certain why authorities haven't taken White's threats seriously, but their inaction, unfortunately, speaks volumes. If this were George Will being threatened by a Nation of Islam figure, you know you'd have seen the perp walk already.

The Dreams Train: Beyond the station

I guess I knew that the Dreams Across America experience was likely to be grueling, but I evidently underestimated the effect it would have on my 50-year-old body; I've spent the past couple of days, since arriving home from D.C., mostly resting and reconnecting with my family. Sorry for the absence, but it gave me some time to reflect on my experience and offer some closing thoughts.

It was, as you perhaps can tell from the posts I wrote along the way, an amazing human experience, most of all because it gave me a chance to meet and get to know a little about a genuinely inspiring collection of people from all walks of life. There were, however, a few disquieting moments toward the end of it all that, I believe, may give us some clues as to why we are still spinning our wheels somewhat in working toward sensible and effective immigration reform -- and also point our way to a solution.

We arrived in D.C. on Monday afternoon at around 2:30 and spent the next hour or so participating in the "Dreams" rally outside Union Station in the plaza in front of it. It might have been an unremarkable rally, if you've seen these things before, but for the presence of an 11-year-old girl, an American citizen who showed off her athletic medals, who described to the crowd her living nightmare after ICE agents descended on her home, with her parents narrowly escaping arrest -- but now the family is in chaos because the mother and father are in forced hiding.

This was a story that really resonated with those I had been hearing from those aboard the train: stories of a broken immigration system almost designed to break families apart and create a whole subclass of workers forced to live in terror that they might be ripped away from their loved ones at whim of that broken system.

And it seemed to be a current running through the speeches and marches that followed. The next day, after a breakfast at the station, the Dreamers all piled onto school buses to head up a march from the Metropolitan AMC Church in Washington down to the White House. Out in front of the church, organizers had prepared a phalanx of child strollers with signs pleading not to break up families [above]. One of the lead banners demanded: "Stop Breaking Families Apart!"

The size of the march was impressive; it appeared to have attracted somewhere between two and three thousand people. It wound in a continuous mass down 16th Street; when we reached Lafayette Park, I could see marchers nearly all the way back to where we started.



It was a remarkably diverse crowd, as had been the demographics of those aboard the Dreams Train. There were Latinos, Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Indians -- you name it, they were in the march. And the spirit of cross-ethnic cooperation was both remarkable and quite visible.



When it reached the White House, much of the crowd dispersed around the lawn in front (park police wouldn't allow the marchers onto the sidewalk or driveway in front). Once most of the marchers had gathered around, the speeches began anew.

It should have been at this point, perhaps, that the Dreamers' achievement should have been celebrated, and their message made clear: We're all in this together, and we need to resolve this in a way that unites us all. But that message, it seemed, was being drowned out in chants and speeches.



I'd had an interesting encounter just as the crowd approached Lafayette Park. I was climbing up the back of a delivery truck that had crates of bottled water on board in (as it turned out, vain) hope of finding a decent vantage point to photograph the whole march. An elderly African-American man was below me off to my left a little, and he was watching the march.

As I hopped down off the truck next to him, the marchers broke out in a chant: "Si se puede! Si se puede!" The old man looked at me and said, "Si se puede? Who they talking to?" And he stalked off in apparent disgust.

I thought: "Well, there's one person they just lost." Not that movements like this need to appeal to everyone, but I couldn't help wonder, as I listened to the speakers carry on about their own agendas, how many more there were like him.

It's kind of a political reality that coalitions like the one that brought together the Dreams Train will be somewhat fractious -- in this case, ranging from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to the unions to immigration-reform groups -- and that when push comes to shove, the more powerful factions will take over. It was clear, in D.C. at least, that the unions were running the show, and in the process were shutting out some of the very elements of the coalition that had made the Dreamers' achievement remarkable. They also, in the process, managed to turn the Dreamers themselves almost into props.

Seeing this reminded me of one of the undercurrents that rode aboard the Dreams Train itself: Shortly after we first boarded in Los Angeles, the Dreamers began settling into their seats on board the train and forming their own social groups, as is normal in such situations. And unsurprisingly, many of the Latinos formed their own group, while non-Latinos tended to interact more with each other; this is probably only natural, since many of the Latinos spoke mostly Spanish, and some no English at all.

But over the course of the trip, I really saw these artificial barriers break down, especially as we ate and slept together and found ways to pass the time together. Sometimes translators helped break the language barriers; sometimes merely sharing a meal or watching the scenery together would work. By the time we reached D.C., it seemed that among most of the Dreamers, there was a mutual respect and camaraderie that can only come through being pushed and tested.

If there was an abiding lesson in all that we endured, it was this: The American Dream itself rests on a just, equitable, effective, and realistic immigration policy that reflects the best of our values -- family, hard work, human decency -- and enables us to share them. And that this isn't something we can achieve by promoting our own narrow interests; it's something we can only achieve by coming together, recognizing our mutual interests and needs, and building something from them that benefits us all. Not just Latinos, not just immigrants, but all Americans.

Yet all this seemed to be drowned by what followed the next few days. Symbolic of the outcome, I think, was what happened to the Dreamers the day they arrived in D.C. Instead of being transported immediately to their hotel accommodations (out in the suburbs) after the rally at the station, organizers inexplicably kept them around Union Station for the next six hours. They finally got to depart for their hotels around 8:30 -- dog tired, needing showers (Washington was a steam bath outside that day), and ready for some real rest, the kind you can't get on a rollicking train.

I'd left by cab around 5 p.m. so I could get some work done, so I at least was able to get cleaned up and refreshed in a reasonable time. If I'd been forced to wait until 9:30 p.m. (the time most of them got to their rooms) I'd have been furious.

It was, frankly, an awful way to treat a group of people who'd just made a tremendously difficult journey on their behalf. There was a feeling, at least among some of them, that they were just being used as props.

And when, after the Tuesday march, all of the Dreamers were left out of meetings with congressional leaders that followed, I can't help but figure that some of those feelings just hardened.

It's all small potatoes, really, but it's emblematic of the larger problems at play in terms of an effective approach to immigration reform. So far, most progressives are content to criticize right-wing policy, but the hard work of coming together for a just and humane solution is being evaded. We're ceding the field to a fairly narrow spectrum of powerful players.

