The World... Swiat... Le Monde... El Mundo!

A Polish summer

2010-08-06T00:25:00.000-07:00

I am in the mountains with my father. It is a small town in the Beskidy mnt range, where Poland's biggest river -- Wisla -- begins. On the first day, as we hiked, dark clouds covered the sky. Grasses leaned to the ground, heavy with mist, and fog lodged in the valleys. We discovered that the bushes on the forest floor are filled with blueberries. They are wild forest blueberries, smaller than their American variety. We filled our stomachs! Yesterday, we went out again, with a blue sky dotted with curly cumulus. It was a five hour hike, and on the way we again gorged ourselves with blueberries and wild raspberries. I've never seen so many! I laid on the grass and could eat the berries off the bushes. A perfect combination of sweetness and sourness. We ate until we could no more, then we gathered berries into glass jars for a breakfast feast. On our way back, we stopped by a farmer's house to get fresh eggs. The kind, toothless farmer went into the barn and gathered the eggs. They were still warm...

The borders of culture

2010-05-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

A fascinating article in the new Abroad column of the NY Times. Though I don't necessarily agree with the final conclusion. The author misses perhaps the argument about power, the power of those who take and of those whose patrimony is plundered. Oftentimes, those plundered were poor and brown or black-skinned. Historical memory is strong, and there is something to be said about restoring a people's rights to the artwork that's a source of their pride.

Who Draws the Borders of Culture?
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: May 4, 2010

IT was gridlock in the British Museum the other morning as South African teenagers, Japanese businessmen toting Harrods bags, and a busload of German tourists — the usual crane-necked, camera-flashing babel of visitors — formed scrums before the Rosetta Stone, which Egyptian authorities just lately have again demanded that Britain return to Egypt. From the Egyptian rooms the crowds shuffled past the Assyrian gates from Balawat (Iraq is another country pleading for lost antiquities) and past the Roman statue of the crouching Aphrodite (ditto Italy), then headed toward the galleries containing what are known in Britain as the Elgin marbles (but in Greece as the Parthenon marbles, or simply booty), where passers-by plucked pamphlets from a rack.
READ MORE AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/arts/09abroad.html

And here is the rest of it.

the politics of language

2010-04-25T19:12:00.001-07:00

A fascinating article about how some in France want to cling to "their" language, to keep it pure and unadulterated. This reflects the debate in the United States, where some espouse the English-only approach... a fear that, under the advance of Spanish, English will somehow disappear or become Spanglish. The problem is that every language is alive, not stagnant. It changes over time, and responds to societal changes. We no longer speak like our ancestors did, say, in the Middle Ages. The banner of a language under siege usually means the fear that a culture or values are under siege. As a political refugee in France, I remember being welcomed, but with a large dose of French exceptionalism: bienvenue, but you must become French like us...
I ADD: There were also many French people who accepted us as we were, and who became my dearest friends.
Pardon my French
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/arts/25abroad.html

Healing off the radar

2010-04-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Traditional curanderos a lifeline for the Latino version of health care providers
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/index.ssf/2010/04/traditional_curanderos_a_lifel.html
By Gosia Wozniacka
Photos by Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian
April 03, 2010

When Guadalupe Maldonado lifted a child in her Head Start classroom, acute pain shot through her hip. The Hillsboro woman could barely walk. She visited her doctor and her chiropractor, and took the medication and advice ordered. But the persistent pain prevented her from working.

Her sister mentioned she might try Domitila Juárez.

Now, Maldonado lay on a blanket on the floor as Juárez massaged... her principal pulse points from head to toe for several hours. When she finished, Juárez turned to the large portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging at the center of her living room wall and whispered a prayer.

"God is the healer," she added. "All the healing comes from him, not from me."

Three days later, hip pain gone, Maldonado returned to work.

Two to three people a day seek out the 68-year-old Juárez for all sorts of ailments -- sprains, aches and pain, anxiety, or hip and back injuries. She sends anyone with an open wound or major fracture to a doctor. Patients come to her Cornelius home from as far as Alaska, and while most are Latinos, she's started to see the occasional Anglo.

She is one of dozens of practitioners of traditional folk medicine in the Portland area who form an under-the-radar network of unexpected health care providers -- curanderos.

They are the Latino version of alternative medicine. Nearly 40 percent of all Americans use alternative treatments, but among Latinos, studies show 44 to 75 percent use traditional folk medicine.

