Are we betting on hate?

(This column first appeared in Spanish on pontealdia.com)

In a lot of ways I’m a glass-half-empty person. If there is a worse case scenario to be imagined that’s the one I’m sure to worry first.

Except when it comes to people.

See, I think people are fundamentally good and that no matter our differences and radically different beliefs we’re all searching for the same things: love, a sense of community, peace, happiness. Every so often life conspires to knock this glass-half-full faith in my fellow humans right out of me.

I’ve been an advocate for immigrants for a long time. Nearly all my blog posts and stories and many of my articles or columns in the past years have focused on what others have named (rightfully, I think) the civil rights struggle of our time. And, yes, I’ve seen a lot of ugliness in what I’ve had to write about during these years of escalating anti-Latino sentiment and anti-immigrant rhetoric. I need look no further than the fatal beating of Luis Ramirez and subsequent police cover-up in Shenandoah, Pa., to admit that sometimes human intention is outright sinister and maleficent.

But there’s no use denying it — I’m always floored by the proof that my fundamental view of people might be completely, and utterly, wrong.

Earlier this month I chanced upon a terrible example connected with the Trayvon Martin case. There is no doubt that the case of the 17-year-old unarmed African-American youth shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., has brought out the worst in people — from veteran news commentator Geraldo Rivera to renowned film director Spike Lee — and yet I wasn’t prepared.

An Orlando television station, WKMG, reported that the Hiller Armament Company, a mail-order venue for gun enthusiasts located in Virginia, was selling paper target silhouettes depicting a hoodie with a target over the chest and a bag of Skittles and bottle of Arizona iced-tea held under the arm. The iconic symbols of the tragic Trayvon killing.

My horror at realizing someone thought to produce this grotesquerie was only surpassed by the horror that the company thought it was okay to market it (in packages of 10) and that people had, indeed, purchased it (at about $17 a pop, according to reports).

According to a post on the Daily Kos, the maker of the Trayvon targets alleges he made the targets “to make money off the controversy.” In other words, he was betting on hatred. Another web site, the Grio, reports the maker saying he had sold out of the targets. In other words, he had a winning bet.

I want to think that if whomever purchased the targets saw his/her daughter or son’s face in the opening of the hoodie, he/she would realize exactly what the purchase means. I want to think the same thing about the maker. I want to think that no matter how sinister and maleficent the intent of this, there’s the possibility of an epiphany. The realization that no child should go through life wearing a target.

I want to think that because, as I said, when it comes to people, I want to see the glass half full. But I’m sitting here, in front of the computer, with the image of the “Trayvon Target” filling the screen of my monitor as I type.

Who uses an image of a dead child for target practice?

We do.

Because if any one of us is betting on hate, none of us gets away without taking responsibility.

PA cops implicated in immigrant's killing go on trial

The must-read from the Southern Poverty Law Center blog is linked here.

Sigh. Pennsylvania isn't looking like much of a utopia these days, is it?

In the news: Gutierrez, Menendez and Ramirez

Three news items of note:

1. Yesterday, congressman Luis Gutierrez (Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus task force on immigration) along with a coalition of Asian American, African American, Latino and Anglo congressmen and women, introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP).
Read the New York Times report: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/us/politics/16immig.html

2. Three Catholic bishops who head committees on Migration, Domestic Policy and Pro-life Activities, sent a letter to senators urging support of the Menendez Amendment in Health Care Reform. Proposed by Rep. Robert Menendez, the amendment would give states the option to lift the five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to obtain Medicaid coverage. Download and read the statement in PDF format: http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/legalfiveyears.pdf.

3. Indictments were unsealed yesterday against three police officers in Shenandoah, Pa. including the chief -- thanks in large part to Gov. Ed Rendell -- on obstruction of justice and other charges in connection with the beating death of Luis Ramirez, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, in July 2008. Read the terrific blog report the Southern Poverty Law Center put together: http://bit.ly/8mm9A1

Who’s counting?

Unbelievably, I started blogging exactly one year ago. Just in time for the Hispanic Heritage Mass then and now. This year’s Mass will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 11 at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. Cardinal Justin Rigali will be the celebrant, and as in past years, he’ll be joined by many priests from across the Archdiocese that minister to the Latino community.

And a growing community it is.

Pennsylvania is one of 16 states with at least a half-million Hispanic residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (The others are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.)