I'm observing all this, of course, not with the intent of raining on the Dreamers' parade, but to point out that what they actually achieved hasn't been properly understood by even their own handlers. Going forward, it's clear that obtaining real immigration reform is going to require a broad-based effort that is inclusive, a real grass-roots movement drawing together Americans from all walks of life, instead of a product of power politics and the pursuit of our narrow self-interests.

The Dreamers demonstrated that it could be done, at least on a small scale. With their example in hand, we need to find a way to make it happen on a national scale.

It would be sad, after all, if everything the Dreamers worked to achieve were frittered away by the politics of the moment.

[A closing note of thanks: I'm really grateful for having had the chance to make as many friends on the train as I did; most of them are people whose names you'll find in my posts. A special thanks to the media crew I worked with on the train: Arthur Rhodes, Shaun Kadlec, and Visperd Mada-Doust. And a big big thanks to Rick Jacobs, who was the guy who made it happen.]

Thom Hartmann: Three Great American Myths

-- by Sara

The first thing that strikes you about Thom Hartmann in person is that he looks about 20 years younger than he actually is. The second is that he's got an energy level that's unbelievable.

"I got off the plane from DC at 3:15 this morning," he admits, apologizing for getting a name wrong in a story he was telling. "And I had to be on the air at six, so I'm running on very little sleep." It's now getting on toward two in the afternoon, and he's been speaking for 45 minutes, bouncing around the platform with energy and a recall of names, people, places, dates -- hundreds of years of American and English history -- that dazzles. If this is what he's like when he's been up all night, he must be hell on wheels when he's well-rested.

Hartmann's got a new book out (Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class). Thursday afternoon, given the chance to preach to the faithful of the religious left, the themes of the book became the text of his sermon. It's obvious that the skill set that makes for good radio talkers is pretty much the same one that makes for good preachers; and Hartmann warms eagerly to the task.

Today, he's debunking three dominant myths that he argues are undermining the American middle class. Culture, he says, is nothing more than a collection of shared stories -- collected over long periods of time, reflecting a lot of our past experiences. Unfortunately, the stories we tell ourselves as Americans about what democracy is and what it means to us are fraught with myths. These stories are at the core of our thinking about democracy: we are living our lives and basing our decisions on the basis of stories that are, in fact, not true. And change will not occur until we puncture these stories in order to make room for new ones.

The first myth Hartmann wants us to puncture is the myth of the free market, which has been elevated to the level of a religion. He invoked Grover Norquist -- who famously said that he wanted to shrink government down to where he could drag it into the bathtub and drown it -- and noted that New Orleans was what ended up getting drowned instead.

"Why does the Bush administration replace competent people with ideologues?" asked Hartmann. The answer lies in the essence of the conservative worldview. Conservatives believe that corporations are morally neutral; but human beings are essentially evil. Given that equation, it's obvious that corporations are thus morally superior to human beings, and thus should be given greater rights and dominance. Government, on the other hand, expresses the will of the people -- and since people are inherently evil, government is inherently evil as well.

Liberals, on the other hand, generally agree on the moral neutrality of corporations; but they believe that people are fundamentally good. "This is the fundamental cleavage between these two world views," notes Hartmann, pointing out that this worldview is clearly reflected in the preamble to the Constitution. "Our founders' six stated purposes reflect this belief -- that government exists to lift people up to their highest potential." We provide for the common defense in order to protect ourselves from the handful of bad apples in the bunch; but the rest of the document, asserts Hartmann, is about maximizing human opportunity.

On the other hand: "The free market is just a euphemism for large multinational corporations controlling the planet," he concluded.

The second myth, says Hartmann, is that "those who grew up in the middle class in America think a middle class is a normal thing. This isn't true. The middle class is an aberration, not a norm." In every case of laissez-faire capitalism in history, he argues, what has resulted -- every time -- was a very small, preposterously wealthy ruling class; a relatively small middle class of professionals and trades; and a huge class of working poor.

"A middle class is not a normal thing. It has to be created." Historically, middle classes only emerge under unusual (and usually unstable) circumstances: in fact, there have only been four great middle class periods in the past 600 years. The first occurred in Europe around 1450, after a quarter to a third of the population died in the plague. This drove up the cost of labor; and this rise in wages created the first major European middle class. We now call this period the Renaissance; and it led to some of the earliest democracies in Europe.

In time, the European aristocracy pushed back with maximum wage laws and other means of destroying this emergent class; and feudalism gradually returned. But when the Spaniards discovered gold in the Americas (and the Dutch and others were trading elsewhere as well), the amount of wealth available dramatically increased. Wages went up, families grew richer, and another middle class formed. We now remember this period as the Enlightenment.

The third wave was the American settlement, in which relatively few people took lots of land (killing the residents who'd long husbanded a rich array of resources), and used them to create a prosperous middle class in both the US and Europe from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s. The upshot of this was the American Revolution. But once it was over, the upper classes reasserted themselves: from the 1830s through the early 1900s, we slipped back into feudalism.

To show how far that decline went, Hartmann pointed out that in 1900, the average American family made the modern equivalent of $9700 -- well below our current poverty line. Small business owners and family farmers struck back briefly through the Populist movement; and 30 years later, FDR codified their values in the New Deal, which reinvigorated the middle class once again.

Those of us who remember the American middle class as it existed between 1945 and 1985 find it hard to adjust to the idea that it doesn't exist any more. And, says Hartmann, we're right to be worried about it. "FDR got that a middle class is a) essential for democracy; and b) doesn't happen by accident. It isn't even normal."

Like earlier eras of middle-class dominance, the one just past was also a time of cultural renewal and unrest. Hartmann reminds us that conservatives consider the 60s a terrible aberration that must never be repeated -- and know that one way to keep it from repeating is to eliminate the middle class, thus reducing the number of agitators. "If you leave it to the corporate class, you will destroy the middle class. They know that when people are working 60-hour weeks, they don't have time to show up, be informed, or even vote." If the price of "social stability" is an entire nation of underpaid working poor, then it's a price our ruling classes are apparently all too happy to pay.

The third myth, according to Hartmann, is that we elect leaders in the United States. "We do not elect leaders…we elect representatives. We elect people to represent us." (And, looking at our leaders, it's sobering to consider just who and what it is that they represent.) "We can't sit around thinking some politician is going to save us….Congress, the Senate, the president, Ralph Nader's group -- none of them are going to do a thing until we push them into it. "

Politicians, Hartmann told us, don't initiate change. Invariably, they wait for a parade to form, and then get out in front of it and claim it as their own. "If enough of us create the parade -- I 100% guarantee it, because it's always happened this way -- some politician will run out in front of it, hoist up his flag, and say "This is my parade!"