The reasons are many:

Latinos are uninsured at three times the rate of non-Latino whites, so oftentimes it comes down to money.

"Many Latinos use folk healers because other health care is not readily available," says Alberto Moreno, migrant health coordinator for the state Department of Health and Human Services. "The Western medical system is often the last resort for our community, it's so cost-prohibitive."

Latinos face language and cultural barriers -- or fear of deportation -- that can lead to distrust of Western health care providers, says Santiago Ventura Morales, a community leader in Woodburn.

Or there are people like Maldonado who have insurance but turn to curanderos when Western medicine doesn't work.

"Health care in the United States is not holistic; it doesn't satisfy the people's spiritual and psychological needs," says Ventura. "When Latinos go with a traditional healer, they feel complete confidence. A healer is a doctor, nurse, counselor and spiritual guide all in one."

Health care has been front and center of the national conversation for the past year but didn't go so far as to take into account needs in specific cultural communities.

Still, the curandero network, a lifeline to Latinos that fills the gap of health care in their community, remains unregulated and untested. Bringing curanderos into the mainstream could help curtail scams, prevent medical complications and make health care more attractive for Latinos, says Gonzalo Flores, a licensed Portland acupuncturist and practicing curandero.

That's starting to happen across the country and in the metro area. In fact, the services of curanderos might have something to offer mainstream health care, much like acupuncture and other non-Western traditions.

"Rather than thinking that these guys are all witch doctors, we should ask how do we integrate some of the practices with the Western medical model to more effectively serve the Latino community," Flores says. "Curanderos can be a bridge."

***

Both Flores and Juárez were born into families of curanderos. Juárez watched her mother and grandmothers dispense herbs, give massages and deliver babies in her small hometown in Mexico. Later, when Juárez married, "the gift of healing just came," and she continued when her children sponsored her immigration to Oregon 15 years ago.

Juárez doesn't advertise herself, doesn't have business cards, but accepts donations: Maldonado paid $20 for several hours of massage. It's not how Juárez supports herself, though. Until last year, she worked full time at a cannery.

"For me, it's not a job," she said. "It's something that God gives you so that you can give it back to other people."

Flores traces his curandero roots to Tejano and Apache ancestors -- his grandmother traveled around Texas ranches, setting bones and delivering babies.

Flores blends beliefs in cleansing rituals that involve feathers, eggs, incense and Native American prayers, among others. He charges $150 for a cleansing but makes his living as a licensed acupuncturist and specialist in Oriental medicine at GroundSpring Healing Center.

"Traditional healing is part of the Americas," Flores says. "A hundred years ago, Western medicine was the alternative medicine."

***

Curanderismo -- from the Spanish cura for both "priest" and "healing" -- blends indigenous practices and botanical medicines with Catholic and African elements, Flores says. Its holistic approach treats illness as an imbalance with the natural universe.

"For Latinos, healing means a combination of the spiritual, mental, physical and emotional, while Western culture separates healing," says Lucrecia Suarez, a Portland therapist who works at Conexiones, which offers culturally responsive counseling.

In Oregon, most curanderos operate out of their homes; a few run botanicas, shops that sell herbs and "spiritual" supplies; and they specialize -- as bonesetters, massage therapists, herbalists or spiritualists.

With a shared culture, curanderos understand culture-bound comments such as, "I have a curse," and don't dismiss complaints of soul loss, evil eye, jealousy or physical or emotional blockage. These culture-bound issues, Suarez says, are considered ailments only in a specific community.

In fact, Latinos rarely reveal them to Western doctors -- or even that they see a curandero -- for fear of ridicule. But whether Anglos give curanderos credence or not, the placebo effect cannot be underestimated. Improvement in health based solely on the power of conviction is scientifically proven, and ignoring culture-bound ailments can hinder healing, Suarez says.

"The basic principle of psychology is that people believe in the healer and his methods," she says. "All these practices are different doors to the same thing."

***

Trust can be a dangerous thing, though, in an unregulated health industry. Some curanderos are scammers, charge thousands of dollars, sell expired or prescription medication, or give illegal injections. Those should be red flags.

