Yes We Can!

Had a student this morning who was quite motivated and wanted to read. Fortunately, I had brought an article about the election describing President-elect Barack Obama and his family. He and I and another student read through it, stopping to review vocabulary (crowd, wept, hugged) and conjugate verbs.

Before that, we went over a worksheet on the modal "can" (completely unintentional: "Yes, We Can!") and I did a dictation asking them to listen and write an address, phone number and person's name. Antonio, the higher level student, then did a mock 911 call where his job was to tell me, the emergency dispatcher, what the problem was and where he was located.

Sad News in Suffolk County

For a week, media from around the world have turned their sights on Patchogue. On Suffolk County. Once again, Suffolk County on Long Island has made news with the beating death of a young Latino day laborer by seven local high school students who decided that they wanted to go out and, according to Newsday, "beat up some Mexicans."

County Executive Steve Levy who, since he came into office has fought long and hard to demonize Latino immigrants, appearing on Lou Dobbs, attempting to deputize local authorities and introducing legislation to make English the official language of the country, declared that had the lynching occurred in neighboring Nassau County, it would have been a "one-day story" (he has since "apologized" for his comments).

We've learned a lot about Lucero, a 38-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant who entered the country on a visa and lived in Patchogue for 16 years. And about his family. On Friday, Lucero's brother let a reporter from a Spanish-language television network up into his bedroom. She reported that Lucero had a U.S. flag draped around a big television screen. And a Pink Floyd poster ("Just Another Brick in the Wall") hanging nearby.

Here She Is?

Received this as a forward today from someone who clearly doesn't know me very well.

“She” is the USS New York, built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center, the fifth in a new class of warship that, according the accompanying description, “will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft” (presumably, wherever we feel the need to keep the world safe from Democracy).

The description continues: “When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence, recalled [a Navy Capt.] who was there. ‘It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.’ [The foundry operations manager] said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the ' hair on my neck stood up. They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to be back.’ The ship's motto? 'Never Forget'.”

The forwarded email goes on to implore us to “Please keep this going so everyone can see what we are made of in this country!”

What, exactly, are "we" made of in this country? Do you speak for me? Do you speak for my brothers and sisters who pray for peace and a new paradigm? How, exactly, is the making of a war ship a spiritual moment? How many war ships will it take until we feel 100% avenged? Five more war ships? 100,000 more? Ten million?

Wisdom shouts in the streets wherever crowds gather. She shouts in the marketplaces and near the city gates as she says to the people, 'How much longer will you enjoy being stupid fools? Won't you ever stop sneering and laughing at knowledge? Listen as I correct you and tell you what I think. Proverbs 1:20

English Only...

So according to the Tennessean, John Tanton, the man behind Nashville's push to make English the city's "official" language, has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as having ties to many national hate groups.

No surprise there... Several years ago, when working on a paper at Stony Brook, I decided to try connecting the dots between seemingly innocuous immigration groups (those that put a genteel and "reasonable" face on their arguments) and the most vicious, vituperative groups, like the Border Patrol, No More Illegals and Deport Aliens.com. Unfortunately, in most cases it was a question of one or two clicks of the mouse.

Nashville has the biggest population of refugee Iraqi Kurds - those same souls we wept for as we heard of their persecution by Saddam Hussein. Now that we have welcomed them as newcomers, have helped them settle here and become part of what could be a rich and cosmopolitan landscape here in Nashville (together with our Sudanese and Ethiopian and Honderan and Mexican and Turkish, and Persian friends), let's not embarrass our city with this utterly asinine, English only legislation.

Militant anti-immigrant groups create a climate of fear and hate. Racially hateful language is part and parcel of the increasing xenophobia pervading this country, reflecting a growing national phenomenon of linguistic and cultural tensions. We have never been a country particularly curious about other cultures and worlds. Rather, we prefer to stick to our own cultural references – the more uniform they are, the more unified we feel as a people. We are content and seemingly highly satisfied with the cultural homogeneity that has overtaken the country. Whether it’s Barnes & Noble laying waste to the small bookstores in lower Manhattan, new subdivisions eating up the remaining farms in Suffolk County, the arrival of Wal-Mart’s in Anytown, USA, or the deregulation and consolidation of every conceivable industry – most chillingly, in the media and communications sector – most Americans are curiously happy to oblige.