So, concludes Hartmann: Like every generation of Americans before us, it's our turn to get out there and be the parade. The fate of the comfortable American middle class -- and the democratic government it supports -- hangs in the balance.

Generally Assembled

-- by Sara

Dave's on his way home from the Dream Train, which is why things have been so quiet around here. And I finally got my laptop back -- just in time to haul it along to the Unitarian Universalist Association's national General Assembly in Portland, which started yesterday.

I hadn't planned to blog this. What happens at church stays at church, I always say; far better to leave the public displays of religion to the fundies. But you gotta love a church where the national convention features Riane Eisler, Thom Hartmann, and James Loewen all speaking under the same glass-spired roof on the same afternoon. (Tomorrow, attorney Sherrilyn Ifill will be talking about how we confront the legacy of lynching; and Joanna Macy will discuss the seismic cultural shifts that confront us in the near future.) And, since so much of what they're discussing covers the purview of this blog -- and the Oregon Convention Center thoughtfully provides wifi -- I reconsidered, and decided to share a bit of my intellectual windfall with you over the next couple of days.

And then there's sweet comfort of sharing space with 6,000 earnest, polite, intelligent people -- most of whom are at least as well-informed and often more liberal than I am. You just sit down (or stand in line, more usually) anywhere, and someone will strike up a fascinating conversation about corporate accountability, sustainable living, or (yes, sigh) immigration policy. The Web is a daily reminder that there are a lot of people in the world who share my values. But there's nothing quite as affirming as having this many of them -- live, in person, all in one place together, talking about the stuff that matters and calling it church.

Lots of great blogging fodder. I'll post as I have time (and power -- outlets are, unfortunately, less ubiquitous than the wireless network). More soon: I've got to go hurry over to take Thom Hartmann to task for something he said on the air last week about moving to Canada being a cop-out. (It can be. But it's not mandatory.)

What America looks like

[Outside Union Station in Chicago. All photos by Visperd Mada-Doust.]

-- by Dave

One of the real attractions to joining the Dreams Across America train, for me at least, was that I would get to see so much of the country up close. When nearly all of your travel is done by air, you see America from a distance (if you even bother to look out your window).

But when you do it by land -- train, bus, car, or bike -- you really get to see it. I intend someday to cross the country by bike, though I haven't much desire to do the bus or car thing. But a train? That always sounded very cool to me.

And it has been. But what's turned out to be even more special about this trip is the fact that I've been traveling with a train full of immigrants from all walks of life from all over the nation.

If America is as much its people as its landscape, I've seen America up close and personal both ways on this trip. And it has been an amazing thing.

The group of immigrants and their advocates that has gathered for this tour is incredibly diverse. They range from Native Americans to Caucasian housewives to African-American teachers to Germans and Italians and Poles to Pakistani and Korean mothers to Iraqi soccer players to Salvadoran refugees to, yes, Mexicans.

The one thing they all have in common is an enormous strength of character and an idealistic belief in the American Dream. They are, really, America at its strongest and finest.

Take, for example, Mike Wilson. He is a member of the Tohono O'Odham Nation, a tribe whose reservation is located in the Sonoran desert on the Arizona-Mexico border. Wilson of course is not an immigrant in the least, but he is a fierce advocate for them, particularly for defending the humanity of the border crossers, who have been dying in ungodly numbers on his tribe's land. As a leader of Humane Borders, he makes it his business to set out water, food, and aid supplies in the desert to help save the lives of the crossers. In person, he's quiet and yet powerful, and you can tell that his convictions are backed up by sobering real-life experience.

Or there's Cathy Gurney, the Sacramento woman who tells her story in video here. Gurney operates a landscaping business that relies almost entirely on Latino labor; as I've mentioned, Gurney makes a powerful case that her business would not survive without that labor, not merely because it's work that white Americans won't do, but also because of the incredible work ethic that Latinos bring to the table. Gurney is bright and vivacious, a lifelong Republican, and absolutely adamant about the importance of recognizing Latino laborers as the formidable component of the nation's economic engine.

There's Hee Pok Kim, also known as "Grandma Kim," an elderly Korean woman from Los Angeles (originally from Pyongyang) whose lack of English skills doesn't keep her from communicating a real warmth and intelligence, as well as her fierce determination in helping to change the nation's immigration laws -- not for herself, but for her children and family and others like her, who have to jump through so many hoops to become "legal" immigrants that it's no wonder they eventually give up.

Or Samina Faheem Sundas, a middle-aged Muslim woman from Pakistan who runs American Muslim Voice. Samina's passion to fix the broken immigration system runs so deep that she gave up her job with a preschool-education foundation in order to make the trip. Or Doris Castaneda, an elderly woman from Guatemala who came along to try to change the laws for the sake of her children and grandchildren. Two of them -- a pair of beautiful little girls named Ashley and Desiree -- accompanied her on the trip to help make that point.

The list, really, goes on and on: Robert Guajardo, a bearded, very Caucasian-looking fiftyish man of Spanish lineage who emigrated here from Mexico. Jules Boyele, who came here from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Virginia Franklin, an African-American educator from Los Angeles who came along to help fight for the Dream Act, which aims to eliminate the provisions of federal law that harms the education of immigrant children. Father Giovanni Bizzotto, an Italian priest who spent 10 years in Mexico before relocating to California. Tonio Antonioni, a former soccer player from Iraq who fled Saddam Hussein's tyranny and whose wife remains in limbo in what he calls "the worst country in the world."

And on and on: Brian Bautista, a sergeant in the Marine Reserves who found his path to citizenship through a tour of duty in Iraq. Fermin Vasquez, a onetime undocumented student who fled a political nightmare in El Salvador to try to find peace and a new home in America. Gabriella Thomas, a blonde German woman who emigrated here in 1969.

Or Hang D. Youk, a Korean man who arrived in Houston in 1998 to join his family and found himself in limbo after his father, a legal immigrant, was killed in a robbery. Wynona Spears, a formerly undocumented emigrant from Belize whose love of jazz led her to dream of a better life, and whose son served two tours of duty in Iraq.

These people are the true face of America in the 21sty century: some white, some black, some Asian, some Latino, whatever -- you name the location on the planet, and there are Americans from there.