Take, for example, the woman who billed herself in ads in Latino newspapers as Doña Tere. She claimed to be able to cure alcoholism, insomnia and headaches, money problems, even impotence. She could ritually "tie" or "untie" relationships, dissolve bad spells and heal the spirit. "Results in just a few days, guaranteed."

Chronic migraines sent Alfonsa Bustos to Doña Tere every eight days between February and April 2008. Doña Tere asked for $5,000 cash, then more money, then gold pendants and earrings, Walmart gift cards and a television. "The TV was so that I could see the person who put the spell on me," said Bustos. "She told us she would return all the things we brought."

In all Bustos lost about $10,000; others who filed complaints by May 2009 reported they gave Doña Tere between $1,600 and $6,500. Despite half a dozen complaints from residents of Tigard, Oregon City and Salem, the Oregon Department of Justice didn't have enough evidence to pursue Doña Tere, who by that time had disappeared.

Fraud often goes unreported because some fear dealing with the government because of immigration issues, says Tony Green of the state Department of Justice. And the sometimes subjective nature of healing makes it difficult to judge the difference between a dishonest and a reputable healer.

"Even if we could catch them, the victims often feel like they did get something of value, no matter how meager," Green says, "so the cases are tough to prosecute criminally."

***

Integrating legitimate curanderos into the health care system may be an answer to avoid scams as well as lessen the burden of treating serious conditions in emergency rooms.

The Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, which runs half a dozen primary care clinics in Washington and Yamhill counties, periodically arranges meetings of doctors with curanderos, says Dr. Lyn Jacobs, the center's family practice physician.

"There's an effort to include them, so we know what they're doing and they know us," she says.

Patients at Virginia Garcia have access to an acupuncturist and a naturopath, as well as a doctor certified by the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, who guides treatments with herbs, supplements, massage and other non-Western approaches. One of the clinics grows an herb garden.

"We believe that allopathic (Western) medicine does not have all answers," Jacobs says.

Other area clinics are connecting, too. In 2005, clinical nurse manager Leda Garside participated in the Oregon-Mexico health professionals exchange. The exchange -- organized by the Department of Human Services' Migrant Health Office and the Mexican Consulate -- took Oregon doctors, nurses and policymakers to Mexico, where they observed curanderos working closely with hospital doctors.

Garside, who works at Salud Services in Hillsboro, learned that many local Latino clients frequent curanderos -- which affects their overall care.

"We always ask, because it's not uncommon, in case it may interfere with the medication we give them," says Garside.

Around the country, Flores says, more medical schools and clinics look at health more holistically, including teaching about curanderos, who can provide cultural knowledge to make health care more affordable and effective for Latinos.

And it's not just Latinos. More Anglos show up at Domitila Juárez's Corvallis home, seeking her healing massages.

Explains Flores: "Americans are becoming interested in curanderos because, guess what, they get the body-mind-spirit thing."
- Gosia Wozniacka

Photography as we know it

2010-03-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
The New York Times
Published: March 29, 2010

By the time Matt Eich entered photojournalism school in 2004, the magazine and newspaper business was already declining....
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html

Post-journalism?

2010-03-24T20:51:00.001-07:00

Let me know if you need a new fence!

Woman that Glows in the Dark

2010-03-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

I live in the crack of an egg.  In the space  between galaxies and earth
mud.  Along the thin borders of enlightenment and darkness.
I saw through the smoky mirror, and my third eye winked at me!
Time is an illusion, and eternity lives in the cracks of everything  that is dualized.
I like living in the middle of  either/or  and gray is my color  in black/white.
 I’m cozy in the nucleus of past/future and
I am the ember seed in light/dark. I am Woman that Glows in the Dark.
I’ll stay awake forever if I have to.

-- Elena Avila, psychiatric nurse and curandera/traditional healer

And here is the rest of it.

Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny

2010-03-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty revolutionary article!
Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny

Namyslow, PL

2010-03-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

The ocean at Newport

2010-02-11T08:09:00.001-08:00

And here is the rest of it.

Looting or saving your children?

