Monthly Archives: March 2017
We’re okay with them now
Born smack-dab in the middle of the Twentieth Century with connections both familial and neighborly with the Nineteenth, the history of the Irish in Boston was not a distant chapter in American history, but the lived experience of people I knew.
My grandmother’s parents lived during the time the Irish finally won some respectability, and being the second wife of my grandfather who was a number of years older than she, her grandchildren had a pretty good idea how things were during the time when he grew up.
The Irish love to tell stories.
The old people told them.
People around in my early years had lived during the emergence of the Irish in politics. Their parents were around when Hugh O’Brien became Boston’s first Irish Catholic mayor.
They knew Honey Fitz, and they spoke with a certain degree of respect for James Michael Curly.
There was even a joke when I was young, which had some truth to it, that when you heard the name of James Michael Curly, you were to bow your head like you did when someone said the name of Jesus.
To the nuns who taught me, he was practically a saint.
My Grandparents’ generation heard from their parents of the days when “Irish need not apply”, and when they and dogs were not welcomed in certain places in a city people now connect with the Irish.
They had seen the political cartoons that represented them in paupers’ clothing with simian faces, faces which, by the way, are still around and universally accepted as they have morphed into cute leprechaun cartoons seen all over on St Patrick’s day, even in school classrooms, where the simian faces are now cute little ones, but which still sport the chin whiskers based on these earlier derogatory characterizations.
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And they knew that, just as Black schools were not created to supply school choice, Catholic schools were similarly founded in that they were places where the Irish children could get an education without the abuse they had been subjected to in public schools because of their religion and nationality.
The Irish in the Nineteenth Century were despised because they belonged to an immigrant community considered to be rife with criminality and terrorism, and they were not of the majority Protestant religion.
Even today there is that rather odd residual question, “Are you a Christian or Catholic?”
Even though the presidential proclamation designating March as Irish American Heritage Month over a century later calls on “all Americans to celebrate the achievements and contributions of Irish-Americans to our nation with appropriate ceremonies, activities and programs” because of their “overcoming poverty and discrimination and inspiring Americans from all walks of life with their indomitable and entrepreneurial spirit”, in spite of the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” paraphernalia worn while enjoying the perpetuation of the negative stereotype of the drunken Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish were the Muslim refugees of the Nineteenth Century in the United States.
Sadly, those who are misrepresenting today’s refugees and treating them like their ancestors were treated while praising the Irish of today are Stephen Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly whose job it is to enforce Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
They have abandoned their ancestors to become the nativists and Know Nothings who had vilified them.
They even show blind or, perhaps, self-serving loyalty to a man who claims that immigrants had stolen the popular vote from him just as in the Nineteenth Century the nativists claimed that the “dumb brutes” of Irishmen who were new to this country were bought to the polling stations to “vote down intelligent, honest native citizens.”
Those who came during the potato famine were not the rich, landed gentry, but the poor and starving seeking life in a new country and tying to get away from those who were systematically killing them.
It would be more American if we welcomed those who come here now for the same reasons the Irish came then, and not wait a century to say we are glad they came.
Meals on Wheels
Total number of people who depend on Meals on Wheels: 2.5 million.
The proposed budget cut for the Department of Housing and Urban Development will be $6.2 billion, $3 billion of which will come from the Community Development Block Grant program of which 3% goes to Meals on Wheels. So what is that, about $90 million to help feed 2.5 million people for a year?
84% of the cost for Meals on Wheels comes from individual contributions and grants from corporations and foundations.
Each trip for a weekend at Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers about $3million.
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If President Trump stays at the White House more than weekends at Mar-a-Lago, shut-ins can be fed.
And if Melania moves to the White House, $143 million of the $183 million it will cost for security for her for one year can go to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Think of the millions of citizens who will benefit from both those programs instead of all that money going to two people.
That awkward moment between Angela and Donald
Somethings are more important than others.
Projected cost to protect Melania Trump in Trump Tower for ONE year:
$183 Million
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I’ll just leave this here.
It’s time for seniors to earn their keep.
I knew this kid
She came from Central America, from a country torn apart by an uncivil civil war. For men, the choice was to fight for whichever side got to them first, or simply disappear. Women with children were used goods, but their daughters were ripe for rape.
So the women saw their husbands and sons recruited, or shot, and their daughters raped repeatedly as they were available for use. Fathers saw their families in danger and themselves powerless to help them. Siblings saw each other misused and abused and their parents victimized.
Her parents had relatives in the United States, and wanted their daughter to get to them and away from the horrors of home. They paid money to an agent who claimed he could get her to the United States. They had no way to check for references and proof of claims, and, besides, it was a chance. If things continued as they were, the family would not be around to need money anyway.
Her parents brought her to the appointed place at the appointed time, and she joined a group of people making the same trip.