It might be easy to shrug them off, along with their stories, with the simplistic perspective of the nativists: "Well, these are all legal immigrants, and the problem we have is with illegal immigrants." But it is of course not that simple. Many of these now-legal immigrants were themselves "illegal" at one time or another in their journeys toward their dreams.

Moreover, as Nathan Thornburgh recently pointed out in his remarkable cover piece for Time on the amnesty issue, it's not logical to expect there not to be law-breaking when the law is onerous to the point of Kafkaesque absurdity:

If people are frustrated, as they should be, by the fact that some eligible immigrants have been waiting for citizenship for as many as 28 years, then by all means, fix that problem. Streamline the process for legal immigration. But don't blame that red-tape nightmare on the millions of low-wage illegals already here, who form a very different (and vastly more populous) group.

A century ago, the face of America was decidedly white. But two centuries before that, it was primarily Indian. The world changes and shifts, demographics with it.

What America has always been about is our shared values -- a love of freedom and a respect for others' freedoms, our willingness to work hard, our desire to raise our families in a safe and healthy place, and our wish to pass all that on to our children and their children.

For most of the past century -- since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which codified the racist desire to keep out people who were not white (specifically, Chinese and Japanese) -- our immigration laws have been predicated on the desire to keep people out, because we believed their skin color and nationality mattered more than their values. As the Dreamers and their stories make clear, it is time to find a way to welcome those who are, inside, truly American.

When that happens, we finally will begin living up to our own great ideal: the American dream.

Onward from Chicago

[The Dreamers enjoy some fresh air in San Antonio. Photo by Visperd Madad-Doust.]

-- by Dave

Well, the trip aboard the Dreams Train from Los Angeles to Chicago was in many ways a test of the Dreamers' endurance -- but so far, everyone's holding up well. We got cleaned up, fed, and rested in Chicago. We also got a fresh addition of even more Dreamers.

So as we pulled out of Union Station tonight, the energy was warm and positive. Everyone's looking forward to getting into D.C. this afternoon.

It helps, of course, that we all know the hardest part of the trip is behind us. It's all been worth it, because an important component of the experience has been in seeing America -- what it looks like, what the people are like, how they live and make their livings.

Getting from L.A. to San Antonio was unquestionably the worst. Once into the desert, the landscape became interminably dull, except for stretches of the Arizona desert, which can be quite beautiful. (Having grown up in southern Idaho, there is probably nothing more uninteresting and aesthetically unpleasant than unremitting sagebrush scrublands for me -- and it seems most of my fellow riders shared that feeling.) The route the train followed through New Mexico was much the same, and western Texas was even worse. It reminded me of nothing so much as the country between Boise and Mountain Home, which I think has been scientifically proven to be the most godforsaken and boring stretch of landscape in the United States.


[The Arizona sky and landscape. Photo by Visperd Madad-Doust.]

Things picked up quite a bit in central Texas on the second day of the trip -- the plains turned greener and grassier, and we saw quite a bit of wildlife: antelope, mule deer, even golden eagles and javelinas. As it grew dark near the town of Alpine, Texas was starting to look much better.

The problem was that, by then, we were many hours behind schedule. There is a good deal of track repair going on along that line currently, and the train was often forced to pull over and wait for hours at a time for the track to clear. Moreover, since the freight lines actually own the track, the passenger trains are forced to pull over and wait for oncoming freight lines whenever the schedule requires.

By the time we pulled in to San Antonio early Friday morning, we were eight and a half hours behind schedule. We were supposed to have had a night in a hotel there, which would have given us a break from the constant rocking, rolling, surging and stopping of a train ride and given us a chance to clean up and stretch our legs. Instead, we spent a second night sleeping in our cars, and once in San Antonio (which looks like a lovely city, but we didn't get to find out), we had to get out, wait at the station for three hours as the next train pulled up (the one we were on continued on to New Orleans) and get back on.


[Mike Wilson of Humane Borders watches the scenery, Photo by Visperd Madad-Doust.]

The trip through Arkansas and Missouri was remarkably scenic; I particularly enjoyed the stretch through the Mark Twain National Forest. But the toilets in our coach clogged up, and when we hit St. Louis, the Amtrak officials were unable to get them fixed and so we rolled on our way.

It was clear that someone in the Amtrak home office horribly miscalculated just how crowded the train was going to be, what with fifty dreamers on top of the regular riders. Food kept running out. Saturday afternoon, there were only about 30 lunches available. And then the train hit something that broke the water line in front, so none of the toilets on the entire train worked properly.


[The evening sky at the Edgewater Presbyterian Church in Chcago. Photo by Visperd Madad-Doust.]

Fortunately, we arrived in Chicago that evening. We pulled in to Union Station hot, tired, sweaty, smelly, and hungry. The worst part of it, I think, was that we had just spent four consecutive days riding relentlessly, squeezed together on a train and living on top of each other. People were getting irritable, and I think we were all tiring of one another -- though it was nothing that a big meal (courtesy of the Chicago organizers and our hosts at the Edgewater Presbyterian Church), a hot shower, and a good night's rest on a stationary bed couldn't fix.

The truth is, in fact, that everyone on the trip has been extraordinarily patient with one another. And that has a lot to do with the character of the people aboard the train.

The Dreams Across America train, in fact, has been most remarkable in my mind for the collection of people who have come together to ride on it. It's an incredible group of people, nearly all of them immigrants -- and you know what? They, too, look like America.

More on that shortly.

Immigration: Seizing the day

-- by Dave

The immigration debate, for those progressives deeply involved in it, has felt rather like waiting for Godot -- we know our fellow progressives are going to be coming along any day now to join the journey toward effective reform. Still, we sit and sit, checking our watches as the clock ticks down, and we wonder.

So far, the debate has almost entirely revolved around the division between rival factions of the right: the corporate conservatives who have benefited from the status quo and would benefit even more from a "guest worker" program; and the nativist bloc that wants every one of the 12 million "illegal aliens" in America rounded up and "sent back where they came from."

If there is a progressive position, it hasn't been enunciated clearly at all -- which means that there has been precious little advocacy from the left. It's well past time for that to change.

This is especially the case because the rightist factions have managed to simply dismiss any advocacy from the left as being about "open borders." That is, of course, a typically false and nasty smear from the right. And a clear progressive position is the only way to overcome it.