2010-01-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

What would you do if the earthquake struck at your home, your community?
Do journalists - or their editors - choose the right words to describe what's happening in Haiti?
Great piece by one of my favorite writers, Rebecca Solnit.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175194/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_in_haiti%2C_words_can_kill/

Oregon's double minority

2010-01-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

Often shunned by family, Oregon's gay Latinos fight for respect
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/01/often_shunned_by_family_oregon.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian

When 16-year-old Edna Vazquez of Colima, Mexico, fell in love with a young woman, her parents ran her out of the house. They sent Vazquez to live with relatives in Oregon, hoping a separation from her girlfriend would save their only daughter and the family honor.... http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/01/often_shunned_by_family_oregon.html

Haiti

2010-01-16T14:16:00.000-08:00

The news from Haiti is very depressing. It seems most supplies are not getting through, because of lack of infrastructure to get them to the people most affected..
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/americas/17haiti.html?hp
and here's a list of place to donate money to the relief efforts:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fgw-haiti-earthquake-resources13-2009jan13,0,5778526,full.story

Soul collage

2010-01-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

Five of us women got together last week to make these collages, as a summing up of the old year and a looking forward towards the new. The two of mine, shown above, are called "Out" and "Refuge."

photo of the year

2010-01-03T13:52:00.001-08:00

I saw this photo in the morning. It struck me with force.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/world/africa/08kenya.html

Immigration outfall

2009-12-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

Good story...
The Vendor Disappears, Leaving a Void
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html?scp=1&sq=bangladeshi&st=cse

Newcomers

2009-12-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

This project started with a book, "Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing" edited by Ilan Stavans. I thought: could I do something like this in Oregon -- collect writing about the immigrant experience? After talking with my editor, I came to the conclusion that moving and being an "immigrant" (a newcomer) is a universal experience, one known to both immigrants and Americans who move from state to state. Learning a new language and culture adds a completely different level to a new arrival. Still, similarities abound. I solicited writing from people who moved to Oregon in 2009 -- whether from India or from Kentucky, from Washington or Mexico. They wrote about what moving and coming to a new place meant to them. And I wrote about my own experience...

New to Oregon: The chase of a fresh start rewards a refugee with a richer life
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/index.ssf/2009/12/new_to_oregon_the_chase_of_a_f.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
December 26, 2009

The first time my family moved, it was supposed to be just a vacation. Communist Poland lay behind the Iron Curtain then, in 1988, and getting passports for a family of four verged on a miracle. Paris seemed the most exciting summer break destination.

After three weeks of sightseeing, instead of folding up the tent we had pitched in a Parisian campsite and returning to our Polish concrete-block high-rise building, my parents asked France for political asylum.

I was 11 years old. Learning a new language, living in a refugee center and writing letters to friends left behind was not how I had imagined adolescence. A year and a half later, we sat on an airplane bound for New York City after being granted political refugee status in the United States.

America offered freedom and better jobs for my parents, a psychologist and sociologist. But this second relocation proved even more painful than the first. Language woes, cultural isolation and the scramble to survive marked our initial years in a Connecticut suburb.

What we wanted most was to go back home: to Poland.

Today, many other moves later, I wonder what propelled us, what made us persevere -- and what launches anyone to relocate across international borders or over state lines, and resettle in a new place.

Between July 2008 and July 2009, 16,130 people moved to Oregon. They came from Africa and from Atlanta, from Los Angeles and from Russia, and Mexico. What did they leave behind, and why did they come to our state? What did moving teach them? What did they gain?

People have moved for millennia -- of free will or pushed out by circumstances, legally or clandestinely, alone or streaming en masse -- in search of work, a like-minded community or sanctuary. They crossed plains and deserts, flew over oceans or rode for days in cattle wagons like my grandmother, forcibly repatriated across Eastern Europe after World War II.

The act of moving has always meant the chase of a fresh start, a more generous fate. That's what my family sought: a place where Communist Party membership didn't determine comforts or careers, where neighbors didn't spy on neighbors, where oranges were not just a rare gift under the Christmas tree.

It wasn't easy to leave Poland. Still, while others stayed on, my parents chose to move. They gambled everything they'd achieved -- family, friends, good jobs, a home -- imagining that a new place would bring at least a kinder reality. They couldn't predict the hardships.

Relocation is a feat of letting go. You disconnect from familiar people and places, ones you loved without knowing it. You shed habits and furniture, the accumulation of a life. Moving is, in a sense, the ultimate act of destruction.

But uprooting can also be an awakening. It can give you a new perspective on where you came from and where you are now. You can discover strengths and viewpoints you didn't know you had.

