Real Hartford

Sick of the Weak Rhetoric?

I certainly am. Every time the term “Sanctuary City” is used, it seems to be with contempt in the speaker’s voice. The Columbia Journalism Review published an article in November 2007 which explains how: “[t]he term exists in a linguistic no-man’s land, a frame that suggests urban officials abet soft-headed lawlessness. At best, the press has done a poor job of explaining the motivation and legal framework behind policies slapped with the label; at worst, it has recycled and showcased the term, which is little more than an anti-immigration talking point, without much analysis or skepticism.” This should be mandatory reading for anyone who continues to throw around the phrase.

Perez Signs Immigration Ordinance

It’s official.

Here’s What Went Down

I could not stay for the entire meeting of the City Council last night, but during the 2.5 hours that I was there, (plus the protest before), this is what I observed. A more complete account is on Mira Hartford.

Oh yeah, the Immigration Ordinance passed!

Immigration Ordinance

Thanks to Queers Without Borders for the tip on where residents can show their support for the ordinance that would minimize the misuse of the Hartford Police Department. The Working Families Party has a form on their website that people can fill out. The next City Council meeting is this Monday, August 12th.

Arbitrary Laws and Borders

For an informed, pragmatic approach to this issue, check out Mira Hartford. For something rambling, keep reading.

This week I’ve read about how a local columnist is moving out of Hartford, and how he partly does not feel so bad about this decision because of the crime rate. I’ve also read about how people believe the role of the police officer is to waste allocate resources to discerning residents’ status. It’s strange to me that nobody questions the right for one person to move across city/town lines or from state-to-state, but that nation borders become an issue. I mention the columnist/radio host because he is employed, somewhat involved in the community, and seems family-centered. Most people–I think–would describe that as being respectable. How different would it be if moving to West Hartford or Canton required more legal issues than selling and buying a house (or renting an apartment)? Why don’t our in-country relocations require much more paperwork than they do? If the issue, as some contend, is that undocumented residents are receiving social services that they should not, then why is the same not an issue when moving to cities or states with vastly different property tax rates? These newcomers haven’t been paying taxes in that area for a long time. Why should their children get to attend better schools? What right would they have to use sports fields?

Making life more complicated is not something that I would get behind, but I think it is worth considering the absence of logic behind the anti-immigrant arguments.

Meanwhile, here in Hartford, some of the people who were elected to take on roles of both leadership and representation are cowering instead of performing either task. The post at Mira Hartford indicates the language of the proposed ordinance as well as what Hartford residents can do to confirm with our City Council that all people be treated with dignity and respect.

“For the last time, don’t share your toys with your brother!”

My ancestors might have been illegal immigrants. I have no reason to suspect that they were, nor any reason to believe that everything was on the up and up. We are not a family of scrapbooking types, so if there ever were immigration papers, they would have been lost, destroyed, or stuffed in an unmarked box in the dank corner of someone’s basement long ago. What I do know is that there have never been any claims of American Indian heritage in my family, so basically, we are guilty of being part of the problem. We come from Russia, Germany, Poland (when it was part of Russia), Ireland, Canada, and France. Maybe elsewhere. My Russian family had our name changed by dolts who could not pronounce or spell anything other than strictly Anglo words. The result: a Russian last name that was –almost ironically–converted to one that looks Hispanic and is often pronounced as such. That part of the family came through legal means, I suppose, in the late 19th century. As for the rest of my family, who knows? It’s plausible that the French-Canadian ones crossed over to Vermont through the woods at night. Others ended up in the state after being routed through Indiana and Wisconsin. At any rate, we have not been here for terribly long.

I was born in the U.S., as were my parents. I can’t vouch for my father’s parents. How far back must one prove legal entrance before the current surge of nativists are content with offering us non-Mayflower arrivals “services” or “privileges?” Because I am white and speak without an accent (beyond the occasional regional inflection) I have not once been questioned by anyone in government or law enforcement about my immigration status or right to be here. It’s assumed that I belong. When I have called the police in past years to report various crimes (drug-related activity, fights/altercations), I was never asked to prove my identity. There was not even a check of my driver’s license.