As Rick Jacobs, the Dreams Across America tour's chief organizer, observed at Huffington Post:

he immigrant's rights movement has been more about rights than about movement. Up to now, we have seen hundreds of thousands of mostly Mexicans marching in downtown LA or other cities, opposing draconian law or demanding rights. But as my friend Paula Litt at Liberty Hill Foundation says, there is no inalienable right to become a US citizen. So the movement has brought lots of unions and people of color (read: Latino and Asian) together, it has not inspired the online activists who write blogs and checks or the white political elite who write checks to take action.

Matt Stoller has more on this:

What is clear is that if progressives are going to play on immigration, we need a strategy and a set of arguments. My gut says that this is going to require linking immigration and trade, since this is an issue having to do with labor, capital, and goods all flowing across borders. Our current immigration 'problems' (or opportunities, depending on whether you a big business guy who likes slave labor) cannot be disassociated from NAFTA, and I'm curious why that attempt was made.

In other words, if there's a 'grand bargain' to be struck on immigration, it should address the millions of Mexicans and Americans thrown into poverty by our trade policies, who then become immigrants or dispossessed. Regardless, the immigration debate, for it to be relevant to progressives, has to be linked to a larger narrative of economic instability. There's something about labor rights in there, but labor has so little reach now that we need new arguments.

This is exactly right, so far as it goes. However, we also need to understand that immigration encompasses much more than merely economics and trade -- it's about fundamental human decency, it's about our place in the world and our cultural and economic health, but most of all it's about the meaning of what it is to be American.

Progressive values encompass all those things, and a progressive position on immigration will naturally be about them as well. But progressives haven't taken it because it hasn't been clear to them just how they can enunciate those things in a cohesive way that makes sense not just to them but to all Americans.

This, I think, is why liberals have largely sat on their hands on this. Check out, if you will, the comments that have come in to HuffPo over Jacobs' posts, or those that have been pouring in to the Dreams Across America blog: they are all overwhelmingly nativist (with many of them claiming, without much evidence, that they really are progressives, with the less-than-persuasive caveat that they're "just opposed to illegal immigration"). It has been hard to find many liberals actually willing to engage and refute their nonsense.

It also seems clear that progressives don't quite comprehend the importance of the immigration debate -- it just seems to many of us that this is an issue raised by conservatives and is simply an in-house fight among them. But the truth is that, probably more than any other issue confronting the nation beyond the Iraq war, it is a debate that will profoundly affect America's culture and economy, and its position in the world, for decades to come.

Most of all, it is probably the greatest opportunity in many years for progressives to regain their position of cultural strength, to make tremendous gains among average Americans in the heartland, and to reestablish liberalism as a powerful force for good in the political realm.

Doing so will require two significant steps:

-- Refuting the flood of wrong-headed garbage that's been coming from both factions of the right in this debate.

-- Enunciating a clear and powerful position for progressives that encompasses their values, as well as those of Americans at large.

I'll be devoting the next two posts to precisely that project.

Immigration and the family

Family values: We Americans love to talk about them and think about them right alongside patriotism and civic duty as the ultimate expressions of our national core, the glue that binds us together.

So why do we have immigration laws that are specifically, almost devotedly, anti-family?

Many right-wing critics of American immigration policy are fond of saying that current policies would work just fine if the government would "just enforce the laws that are on the books."

It seems never to occur to them that the main reason the government doesn't do so, at least not on a massive scale, is simply that the laws as written are largely unenforcable -- or perhaps more to the point, that enforcing them actually creates larger problems, to the point of atrocities, than those they were intended to address.

The chief problem with immigration law in America is the misbegotten nature of the laws themselves. Much of this has to do with their nakedly racist origins, the legacy of which has never been erased.

This could not be any clearer than the effect of immigration laws on families. Sadly, the story of Tony, Janina, and Brian -- one in which we can watch a family being ripped apart -- is replicated every day in America. Those laws, seemingly designed to actually discourage immigration rather than deal with it both thoughtfully and helpfully, have for many years now had a devastating effect on immigrant families.

First and foremost, legal immigrants are not permitted to bring their families with them as fellow green-card holders; this has the fairly obvious effect of separating and dividing families, and in the end encouraging these immigrants to return to their home countries. And if they try to bring their families to America legally, they face a mountain of red tape and interminable waits. As a 2006 study of the issue notes:

A spouse or minor child of a legal resident (green card holder) from Mexico has a 7 year wait (a 5 year wait from other countries). A married child of a U.S. citizen must wait 7 years to immigrate (11 and 15 years, respectively, if from Mexico or the Philippines).

Moreover, as Celeste Fremon at Witness L.A. observes, the immigration law passed 10 years ago, supposedly intended to force officials to deport criminals, has had a widespread and devastating effect on immigrant families:

The new law was a doozy.

It subjected every non-citizen to mandatory deportation for committing an "aggravated felony" -- which the IIRIRA, defined so broadly that convictions ranging from murder to minor, one time drug possession all qualified. Even the theft of a $10 video game, with a one-year suspended sentence, met the definition. Worse, the law was retroactive. This meant that old convictions that had been legally expunged were suddenly treated as "active" under the new law.

The very worst thing about the IIRIRA was that removed all judicial discretion. In other words, even if a judge found that an immigrant father had extreme extenuating circumstances and there was every practical reason to allow him to stay in the country, it was impossible. There was no legal recourse. No due process. The law couldn’t distinguish between those who deserved deportation and those whose removal would do far more harm than good. And the banning from the US was forever.

Immediately upon the law's passage, horror stories of lives ruined and families destroyed began to surface There was the Vietnam Vet with three medals who was deported for an 11-year-old burglary conviction, leaving behind a wife and seven children, all U.S. citizens. People adopted as children by American couples were deported. One former child refugee from the genocidal Pol Pot regime was deported back to Cambodia for urinating in public on the construction site where he was employed. Hard working little league dads who'd been caught with a few ounces of weed in their youth were deported.

And these examples aren't anomalies. When I was researching an article on the subject for the LA Times Magazine a few years ago, I ran across scores of such cases—some exotic, most ordinary. All sad.

Fremon notes that legislation -- dubbed "the Anchor Baby bill" by the nativist right which opposes it -- has been proposed giving judges the discretion to consider the effect of a deportation on American citizen children. It's currently working its way through Congress.