The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2008 is 46.9 million, making people of Hispanic origin the largest ethnic or race minority in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics are 15 percent of the nation’s total population.

And to these totals you can add the 4 million residents of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (which is included in the U.S. Census report’s “national summary” data, but not in its “national totals”).

The Hispanic population in the U.S. is younger than the population as a whole. Hispanics comprise 22 percent of children younger than 18 in the nation, 25 percent of children younger than 5. The U. S. Census Bureau projects that by July 1, 2050, the Hispanic population of the United States will reach 132.8 million, and be 30 percent of the nation’s total population.

There were 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses in 2002, and the rate of growth of these businesses between the census of 1997 and 2002 was 31 percent. The national average rate of growth for all businesses during the same time period was 10 percent. Hispanic owned businesses generated revenues of $222 billion in 2002, according to census sources, up 19 percent from 1997.

Still, if you read my blog, or other Latino blogs, you already know that the violence, hate and animosity toward Latinos has increased markedly in recent years. The FBI reported a 35 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos from 2003 to 2006 and a 3.3 percent increase in 2007 alone. Certain communities (Suffolk, N.Y., for example) have become something like hunting grounds where gangs of ruffians target their Latino neighbors for death, and juries and elected officials look the other way. Mainstream Latino advocacy organizations such as the NCLR have been vilified, and the first Latina Supreme Court justice was lampooned with openly racist caricatures during the period preceding her confirmation.

The vitriol in the immigration reform debate has contributed greatly to anti-Latino sentiment.

It is faulty logic to presume that all immigrants are Latino and all Latinos are immigrants, but nativists and commentators with nativist sympathies have reinforced this spurious syllogism. Ongoing air time devoted to the “invasion of America” (commentator Pat Buchanan) by hordes of “primitives” and “women with mustaches” (radio host Jay Severin) who are “changing the complexion of America” (Bill O’Reilly) and are “invaders” and carriers of “leprosy and tuberculosis” (Lou Dobbs) has had its effect on people’s ideas about Latinos and immigrants.

Even those who don’t wholeheartedly buy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric express irritation at Spanish-language phone options, or celebrations and parades wherein flags of Latin American countries are flown alongside the U.S. flag. Would the same level of irritation be manifest if the language option were German, say, or Polish? Do the St. Patrick’s and Columbus Day parades with their Irish and Italian flags proudly flown generate the same animus? Clearly not.

Much of current anti-immigrant rhetoric centers around the differences between new waves of immigration and historic ones – but the differences are largely myth.

Earlier immigrant groups also initially settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their own languages, went to church at personal parishes where Mass was celebrated in their native languages and set up businesses that not only served their fellow immigrants but contributed to the growth of the U.S. economy. They eventually learned English, became naturalized citizens, gave birth to U. S. citizens and grew to be integral to the weave of contemporary America.

It has been said that new immigrants don’t want to learn English, yet demand for English as a Second Language classes for adult learners far exceeds supply. With classes or without, more than 75 percent of current immigrants learn to speak English proficiently within 10 years of emigrating.

We’ve also heard that the new immigrants, unlike their predecessors, don’t want to become citizens. But according to U.S. Census Bureau and Bureaus of Citizenship and Immigration Services data, more than 33 percent of immigrants become naturalized citizens. This, of course, can’t begin to reflect the number of immigrants who might want to become citizens if a path to legal residency and citizenship were open to them.

The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born stands at 11.5 percent currently. In the early 20th century, it stood at 15 percent. Immigrants in those days also dealt with anti-immigrant fears about the number of them coming to America, and the same derogatory attitudes about people “without papers” -- the genesis of at least one ethnic slur.

Myth has it that most immigrants today are undocumented. But the Immigration and Naturalization Services statistical yearbook records that 75 percent of current immigrants have legal permanent visas. And they pay U.S. taxes – between $90 and $140 billion a year. (Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes – as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” -- taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers -- which drew $20 billion between 1990 and 1998.)

Current immigrants, like their predecessors, contribute to the U.S. economy through their consumer spending and through the income generated by the businesses they set up. According to the Cato Institute and the Inter-American Development Bank, consumer spending of immigrant households and business contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S. federal, state and local governments.

And Alan Greenspan, while he headed the Federal Reserve, pointed out that 70 percent of immigrants arrive to the U.S, in prime working years. As part of our workforce they will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years.