Along the way from the village to the United States she and the others had to pass through Mexico, and obviously since what the agent was doing was considered illegal, he would cooperate with whatever was the road of least resistance, and that often meant allowing the girls in the group to be raped and any man who objected to be beaten and left behind, or simply killed.
When they reached our Southern border the agent’s job was done. He had gotten what was left of the group to the United States. So he just walked away quietly one night leaving his charges in the desert.
Eventually through the kindness of strangers, she got to her relatives, and as one of her teachers, when this 13 year old girl came to the school, I and her other teachers were informed of her experience with some training on how to deal with victims of traumatic and multiple rapes.
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She came here not to take anyone’s job or to suck at the teat of the United States, but to avoid rape and possible death.
If she had been caught after arriving at the border, imagine what she would be sent back to, and what she might to have had to endure on the way home.
Her family never followed her here.
Hers is not a unique story.
Without learning why someone has come to this county and what they endured to get here, simply sending them back may seem like a simple task, but the reality may not be easy or even moral.
Certainly the American soul has not become so frozen that it sees only black and white, and even knowing the facts will not accept a person’s reality.
Only the heartless would have sent this girl back, but, unfortunately, these days there seems to be too many who lack a heart.
Sanctuary cities do not confer diplomatic immunity.
Recently, workers at a local manufacturing company held a demonstration. They were concerned about wage theft and lack of reasonable breaks for lunch, bathroom visits, and sickness.
They were not asking for much, and their demands were nowhere even close to extreme.
When the local press covered the action there were four words in the report that seemed more speculation than verified fact. With no real reason to have mentioned it, after explaining that the employees were immigrants, this is a city of immigrant, these four words were thrown in: Some might be undocumented.
Ignoring all else, the comments following the article were all about people sneaking across the border to take jobs away from Americans, and how it is so wrong to have to defend your family from the criminals who are running the streets.
It seems that with the mention of Immigrants, it is standard operational procedure to automatically assume that the majority spoken about are here illegally.
The word “some” was replaced in the minds of many with “many”, “most” and “the majority”.
Bring up the idea of sanctuary Cities, and the reaction you get is that people do not like the idea that criminals are going to be allowed to run the street without consequence.
This immediately assuming that all these people are bad, and the anger that is expressed toward anyone who presents the opposite, says more about those opining than those migrating.
Has humanity soured so much that the first thing that comes to people’s minds is the trope that the majority of immigrants coming to the United States are criminals with the minority being good?
Why do people automatically jump to the worst they can imagine about people without knowing them?
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Why don’ they assume the majority are good with a few bad apples among them?
Of course it didn’t help that Trump ‘s speech upon entering the presidential race was that Mexico was sending its criminals and drug dealers, and then adding that some of them might be good people with the saddest part of that being that he was just believed without question.
He fed into this knee jerk negativity that makes people feel good about themselves if only because they are happy to hear that there are people who are worse.
Why don’t people think with empathy for those who have come here from someplace else as our ancestors did and did it the only way open to them?
Ten years ago, a local factory was raided in my city to find any undocumented workers. No crime had been committed by any worker at that factory to warrant any type of dragnet, and no warrants had been issued for any employee. The sole purpose of the raid was the hope that among the employees there would be some here illegally and, once arrested and processed, the head of that branch of law enforcement could claim he was tough on crime.
People with families who were here legally and who worked hard and followed the law were scooped up along with the few people who had no papers with some of them sent 2,000 miles away to be processed before being allowed to return without anyone explaining to those who had seen them sent off that they were just collateral damage and were innocent.
These people have had to live under the suspicious eyes of their neighbors ever since.
The undocumented were Guatemalans and not Mexicans, but were sent to Mexico and expected to retrace their steps and go back home. Whatever they had had to face to get here, they had to face to go back, and whatever they had escaped from to come here, they were going back to face. For some that meant the drug cartels for which they would have had to work and then die when no longer needed, or die immediately for not cooperating. If they endured rape and robbery to get here, they would do the same on the way home.
Sanctuary cities do not confer diplomatic immunity. If an undocumented person is arrested in the commission of a crime, they are treated accordingly, with the ultimate punishment being sent back to wherever it was they came from. They are not excused of their crime and sent out into the street.
What sanctuary cities do is protect those who are abiding by the laws from profiling or being caught up in raids whose only purpose is to scoop up any undocumented people.
Truth is Absolut
Oklahoma is a very conservative state. Its “official” newspaper had been designated the most conservative in the county, and its media and politicians tend toward the right, and often omit any information that might go against it.
So it was little surprising that one of its media outlets has published a list of those lies that Trump and his administration have passed on as truth with no basis in fact, perhaps assuming Trump’s supporters will believe them merely on the strength that they were said.
This is that list.
TRUMP: “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!”
FACT: George W Bush did that. More accurately, Bush is responsible for 113 as opposed Obama’s 9 known to have returned, with another 86 released by Bush possibly having returned. A national intelligence report says 122 men who were held at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. base in Cuba, were confirmed to have re-engaged in hostilities after their release.