Even more significant, though, has been the significant increase in raids on employers of illegal immigrants in the past year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. What's happened, of course, is that many of these undocumented workers have spouses and children who are either citizens or legal immigrants. In rounding up massive numbers of these immigrants, and ostensibly concerned about keeping families together, ICE has been sweeping up entire families and placing them in euphemistically titled "family detention centers" that are really nothing less than modern concentration camps. And in doing so, they effects of the incarceration on families has been predictably awful:

The report lauded the goal of keeping families together but urged DHS to close the Hutto facility, saying that "prison-like institutions" are not appropriate for families. "Family detention is not one that has any precedent in the United States, therefore no appropriate licensing requirements exist," the report said.

... The report recommended that ICE parole asylum-seekers while they await the outcome of their hearings. It also said that immigrant families not eligible for parole should be released to special shelters or other homelike settings run by nonprofit groups and be required to participate in electronic monitoring or an intensive supervision program that would use a combination of electronic ankle bracelets, home visits and telephone reporting.

The 72-page report also criticized the educational services for children; the food service and rushed feeding times for children; the health care, especially for vulnerable children and pregnant women; the therapeutic mental health care as insufficient or culturally inappropriate; and the recreation time as inadequate for children. The review said that families were being held for months in Hutto and for years in the case of the longer-established Berks facility.

The report also cited inappropriate disciplinary practices used against adults and children, including threats of separation, verbal abuse and withholding recreation or using temperature control, particularly extremely cold conditions, as punishment.

Moreover, in many of the sweeps being conducted by the ICE, families are also being torn apart as parents are sent off to be deported while their children are left behind. This was pronouncedly the case this spring in an immigration raid in Massachusetts:

Massachusetts social workers will travel to a Texas detention center to check on scores of workers from New Bedford accused of being in the country illegally. They were flown there before Massachusetts authorities determined whether all their children were receiving adequate care.

Patrick, at a press conference, and later in a private conference call with Homeland Security officials, protested the decision to fly 90 of the detained workers from Massachusetts to Harlingen, Texas, before state social workers had a chance to inquire about their child-care needs, potentially leaving many children with inadequate care. Two young children were hospitalized yesterday for dehydration after their nursing mothers were taken away, state officials said. Another 7-year-old girl called a state hot line seeking her detained mother. It was unclear last night where their mothers were.

"What we have never understood about this process is why it turned into a race to the airport," Patrick said. "We understand about the importance of processing; we get that. But there are families affected. There are children affected."

The two sides spent the day arguing with each other over the treatment of the detained women and their families, with Patrick's comments prompting a sharp rejoinder from a top Bush administration official.

Immigration agents "worked closely with DSS both before the operation commenced and at every stage of the operation, to be sure that no child would be without a sole caregiver," Julie L. Myers , the assistant secretary of homeland security, wrote in a letter to Patrick.

Myers, as well as a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that each of the 361 detainees was asked about child-care needs several times. They pointed out that 60 women who were found to be the sole caregivers to their children have since been released, though they will still face a court hearing.

But Massachusetts officials said some of the women -- most of whom were from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Portugal, and Brazil -- may not have been as forthcoming with federal agents as they might have been with state social workers.

"When you come from nations that have a history of violence against women and a history of a government being repressive, what can you expect?," said US Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy. "You have to have people with the ability to connect with these detainees."

State social workers who arrived late Wednesday at the interim detention site at the former Fort Devens army base in Ayer found 20 detainees, whom federal agents had not identified, and who they determined should be returned to New Bedford: four pregnant or nursing mothers, nine single mothers, and seven detainees who were minors under age 17. But by the time they were given access to the detainees, the 90 others who were sent to Texas had already left on a plane.

DSS Commissioner Harry Spence said he expected a team of social workers to be en route today to Harlingen.

"We expect to find some number of pregnant women, minors, and sole caregivers," said Spence.

Of the detainees who have not been returned to New Bedford or sent to Texas, 116 were flown yesterday to a detention center in Albuquerque, with the other 75 placed in various New England jails.

The debate and logistical issues underscored the complexities of the politically charged immigration issue, with tensions emerging between social service and law enforcement needs. Adding confusion was that most children left behind are US citizens because they were born here, and reuniting them with parents sent back to their native countries may be difficult, state officials said.

... Patrick arrived at the church in the early evening, meeting with several emotional families and advocates. "What you see in this room is a human tragedy, where policy touches people," he said. "There were stories of humiliation, fear, anxiety, uncertainty. It reflects , for me, not what this country is about."

South Coast Today has been maintaining a section front on the raids, in no small part because of the devastating local effects of the raid. Among the stories it features is one explaining what befell a local family because of the raid:

Lilo and Maria, illegal immigrants, were working at the factory the day of the raid. According to Lilo, by the time federal agents recognized the couple was married and had children at home, Maria had already been fingerprinted. So they released Lilo to care for the children and gave him an order to appear before an immigration judge May 16 in Boston.

Maria was detained and sent to the Bristol County House of Corrections in Dartmouth, where she awaits her release.

"Minute to minute she is thinking about the children," Lilo, who speaks Spanish, told a reporter through an interpreter.

Lilo has spoken to his wife on the telephone, but he has yet to visit her at the jail that is less than 8 miles from their home.

Lilo, Maria and their children are one of 98 families who were divided during this month's raid at the South End factory, according to data collected by Ondine Galvez Sniffin, an immigration attorney with Catholic Social Services. She said the number may be higher since some detainees might be afraid to tell federal officials that they have children or spouses.

Ms. Sniffin estimated that 21 of the 98 families remain separated, while 70 families have been temporarily reunited. Parents who were reunited with their children must still appear in court for deportation hearings. If the court rules in favor of deportation, families will face a difficult decision: Should the family leave the United States together or should family members, including children, who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents stay behind?
Fortunately, there is at least an investigation into the ICE's behavior in this case:

A federal judge has agreed to allow a team of immigration lawyers to continue investigating whether flying more than 200 illegal immigrants to Texas denied them due process under the law.

But U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns stopped short of the main demand of the federal lawsuit filed by the Guatemalan consul and the lawyers, which was to return those detainees to Massachusetts.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the Michael Bianco Inc. factory two weeks ago, arresting 361 illegal immigrants as well as the owner and several managers. The owner and manager were released on bail the next day, whereas the immigrants were bused to Fort Devens in Ayer. A total of 206 were flown on two separate flights to detention facilities in Texas, where 178 remain in custody.
“The recent ICE actions against hundreds of people in New Bedford, many of whom were sent out of state without due process, raises serious questions about U.S. support for human rights and access to civil legal services,” according to a statement from the attorneys, which includes Greater Boston Legal Services and a number of other private lawyers, all working on the case for free.