An enduring myth about current immigrants is that they emigrate to receive public benefits. There is data from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Urban Institute that shows that immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they receive.

Recent surveys have shown that new immigrants are actually much healthier than longtime immigrants (who in turn are healthier than native citizens). Which is lucky because legal immigrants are restricted from accessing any public health benefits for the first five years of their residence in the United States. Undocumented immigrants are precluded from accessing any public benefits at all.

It is hard to believe that any of us want to see our fellow human beings ill and suffering and barred from receiving any medical treatment; just as it is hard to believe any of us want to see people dying while trying to be reunited with their families, or while trying to escape violence or poverty. And yet, existing health care legislation and immigration policies compound these problems while offering no solutions.

Fortunately, we are heirs to a system of governance that permits us to challenge standing legislation. We can pass better laws. Laws that create a path to citizenship for people who desperately want to be here. Laws that ensure that U.S. citizen children aren’t separated from their undocumented parents. Laws that reflect compassion for our brothers and sisters in need, and that open to hope rather than a wall.

In the year I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve shown you signs that read “Hispanics keep out” and “Speak English.” I’ve posted videos that portray immigrants the same way blacks were depicted in early minstrel shows, and have referenced news about a teen who endured ethnic taunts while being dragged with a noose around his neck. I’ve written about a young man who was snatched right off a train platform on the basis of his Spanish accent, and linked you to horrifying stories about hate-crimes against Ecuadorian and Mexican immigrants in this and adjoining states.

But I’ve also written about people who stand for more and better.

Peter Pedemonti and his cohorts at the Catholic Worker house and in the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia who believe they are “entertaining angels” when they welcome the stranger.

Msgr. Hugh Shields. Anna Vega, Tim O’Connell, Sister Lorena and countless other unnamed religious folk and laypeople who believe we are all one family under God and so extend to immigrants the love we usually reserve for blood family.

Robert Nix, who journeyed to Shenendoah, Pa. after Luis Ramirez was killed to publicly urge community reconciliation.

I’ve pointed you to El Diario/La Prensa, which reports stories about immigrants and Latinos the mainstream media doesn’t even venture to cover.

And I’ve quoted the words of the U.S. Bishops, including our own Cardinal Justin Rigali, who have consistently sought to remind us that, in the words of Christ, “whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

Going into my second year of writing this, I’m not sure what effect, if any, blogs can have in our thinking about issues as complex as immigration or the upswing in anti-Latino sentiment in the nation. Particularly blogs like this one, with a small readership that, in all likelihood, already recognizes popular immigration myths for what they are and finds the words of the nativists and anti-immigrant commentators as repugnant as I do.

But I have to think it’s worth it.

There are local voices here that are too quiet to be heard in the nasty national debate. There are voices of local immigrants, and the voices of local people of faith who walk with them. There are voices of those who have overcome unbearable hardship and the voices of those who have taken up their advocacy. Not all of those voices are in the blog posts – some are in the comments, both public and private, made in response to the posts.

And despite the bad news and bad feelings I sometimes point to in my posts, it is the wonder and awe of knowing there are good people out there -- willing to protect and love and do for their fellow human beings -- that really keeps me writing.

What’s in a name?

The letter comes like most of our letters to the editor still do, via snail mail. It’s signed, has a local return address. Good. We don’t publish unsigned letters, and rarely publish those sent from outside our readership area.

Angela opens it, but I take it out of her hands before she gets to read it – I have a small space to fill on the editorial page and if the letter is short enough, or readily edited without sacrificing its essence, I can lay it out and call the page done.

As I scan the first couple of sentences I’m hopeful.

Its impetus, the writer says upfront, is a column that appeared several weeks ago on the bilingual page of the paper, written by Moises Sandoval, a veteran editor, writer and Catholic News Service columnist.

If it’s criticism, I think to myself before continuing to read it, at least I won’t have to console any of the local columnists I’ve encouraged-cajoled-bullied into writing for us. Sandoval’s probably a lot tougher than my guys, I think. He can take it.

Turns out, I’m the one who can’t take it.

The writer is disturbed about the Church’s insistence on humane treatment for “illegals” and tired of the U.S. Bishops’ calls for comprehensive reform of existing immigration laws. That’s disheartening, but not completely unexpected. The results of the poll currently up at the Catholic Standard & Times web site’s homepage (www.cst-phl.com) indicates that a large number of our readers feel similarly, if perhaps not quite so strongly.