As for so-called “multiculturalism,” it’s just fine in small doses and as long as it’s restricted to ethnic restaurants and at carefully circumscribed ethnic festivals.”

It’s not even English-centeredness itself – love of the language, mastery of its nuances, fascination with the beauty of the language per se – that moves people. Unlike the French who fetishize their language (to the point of obnoxiousness), as Americans we just know that English is “good” and Spanish is “bad.”

There is an almost knee-jerk response in people’s acceptance of certain givens – that Miami turning into “little Cuba” is “awful,” that calling up one’s bank and being offered services in Spanish is “outrageous,” that hearing people conversing in the grocery store in another language is “a disgrace.” The unspoken assumption, of course, is that all right minded people accept these givens.

Given the reality of our current economic crisis, it will be immigrant newcomers everywhere who for the foreseeable future will continue to shoulder the blame, even though that very population will be one of the most affected by service cuts and an overall decreasing quality of life. The “language issue” is but one piece of a web of intersecting economic, social and political variables in an increasingly complex and competitive world.

It’s up to those who see immigrants as bringing a richness and texture to the American table (or who, like me, just don’t believe in borders) to fight off restrictive English Only legislation.

as high as the heavens are above the earth...

...so high are My ways above your ways, My thoughts above your thoughts. isaiah 55

Unpredictable

So I was walking along the beach with my late brother-in-law's fiancee, who has been mourning his sudden death since February. The ocean was calm, much calmer than it's been for the past week, and we were enjoying the sun and the gentle tide that only occasionally came up as far as around our feet, softening the sand and cooling our toes. She was talking about her fear of swimming in the ocean, there having been a rash of riptides and much talk of near misses and sudden rescues.

And I said something like, "yeah, the thing about the ocean is that it's so unpredictable."

At which moment, a wave jumped up over us, seemingly out of nowhere, to soak our clothes, the case I was carrying for my phone, the skirt I had wrapped over my shoulders.

Okay, God. I get the message. Unpredictable, indeed.

East End Observations

We are spending the month of July on Long Island's East End where we spent 10 years living until a few years ago. It is nice to be back in the lovely yellow light of the Pine Barrens Region. When we pull off Route 27 and make the turn onto the road taking us south to Montauk Highway, I can't help but wonder what this landscape must have looked like a thousand years ago, unsettled and unspoiled: at dusk it is particularly beautiful. The dark navy silhouettes of the scrub pines against the slate sky. A Sacred place.

At the 7/11 in the early morning the shape up crews await the construction trucks that will come deliver them to work for the day. Workers ride up and down Montauk Highway to get there early enough to put in a full day, riding silently in their dark tee shirts and blue jeans. I wonder if it has gotten ugly here, as in so many other parts of the country. There has always seemed a symbiosis here - don't ask, don't tell. For the most part, I always thought they were given an honest day's wage for an honest day's work. In the boom times, the construction and landscaping businesses offered work - lots of it - from spring through late fall. Now, however, during times like these I wonder if these individuals feel as though they must retreat further into the shadows. If the sight of the local cops, looking for anyone DWL (driving while Latino) and deputized for immigration violations makes their hearts beat just a little faster.

When I lived here, I initiated an ESL program in the local Catholic parish. I think alot of Juan and Pedro, two "wise guys" who sat in the back of class with smirks on their faces, but who showed up week after week and listened to learn - and then attended Mass. Timotea, the petite mother who was smart and no nonsense, Augustina, who was tentative and nervous, never thought she would learn the language and who worked busing tables in a local joint my husband and I used to eat at. Maria, a beautiful woman with long dark hair who worked in a plastics factory and Adan, a construction worker who stayed after class one day to ask me how he could start paying taxes. Andres, an older man who back in Guatamala made huipiles and brought me a beautiful textile one day that still hangs on the back of my chair in my living room. In exchange, I downloaded a CD of songs for him and printed out lyrics, because they all loved when I brought in music. I still wonder what he made of Stevie Wonder's "What the Fuss," or "Plastic Bag" from Mike Ladd's "In What Language."

I look into the faces of the immigrants I pass in the street and in restaurants and delis looking for a familiar face. I wonder if they have found their way or if life's circumstances continue to challenge them every step of the way... I think of my privileged life and the opportunities and options that are stretched before me like gems on a mirrored platter. I forget, far too often, to be grateful for the luxury of choice.