But ICE, in declarations made to the court and through its spokesman, asserts that the agency has treated its detainees fairly.

"ICE is fully committed to the legal process for detainees in our custody," said ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi. According to court documents, about 30 detainees have been released after posting bonds, and as many as 60 other detainees have had bond hearings in court. While a number of detainees held in Massachusetts have posted bail and been released, bail has been denied to all but two or three detainees in Texas.

The lawyers claimed that from the day of the raid, ICE has done everything in its power to move the detainees away from their support networks and have denied them access to attorneys, the right to due process and the right to a fair hearing.

"We have very serious concerns about how they went about this," said Harvey Kaplan of the Boston law firm Kaplan, O’Sullivan & Friedman, one of the lead attorneys in the lawsuit. ICE "has done everything they can to rush these people out of the country, everything they can to deny them access (to attorneys)."

Even more disturbing is that the ICE is applying Guantanamo-style tactics to interrogate the detainees:

John Wilshire Carrera, an immigration lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services, said that in the initial days after the raid, detainees were denied sleep and interviewed in the middle of the night by ICE agents.

He said ICE agents tried on several occasions to get the detainees to sign a form agreeing to be deported.

"They're being pressured into signing documents. That's something I believe is going on," he said. "They have papers where a box is prechecked to waive your rights, and they’ve been asking them to sign it."

Mr. Raimondi, the ICE spokesman, said detainees have been asked to sign voluntary removal orders.

"I stress the word voluntary," he said. As to the other document alleged to exist by Mr. Wilshire Carrera, Mr. Raimondi said he would need more specific information before he could comment.

This was followed by a hearing in Boston in which it became clear that the ICE's behavior resembled nothing so much as a rogue elephant:

The "humanitarian crisis" of families being torn apart because of a federal immigration raid could have been avoided, officials testified at the Statehouse yesterday, if federal authorities had taken the state's concerns seriously from the beginning.

The heads of three state agencies appeared before the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities to discuss the impact of the March 6 raid on New Bedford's children.

"Children were placed in significant jeopardy as a result of the decision not to allow us access," said Harry Spence, commissioner of the Department of Social Services. "All we were asking was that the law be enforced in a way that ensured the safety of the children."

... Gov. Deval Patrick has called the raid's impact on families a "humanitarian crisis."

And the trauma is continuing, according to Dennis Gauthier, head of the DSS office in New Bedford.

His agency discovered two days ago that a 16-year-old girl, "living in fear," had been cared for by a landlord for the past two weeks.

DSS has also placed three teenagers who were swept up in the raid in foster care, he said, because ICE would not allow them to be released to parents who are illegal immigrants.

DSS is still pressing ICE to release 10 parents to care for children, including the mother of a 4-year old boy who is not eating and is severely underweight.

"This child needs his mother back," said Mr. Spence, noting that the child is living with his father. "This child is not safe. This child is at risk. Release the mother with a monitoring bracelet, that's what we've asked."

In the days and weeks before the raid, ICE agents met with state officials. ICE wanted help with traffic, namely a state police escort from the factory to Fort Devens in Ayer with bus loads of detainees. ICE also wanted New Bedford police to shut down the roads around the Rodney French Boulevard factory.

What ICE did not want, according to state officials, was any help or advice in dealing with the families of those arrested.

"The impact on the children and families was an issue that was constantly raised," said Kevin Burke, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety. "ICE assured us they had policies and procedures in place, that they had done this many times before . . . We kept asking how they were going to deal with all the children."

ICE turned down two requests from the state for access to those arrested before the raid, and numerous requests afterwards, Mr. Burke said. Only when Gov. Deval Patrick, and U.S. Reps. William Delahunt and Barney Frank began making demands of ICE the day after the raid were state social workers allowed to interview detainees.

When asked by state officials for ICE's written policy on what constituted a "humanitarian release," ICE agents responded that they have no written policy, Mr. Burke said.

Recently, Judge Stearns ordered a hold placed on the ICE's deportation plans, at least until the status of these detainees and their families has been determined. Today, he ruled that those who signed the pressured papers cannot be deported.

What's clear is that these effects are the clear result of anti-immigrant agitation that has placed increasing pressure on the Bush administration to act. And when they have acted, the results have been predictably atrocious, especially for families:

Arrests of undocumented immigrants have grown 750 percent between 2002 and 2006, going from 485 arrests to 3,667. That dramatic increase in scale and frequency has produced far more visible humanitarian consequences than ever before, an immigrants' advocate said .

"This is the hidden underbelly of immigration enforcement," said Christopher Nugent, a Washington-based immigration attorney. "This is nothing new. It happens all the time."

Nugent and others said families are separated and children left with friends or relatives every day in the course of normal ICE immigration detentions. But the welfare of children affected by immigration raids has become a bigger issue in recent months as the scope of the immigration raids has expanded.

... "America is going to see more and more of this," said John Keller, a Minneapolis immigration attorney who represented some of the 239 Swift & Co. workers detained in Worthington. The raids are "a very blunt tool that is being applied to family situations."

Children can be separated from detained parents for months, while parents await bond hearings, or deportation. Parents who leave the United States face the choice of taking US citizen children with them, or being separated from them permanently in the hope of giving those children better opportunities here. Social service workers in other cities where raids took place told of scrambling to try to get passports for the US citizen children whose parents chose to take them back to the countries they left.

ICE is not obligated to provide for the children of undocumented workers they arrest, or to go easier on those with children, said Victor Cerda, a former ICE general counsel and a 10-year veteran of immigration enforcement.

And as Mark Silva observes, Bush's own proposed immigration reforms will actually have even more devastating effects on immigrant families:

Under the "guest worker" program that Bush proposes to allow employers to temporarily bring workers into the country, [Sen. Robert] Menendez maintains that workers "would be separated from their children and spouses as they will not be allowed to enter lawfully with the worker."

And under a "temporary worker" plan that Bush proposes to allow millions of undocumented immigrants already here to remain and work, provided they pay fines and learn English, and eventually seek citizenship, Menendez complains that the fines which the president proposes are onerous -- "Under this scheme, a typical family of five would have to pay up to $64,000 in fees and would have to wait up to 30 years in order to finally become U.S. citizens."

The American conservative movement has made an outright fetish in the past 20 years or so of pretending to stand for "family values", wielding such supposed values as a political club to bully their position on everything from abortion to gay marriage.