I can not get away from the irony that exists in the immigration “debate.” For starters, many opponents of sharing the land claim religiosity of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, yet have no attention span about the tenets of their religions. Like many other parts of American life, they have gone the route of picking and choosing what seems most convenient in their religion/laws to suit their personal prejudices. In the Ten Commandments, we are directed not to steal, murder, or cheat. Elsewhere in the Bible, we are urged to love our neighbors, our brothers. Although not an expert, I’ve read the Bible a few times independently, and don’t recall ever seeing a suggestion that God urged people to take up arms, sit by borders, and pick off fellow humans as they attempted to cross without filing paperwork.

As for picking and choosing, some nativists like to talk about how their ancestors did everything by the book, and so they are rightfully here and now entitled to prohibit others from coming. The Edge of the American West addresses this in Eric’s article, “Inventing Illegal Immigration.” Likewise, an overview of immigration history on the Ellis Island website shows that immigration laws and restrictions have been in flux, and at times, there were no laws regarding this issue. Continue reading “For the last time, don’t share your toys with your brother!”…

Be Thankful if You Aren’t Living in Fear of Having Your Home Raided at 5 in the Morning

In response to recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, there will be a public meeting tomorrow night at St. Augustine’s Church in Hartford. Luis Cotto reports that a resolution will be brought before the City Council tonight.

Statewide Public Meeting to Oppose the ICE Raids in Hartford

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 7:30 p.m.

St. Augustine’s Church (in the church basement), 10 Campfield Ave., Hartford

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 21 Hartford residents from the Brazilian neighborhood of Parkville over the first two weeks in November. Its agents barged into people’s homes before sunrise and dragged them away. They
surrounded a local buffet restaurant and arrested its employees. They crossed the street and raided a car mechanic’s garage. They have made Parkville into a ghost-town. Merchants have no customers. Stores close early. Restaurants are
empty. Residents keep to their homes in fear of the next ICE attack. Some have fled the city.

There was a time when an ICE raid of this magnitude was considered out of the question in a city like Hartford. Now the question is how soon will there be another?

Please join concerned residents of Hartford, New Haven, Danbury and elsewhere to plan a protest to turn up the heat on ICE and alert immigrant communities that they are not alone.

For more information, call Frank O’Gorman of CT People of Faith at 860-841-5006 or Kate Prendergast of Stop the Raids! Trinity College at 610-209-9264.

This meeting is endorsed by the Stop the Raids! Trinity College, American Friends Service Committee of Connecticut, CT People of Faith, National Lawyers Guild – CT Chapter, The Campaign to Stop the ICE Raids in Danbury, and Queers
Without Borders. More endorsers are forthcoming.

It’s all too easy to buy into the myth that if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Even if you believe that people who are “illegally” living in this country should be sent away, the reality is that legal immigrants and children of illegal immigrants are also subjected to these raids.

The news media do not hesitate to report on how traumatizing it is to experience a home invasion, but they say little about the traumatizing home invasions that are planned and executed by ICE agents.

Forum on Immigrant Raids

This Saturday at 6pm, “Stop the Raids” from Trinity College will be sponsoring a public forum at St. Augustine’s in Barry Square. The discussion will be about how the immigrant community can protect itself from ICE raids.

Maximo Morales, a victim of a warrant-less immigration arrest, will be one of the speakers at this event. Yessica Orbegozo will educate immigrants about how to protect themselves against such raids, and Father Mitchell will address preparation. To find out more information on this forum, call 860-810-0253.

Lieberman and Ordinary People’s Lives

Lieberman just does not care about Connecticut voters, and here’s another reason why.

EDIT: I just saw the whopping 95 seconds that WTNH (the only mainstream media outlet that even bothered to show up today) devoted to this news item. Continue reading Lieberman and Ordinary People’s Lives…

Everything is Politics

While I don’t agree with what Healy expresses in his post, I’m not finding anything wrong with it either. Speculating on where the legislative session will go is not much different from publicly declaring one’s support for the death penalty in response to the murders in Cheshire. In a kinder world, the family would be given time to mourn– the media wouldn’t print lurid details about the case that the public simply does not need to know. (Gratuitously divulging such information actually creates problems for the justice system, as we’re seeing in the Shefelbine case right now). In a perfect world, the family would not have been given reason to mourn.

But to pretend like politics isn’t remotely involved in crime is to boldly ignore the nature of violence. It’s not something created in a vacuum.

Fortunately, some people are speaking out about this.  Too bad the mainstream media ignores this.