My parents eventually found jobs in their professions, while my brother and I attended universities. We bought a house, learned English and became U.S. citizens. When I tried to decide whether to go to graduate school on the East Coast -- close to family and friends -- or the West Coast, an American friend wrote me: "Go West, young woman!"

An early version of this 1851 advice of Indiana journalist John Soule had served as the mantra for 19th-century American migration. U.S. citizens and immigrants moved across the country, to the Pacific Ocean, including to Oregon. They have not stopped since.

This vast country lends itself to epic journeys. That's what Americans do -- that's how we all became Americans.

So back in 2001, I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. In a few years, I relocated, via a brief detour in Texas, to Oregon. Though I miss my family and friends, my life is larger, richer still by the people and landscapes I found.

But there's a burden left, a nagging grief: a grandmother who lives alone in Poland, a brother and parents whose lives are distant. Moving is, sometimes, a search for absolution -- a hope that what we've found vindicates all that we've left behind.

-- Gosia Wozniacka

Separate Lives, at the threshold of the EU

2009-12-22T22:35:00.000-08:00

I was very excited to find that Transitions Online, the magazine that ambitiously covers all of the post-communist countries, reprinted a story I wrote several years ago. I found it online by accident! It was a great story to work on. My Polish colleague Wojtek and I took small rickety buses and trains traveling across villages and towns on Poland's eastern border. We were welcomed into people's homes, in the old tradition of Polish hospitality, fed kielbasa and tea by little Polish grandmas, and marveled at the times gone by and the times ahead. We finally found a village that was split in half -- one part lay in Poland and would be part of the European Union, the other part lay in Belarus, a former Soviet Republic that's still far from Western ways...

Polish-Belarusian Border: Separate Lives
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=352&NrSection=3&NrArticle=21045&tpid=6&ST1=ad&ST_T1=job&ST_AS1=0&ST_LS1=-1&ST2=body&ST_T2=letter&ST_AS2=0&ST_LS2=-1&ST_max=3
by Gosia Wozniacka and Wojciech Kosc
Photos by Gosia Wozniacka
21 December 2009

Joining the EU brought many benefits to Poles and much harder lives for those living just the other side of the bloc’s new eastern border.

The decade that is drawing to a close saw its share of revolutions, whether on the street, at the ballot box, or by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. From now through Wednesday, 23 December, TOL will look at how we covered some of the most significant events of the past 10 years – today, the “big bang” accession of 10 new countries to the European Union in 2004.
This article originally ran on 10 September 2004.

TOKARY, Poland | Down Napoleon Highway, where the French emperor marched his troops to Moscow, a road winds through thick forest, barren fields, and hamlets cocooned in lingering morning mist. Wooden huts perch on the edge of clearings.

Around the bend, the village of Tokary appears almost out of nowhere. A Catholic cemetery, guarded by an Orthodox wooden cross, marks the entrance. At the crossroads, two border patrolmen chat next to their jeep on the empty and wind-swept road.

A mile into town, Eugeniusz Wichowski is having a hearty mid-day meal. He’s 42 and in his fourth term as mayor for a cluster of villages on the Polish-Belarusian border. His family is one of the oldest and most respected in Tokary – his grandfather was granted land here in recognition for fighting against the Germans in World War II.

Wichowski’s mother, Antonina Wichowska, 72, shuffles around the kitchen serving pancakes and tea with lemon. Thanks to the mayor’s efforts, his parents’ house – like 99 percent of households here – has running water and electricity. And the village, like most others, has paved roads and telephone booths.

But it is only half the picture. The other half peeks out from behind the trees a few hundred meters away, in Belarusian Tokary. The Polish-Belarusian border slices the village in two, and, as of 1 May, that border gained added significance. With Polish Tokary now in the EU, its Belarusian twin – though within walking distance – is worlds apart, and the border may additionally become a dividing line between prosperity and stagnation.

EU membership has not been officially discussed for Belarus, or for another of Poland’s former Soviet neighbors, Ukraine. Some fear that Tokary’s impoverished Belarusian counterpart – and the villages like it that dot the borderlands – will be sealed for years to come behind a new “iron curtain.”

AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE

Antonina, perched on a wooden stool by the white-tile stove, says the best thing her son ever did as mayor was to unite the two Tokarys, if only briefly. Her husband, Konstanty, has four brothers on the Belarusian side of the village and a sister in Brest. During the course of Konstanty’s lifetime, Tokary belonged to Poland, briefly to Germany, then to the Soviet Union, again to Germany, and, finally returned – or half was – to Poland.