But while no one has ever adequately explained how allowing gays and lesbians to marry actually undermines families (logically, one would assume that it actually would help families), these same rabid right-wingers have been foaming at the mouth about illegal immigrants and the need to deport them immediately -- with the clear-cut effect of actually devastating many millions of real-life families.

What's become obvious, of course, is that conservatives care no more about real family values than they do "patriotic" values. They just like to wrap themselves in the symbolism and words, while their actions speak much, much louder.

[Note: This is an updated and revamped version of an earlier post.]

Losing Janina

It's a favorite American fantasy that when you follow the rules, pursue the American Dream, do everything right according to the law, you're duly rewarded. If you want to come to this country, you do the same: Follow the law, take all the necessary steps, and it all works out. You get to be a citizen and everything is good, right?

Well, not always. Take the case of Janina and Tony, whose remarkable story is told in the video above. If their saga does not break your heart, then check your pulse. You may not have one.

We all know, often from wholly differing perspectives, that America's immigration system is profoundly broken and in desperate need of fixing. But for most of us, it's something of an abstraction. Most Americans have only a tangential relationship with the problems -- we tend to think of immigration as a Latino thing. And, sadly, that means most white Americans just don't really relate to what's wrong. Latinos, for too many of us, are the Other.

So to make that easy, we like to talk in statistical and abstract terms about immigration. We especially like to have our bright lines that make it simple to understand: Legal immigration we're cool with. Illegal immigration, nuh-uh.

One of the reasons that nativists often tout for opposing what they call "amnesty" for "illegal aliens" is that, as they claim, it's unfair to the people who play by the rules and immigrate legally. The system, they say, is supposed to reward the latter, and "amnesty" undermines the legitimacy of their hard efforts.

But as you'll learn from watching this video, Janina did play by the rules. She emigrated from Poland with all the proper paperwork, set up life in America with her husband, had a child who is an American citizen.

And despite all that, she has been deported back to Poland, forced to take her young son with her, and leave her citizen husband behind. The family is torn apart -- and as you'll see, it was all because of a broken system that simply fails to live up to what we Americans like to think is our dream, our way of life. And as the system breaks families and lives apart, that dream breaks apart too.

Hatin' on the immigrants

A lot of people are probably wondering: Why undertake a project like Dreams Across America? What good will it do, really, to try to have conversations with other Americans about immigration?

So if you want a clear example of why we desperately need to be having these conversations -- why it's vital that we begin putting a human, and real, face on the immigration debate -- check out what happened a couple of Sundays ago in Hazleton, Pa., where the city has been passing anti-immigrant ordinances:

The publisher of a Spanish-language newspaper had to leave an immigration rally Sunday in Hazleton after a crowd surrounded him and began yelling for him to “get out of the country.”

Amilcar Arroyo, publisher of Hazleton-based El Mensajero, was covering the event when he was verbally attacked by a crowd who thought he was an illegal immigrant and a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit against Hazleton.

Arroyo is an American citizen and is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“For them, I am one of those. They label us all illegal aliens,” Arroyo, an immigrant from Peru, said.

The rally was organized to show support for Mayor Lou Barletta and the city’s illegal immigration ordinance. Several hundred attended it and no other incidents were reported.

Several in the crowd began yelling at Arroyo after a rumor circulated he was one of the people suing the city for its illegal immigration ordinance, said Pamela Hauptmann, of Bethlehem, who was one of the people who confronted Arroyo.

“Someone went over to him and asked him if he was suing the mayor,” Hauptmann said in an interview Monday. “Then we said, ‘Why don’t you go home?’”

The incident was captured on video by The Morning Call, of Allentown. Some shouted “get out of the country” as others can be heard chanting “traitor.”

Arroyo, who also serves as his newspaper’s reporter and photographer, was escorted from the rally by city by police for his protection. An unidentified Hispanic man was also taken from the rally after the incident. Arroyo said that man is also a U.S. citizen.

You can see the video here.

Particularly precious was the backpedaling Hauptmann attempted, at least in public:

Hauptmann was captured in the video and photographs as she shouted and pointed at the two men. She felt the incident makes her look as though she is “picking on” Hispanics, which she said she was not.
“I am not a hateful human being,” she said. “I just want people to obey the law.”

Sounds just like Lou Dobbs and the rest of the nativists, doesn't it: "We're not against immigrants, just illegal immigrants." Right.

That would explain why Hauptmann then apparently went online and posted the following at Stormfront, the white-supremacist Web site, under the pseud "Haupti" (the comment has apparently been scrubbed, but can be found in Google cache here:

Hello, fellow SF'rs. I was the screaming blonde in the video. I am shocked and dismayed at the blatant lies and distortions of what happened!!!!!! The uneventful incident lasted all of 2 minutes and we are all turned into evil whites picking on the poor mexcriment! I will laugh one day soon when the mexcriment are stealing from them and driving through their towns waving the mexcriment flag! Coming to a neighborhood near you!"

Nope, Nothin' hateful there, eh?

This, unfortunately, has come to typify the debate over immigration: Haters who just don't want to see brown people living in their formerly all-white towns and neighborhoods, people who fear the loss of white privilege more than anything, use any excuse to attack not merely immigrants, but anyone who disagrees with them, particularly if they are Latino themselves. And the rhetoric gets so hateful that the danger of violence becomes very real.

And then, of course, they proclaim to all within earshot that really, they don't hate immigrants -- just illegal ones.

Fortunately, the Pamela Hauptmanns of the world are, despite appearances, distinctly in the minority. Most Americans, as poll after poll has found, have a much more reasonable view of their new immigrant neighbors, and a far more likely to welcome them than to try to lynch them. But they are uncomfortable with the claims made by the haters -- that these immigrants are taking away jobs, that they're bringing crime, that they're invading and want to return the USA to Mexico. And they're especially susceptible to the notion that the only problem is that these people are coming illegally -- when, as we've seen, the legal status of these immigrants is not really what has these people up in arms.

No one is engaging the other side of the conversation on this: That perhaps the problem with "illegal aliens" is not the "aliens" but rather the dysfunctional law that renders them illegal.
And if we can have that conversation with ordinary Americans, I believe they'll listen.

As for the Pamela Hauptmanns of the world -- well, there isn't much point in even attempting a conversation there. But if the rest of us are talking -- really talking -- then they likely will be forced to retreat back to the fringes where they belong.