SEAN SPICER: “Great news for American workers: economy added 235,000 new jobs, unemployment rate drops to 4.7% in first report for @POTUS Trump.”
FACT: Although happy with the numbers, Trump had repeatedly denounced such numbers during the campaign in relation to Obama. While the unemployment numbers during Obama’s last year were at 4.8%, Trump claimed the real figure was more like 40%. He had claimed, “The unemployment number, as you know, is totally fiction.
Trump’s explanation as to why the number are legitimate now is,”They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”
TRUMP: regarding Exxon Mobil investments in the Gulf region: “This is something that was done to a large extent because of our policies and the policies of this new administration. I said we’re bringing back jobs. This is one big example of it.”
FACT: The “Growing the Gulf” program started in 2013 and is to continue until 2022 at least. This is just another example of Trump claiming credit for corporate announcements about jobs and spending that date back to plans made when Obama was president.
SPICER: “If you’re looking at the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place. I mean they were way, way off the last time in every aspect of how they scored and projected Obamacare.”
FACTS: The CBO was largely right on most broad points about Obama’s health care law, not way off When they correctly predicted that insurance coverage would expand substantially and employer-sponsored coverage would not plunge.
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BEN CARSON: “There were other immigrants who came here on the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.”
FACT: Slaves are not considered immigrants. Immigrant move to a new country voluntarily.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS:“It’s specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired”.
This was in response to why Trump’s directive on the use of U.S. steel and pipe does not apply to the Keystone XL project. She attempted to explain that “the steel is already literally sitting there, it would be hard to go back.”
FACT: Trump signed an executive action calling for pipelines to be made from U.S. materials “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” He even held up the signed executive er and smiled as he showed it around to those present.
That’s short of a mandate and, in any event, excludes the two pipelines. He had crowed that “we’re gonna make that pipe right here in America.” The material “comes from the United States or we’re not building it.”
He did not mention, nor did he include the XL Pipeline exception in the executive order or any comment about it.
TRUMP: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
FACT: Trump’s gave no evidence when he made that accusation, not has he offered it since.
SCOTT PRUITT, EPA administrator: “No, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
FACT: he is ignoring scientific consensus and the conclusions of a variety of U.S. government agencies, including the EPA which holds that man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for about 60 times more warming than natural causes.
But, unfortunately, for some, the facts are a direct assault on the goodness of the president, and the weapons of the libberuls who are just spoil-sports who can’t accept that Trump won.
Art? who needs it?
In my career I taught in five different school districts on both coasts and in the middle.
Regardless of location, demographics, or real needs, when cuts to the budget had to be made, the first to get cut were the arts. Sports simply were never touched.
Now they may have come up with creative ways to justify this, but when statistics show that more kids who are involved in some aspect of the arts in high school have a far greater chance of careers in areas related to the arts, while the overwhelming number of those who played sports will not have careers that are even loosely connected to sports, their budget decisions need to be examined..
And if you think the reason is that there is a societal preference to sports because they are manly while the arts are for, well, the “creative” kids, you are correct.
If you look at the history of schools in the U.S. you can see that in the past the vast majority of those who left the classroom for an office were the coaches and avid sports fans.
One year, after twelve of advocating for students, advocacy that called for attending many late night meetings, a court case, defending myself in the court of public opinion (and doing well with that), and just needing to pull back a bit, I was verbally reprimanded by a principal because he had not seen me at any football games. I hadn’t attended a school play, a chorus or band performance during that same time, but that as not an issue. Not being there for sports was.
School meant sports to them, and that is all that counted.
The second round of cuts, if needed, would be the girls’ sports for pretty much the same reason. But they seemed to never get to the third phase that would have hit the boys.
Small minded attached something negative to the arts, and so they were undesirable.
The claim was that sports were necessary because they taught character, but memories of your high school jocks often reveal that character building was less important than a trophy.
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Art taught critical thinking and personal growth, and those who wanted their actions to go unanalyzed certainly were not in favor of that.
And now this prejudice to the arts has reached the White House.
The National Endowment for the Arts has fallen victim to Mr. Man, Donald Trump and his GOP Congress.
The United States is going to be the only country in the world without government support for the arts.
The major problem with the National Endowment for the Arts is that it allowed for works of art that made people think.
It created arts councils in every state, and even generated important new fields, such as art therapy for war victims. It helped revitalize cities that needed that, and even got private funders to support artists and the arts so it was a cost effective investment.
But Trump promised to bring runaway federal spending under control, and bring down the national debt. To do this he will eliminate the NEA and public television for a savings that amounts to all 0.02% of the $3.8 trillion federal budget.
The NEA’s whole annual budget cost about the same as one fighter jet, and Trump wants to buy a whole bunch more of those because we certainly need lot more of those to add to the many surplus ones we haven’t used.
What we don’t need is art or beauty.
We just need compensating weapons