As mayor, Wichowski was able to open the border in Tokary on two occasions during religious holidays, in the early 1990s. Prior to this, Konstanty had not seen his relatives for 40 years. His wife and son had never met them.

“You should have seen it when we met again for the first time,” Antonina recounts. “We were all kissing each other and cursing those who had divided us. My husband was crying. They [the relatives from Belarus] slept here; the house was full with three generations of our family.”

Things are more complicated now. To cross from one Tokary to the other, Poles now need to go to Bialystok, the province’s capital city 130 kilometers away, to get a visa. And the nearest border crossing is in Polowce, 25 kilometers away.

Minority populations live on both sides of the border. There are Catholic Belarusians and Orthodox Poles. In Tokary, as in many towns and villages in this area, a Catholic church and an Orthodox chapel coexist. Despite past misunderstandings, the Catholic and Orthodox adherents of today attend each other’s services, especially weddings, funerals, and major religious holidays. Many villagers here speak a local dialect, a mixture of Polish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, and on the Belarusian side, some still speak Polish.

A mile into the forest, a little past a sky-blue Orthodox chapel, a razed tract of earth stretches like a phantom road. From behind an iron gate, Belarusian Tokary is visible through the trees. Occasionally, the border patrol rumbles by in a jeep.

Ireneusz Koziejuk, 35, an Orthodox priest based in Polish Tokary, says he sometimes sees people driving up with old maps and waiting. “They sleep in their cars, and in the morning they are baffled as to why the gate is not rising. [I imagine] it used to be so nice, people going back and forth, back and forth. Now that’s just a memory.”

The border crossing between the two Tokarys was officially closed in 1948 after the turmoil of World War II – though a crossing operated regularly on special occasions. When Poland became a democracy in 1989, the border was again firmly secured until the mayor was occasionally allowed to open it again.

At least at first sight, Belarusian Tokary looks no different than Polish Tokary. In a wooden house that’s only 10 years his junior, Jan Gorbaczuk, 78, looks at the telephone, his gaze mixing resignation and sadness. “These were my friends, my guys,” he says of his lost relatives and neighbors. “We used to go see girls together. Now I don’t even have a telephone number for Kostek [Konstanty Wichowski].” Jan and Konstanty’s fathers were brothers.

Maria Zajec, who runs the kolkhoz, the village collective farm of about 160 workers, says financial reality won’t allow villagers like Gorbaczuk to visit Poland. Belarusians live on an average monthly salary of $50, and a single-entry visa costs $12.

“The European Union will not do us any good,” she announces categorically standing in her driveway. “We won’t be going to Brest anytime soon to get a visa, because most people here don’t even have a car, and if we did, we couldn’t afford to pay the [visa] fee.”

Zajec, in her late 40s, believes the West is out to exploit countries from the former Eastern Bloc. “We’ll all become their slaves,” she says. “The West doesn’t need your goods. It only needs your land and labor.”

“But if I had the choice,” Zajec adds quickly, “I would like to live in Poland. I often watch Polish soap operas on TV. It’s so nice there. In Poland you can be the master of your own life. There is something to look forward to. Here, it’s the collective.”

By the fence of Zajec’s house, an old woman pushes a rusted bicycle down the asphalt road. Weronika Samczuk, 78, got married three months before the border closed in 1948. Her house, which stood in the borderline strip, was dismantled. She was stuck with her husband in Belarus and never made it back to Poland. “Please, tell me how everyone on the other side is,” she implores.

Mayor Wichowski calls the closing of the border in Tokary “a mistake.” For years he has been working to re-open the crossing. “I feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, especially now that the European Union is here,” he says. “The new visa regulations have created so many problems. Contacts between people [on both sides of the village] used to be easier. Today it’s worse than ever before. People have stopped visiting each other.

“Contact with the Belarusian border region is one of my priorities as mayor,” he adds.

SERVING COWS IN APRONS

Wearing a stretched, gray sweater marked with holes and pieces of earth, Kazimierz Zalewski, the Tokary village administrator or soltys, has just finished mucking out the pigsty. He smiles heartily from under his thick moustache when he speaks. Zalewski, 48, has 23 hectares of poor-quality farmland from which he must sustain his wife, their six children, and his parents. He produces about 80 percent of the food his family needs on his farm.