But the letter goes downhill from there. It is evident from the statistics quoted in it that the writer uses illegal as a synonym for Latino. And later in the letter, the people crossing into the nation from the southern border are assigned other epithets: Criminals. Leeches. Parasites.

When I hand the letter back to Angela, I am uncharacteristically subdued.

“Don’t people get that we all bleed the same color?” she says after she reads it.

Angela is African American and Native American and I know she doesn’t expect an answer to her question.

“Have you ever seen ‘Stardust?’” I ask after a moment, seeking refuge in non sequitur. “You know, the movie based on the novel by Neil Gaiman?”

She nods.

“Remember how when the prince’s throat is cut, he bleeds blue instead of red?”

We laugh together at the visual pun, then go back to the unending stream of tasks necessary to ensure that a newspaper goes to press on time.

I should probably confess at this point that I have an abiding love of fairy-tales and folktales. I admire the way these stories work – flights of fancy that nevertheless hold real insights. So it’s no surprise that my mind has flown straight from that letter to the editor to a filmed fairy-tale like “Stardust.” Many fantastical stories have as a central conceit the theft, discovery or bestowal of a name. Remember Rumpelstiltskin?

But it’s not only in fairy-tales where names mean something.

When we strip people of their human dignity, we take their names along with it. It allows us to think of people as some collective other. They become “illegals and criminals.” Or “leeches and parasites.” Not made of the same flesh, bone and blood as we are. Not prey to the same worries and needs; not filled by the same joys.

This week the 18-year-old who put a noose around Robert Cantu’s neck, dragged him behind a pick-up truck and threatened to hang him in the town square while yelling “spic” and “border jumper” at the teen, pled no contest to charges of ethnic intimidation (he was sentenced to 10 days in an Ohio jail). The killers of Marcelo Lucero, José Sucuzhañay and Luis Ramirez all attacked their victims as representatives of some fearsome, collective “other” – Hispanic, undocumented, gay.

We’re seeing this unnaming play out in Iran as well.

Governments can be good at turning human beings into a collective “other” to be subdued or jailed or exiled or eliminated. I am reminded of Central America during the bloody, undeclared civil wars of the 1980s – and of how, even beyond those who lost their lives, hundreds of thousands lost their names.

Ah, but then, as in my beloved fairy-tales, something quite unexpected happens.

El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero reads the names of the dead during broadcasts on the Catholic radio station. The day the first civilian president of Guatemala is elected after 30 years of military rule, thousands gather at a silent protest holding up placards with the names of the disappeared. At prayer vigils, neighbors and family read out the names of the 137 victims of homicide in Philadelphia this year. And perhaps most spectacularly – despite the jailing of Iranian journalists (33 to date according to Reporters without Borders) and despite controls on every major form of information dissemination – we all learn Neda Soltan’s name.

At the end of the workday in which I read the letter to the editor, I’m still thinking about names, the words that are substituted for names, and the way a name – given even one person to hold it higher than fear, higher than circumstance – can help us remember our shared humanity.

We all bleed, Angela says. We all hope, I say.

On the way in to the train station I see three homeless people who regularly sit at the entrance I favor. They ask, unobtrusively, for money. Unbidden, a line from Isaiah 49 pushes its way into my thoughts: “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb He gave me my name.”

I’ve never asked their names.

I’m not so different from the letter writer who precipitated this blog post.

I rummage around for change, then drop the coins into their separate cups as I ask.

Cathy smiles when she tells me.

Earl stammers through his beard.

Poor Boy explains that his is a nickname his mother gave him as a boy, but that it doesn’t mean they were poor.

Next time, I’ll remember.


Photo of immigration rally CS&T file photo. Rumpelstiltskin engraving by Anne Anderson from Wikimedia Commons. Photo of homeless person by Sarah Webb for the CS&T.

Gov. Rendell asks DOJ to pursue civil charges for beating death of Mexican immigrant in Shenandoah, Pa.

From PRNewswire-USNewswire:

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Governor Edward G. Rendell has recommended that the Department of Justice pursue civil rights charges against two Schuylkill County individuals involved in the beating of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in Pottsville on July 12, 2008.
[...]
"The evidence suggests that Mr. Ramirez was targeted, beaten and killed because he was Mexican," wrote Governor Rendell in the letter.

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/jQGMM