According to Zalewski, farmers in Tokary are not enthusiastic about the changes the EU is to bring.

“They don’t have any hope,” he says, pulling on his moustache as he stands on the steps of his white-brick house. “They don’t believe in the EU.”

Zalewski says the EU will be beneficial for Warsaw, but not for fringe villages like Tokary, citing the cumbersome regulations that farmers must fulfill to operate in the new market as the main reason for his pessimism. Using his own case as an example, the soltys says he might have to give up milk production and sell his four cows, even though they now bring him about $250 per month in income through milk sales. He simply can’t afford to build the modern, roofed cowshed separate from other buildings in his farmyard that EU regulations dictate.

“This is baloney,” he sneers. “What are we supposed to do? Take care of the cows in white aprons?”

EU membership will bring with it EU agricultural subsidies, but at only half the level that Western farmers receive. That inequality will continue until 2013, when subsidies will finally level up. According to a study by the European Commission, Zalewski and other local farmers like him can count on receiving up to $300 a month.

SURVIVING, NOT THRIVING

With or without the subsidies, people in Tokary are trying to make do. Some have jobs in the neighboring village of Adamowo, where they’re helping expand the local oil pumping station, a part of the “Friendship” pipeline that runs from Russia to central Poland. Others work at the post office or at the juice plant Hortex in the town of Siemiatycze, 30 kilometers away. Still others cultivate their own small plots of land. But many, Zalewski says, have already left.

For some, it all comes back to the dormant border crossing.

“Young people leave because they don’t see a future here,” Bohdan Sawicki, the village’s Catholic priest, says. “I am quietly hoping that the border crossing will reopen here in Tokary. This would mean increased movement and trade, hence a hope for monetary gains. People here are strong, capable. They just need a chance.”

Without a border crossing, the 48-year-old priest says, this village may die. Only two baptisms were celebrated this year, but he’s presided over four funerals.

Despite ambivalence about both their future in the EU and the increasing formalization of the dividing line between the two Tokarys, people here still chose to vote yes in the referendum on Poland’s accession to the EU in June 2003. Anemic turnout aside, 67 percent of villagers in border towns like Tokary who did choose to go to the polling station cast a yes vote. And in April, Mayor Wichowski hired two advisors to help local farmers fill out paperwork for EU projects and subsidies.

But even the optimistic Wichowski sounds worried about the future of the tiny place where he was born. The divided village’s Polish part – even though it is most certainly better off than its Belarusian twin – is still a long way from prosperity. While he busies himself with learning how to fill out forms for EU benefits, Wichowski says he sometimes wonders about the wisdom of it all. Maybe if villagers in the Belarusian and Polish parts of Tokary were given the chance to stick together, Wichowski muses back in his office, both Tokarys could make it.

“When a poor guy gets together with another poor guy, they both get rich,” he says, coining an aphorism. “But when a poor guy gets together with rich guys, the poor man only gets poorer.” #

Seattle

2009-12-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

Organizing immigrants and refugees

2009-12-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

Story on CIO, or Center for Intercultural Organizing, in the paper tomorrow:

Refugees and immigrants today, citizens and leaders tomorrow
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
December 06, 2009
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/refugees_and_immigrants_today.html

On a Sunday afternoon in October, Kayse Jama stood before two dozen immigrants and refugees from 14 countries, describing how Portland's commissioners run the city. Though many in his audience had fled to Oregon for fear of a violent or corrupt government, Jama told them how to join committees, attend meetings, and vote.

"You have to be early at the table, otherwise no one will raise your issues," Jama said. "If you're not there, no one will be speaking for you."

Six years ago, Jama, a refugee from Somalia, founded the Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO) in Portland. He felt that immigrants and refugees wanted more than government services; they wanted a way to affect their community and have a say in state and city politics.

The organization, which unites new arrivals from diverse backgrounds, hopes to create a multiethnic, multiracial movement for immigrant and refugee rights. It has trained hundreds of newcomers in civics and leadership skills, helping them integrate into U.S. society.

The center also helps newcomers become residents and citizens, obtain work permits and travel documents, and guides them in how to petition for family members.

The work is crucial, Jama said, because Oregon has seen a large immigrant influx over the past three decades, but its political leadership is still one of the whitest, least diverse in the nation.

"There's belief that Portland is a progressive city," Jama said. "But the reality is that there's a huge demographic shift and the system has not figured out how to address it. People in power are not able to understand how to engage diverse communities."

Training leaders

While most smaller nonprofits focus on specific ethnic communities, CIO organizes across nations and cultures.

"It's an organization that really fills a niche of giving voice to a growing community," said Midge Purcell, a coordinator with the Urban League of Portland. "And they are doing this by giving people the skills to represent their interests in the city and to be more engaged in the decision-making process."

The center attracts mostly immigrant/refugee professionals and U.S.-born "internationalists;" it has 425 members from 67 different countries. Ninety percent of its members are low-income. The group tries to alleviate class and language barriers by providing translators and baby sitters.

The organization is a result of Jama's own frustration. He fled Mogadishu in 1991 during Somalia's civil war and has lived in Portland for the past 10 years. But he felt his fellow immigrants and refugees lacked a voice in Oregon.

CIO was the solution. Its flagship leadership training program, PILOT (Pan-Immigrant Leadership and Organizing Training), teaches newcomers about immigrant rights, state and city politics, community organizing, campaigning, and media strategies, among other topics.

Jama, who became a U.S. citizen last month, puts the trainees to work testifying at public meetings, running short-term campaigns, and lobbying local politicians against policies that discriminate against newcomers. He promotes immigrant leaders who can get involved in the political process.

For some, such as Tatyana Bondarchuk, a refugee from Russia, that means overcoming significant barriers of language, culture, and a deep mistrust of politics.

"People coming from countries that are experiencing conflict have a fear of government," said Donna Perry, a refugee from Nigeria and policy adviser to Portland Commissioner Amanda Fritz. "They are just trying to survive when they come here. What CIO has done is to get them educated about how significant participating in the life of your community is."

When Bondarchuk moved to the United States in 2000, she knew only two words in English – "yes" and "no." After training at CIO, she met with the mayors of Portland and Beaverton. This year, she helped Russian youths secure Portland city funding for an outdoor concert.

"I felt like I had more confidence because of CIO training," Bondarchuk said. "I learned how I can make my impact and work with the government to bring issues from the community."

And this spring, Bondarchuk was one of 50 members who took a bus to Salem to lobby legislators on state health care issues. Members of APANO (Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon), the Urban League and Oregon Action also participated, highlighting another of CIO's widely praised qualities: building bridges with community organizations.

Overcoming challenges

While the organization has grown and become a fixture, it has struggled to survive on a shoestring budget. It cut two of its five staff members – at a time when more newcomers are knocking on its doors.

CIO is also grappling with a loss of visibility at Portland City Hall. The group gained a high profile during Mayor Tom Potter's time in office. It was active in Potter's Vision into Action, the Immigrant and Refugee Task Force, and the campaign to create the Office of Human Relations.

"Potter opened the doors to immigrants and refugees. It was a very symbolic time, a real coming into City Hall," said Maria Lisa Johnson, director of the Office of Human Relations. "CIO was such a part of that."

Engaging Mayor Sam Adams has been more difficult, Jama said.

"We're not part of his urgent agenda," Jama said. "As a community member, I don't feel like we're even at the table. I feel like we took three steps back."

But Adams does care, said fellow Commissioner Fritz, who overseas the offices of Neighborhood Involvement and Human Relations. The proof:He made funding for CIO's leadership training ongoing.

"There's a recognition that our new partners, like CIO, are key," said Fritz, an immigrant from England. "They really help new Portlanders settle in."

But to Jama, the funding is "a given," he said. "We want more than money."

The problem is one of perception, he said. Most people think immigrants and refugees just want financial aid – but the reality is that every city decision affects newcomers.

"It's been a difficult process to explain that when they're creating environmental policy, or economic development, or planning policy, immigrant and refugee leaders need to be at the table," Jama said. "We're not just people who need services."

CIO is now expanding to Beaverton, helping city officials there create an immigrant and refugee task force. It's only a matter of time before more cities make an effort to include newcomers in civic life, Jama said. "Immigrants and refugees are changing the face of America," he said. "We're the future. We cannot afford to be on the sidelines."

-- Gosia Wozniacka

Former enemies talk and reconcile

2009-12-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

This was a hard article to write. I played catch up on a number of African conflicts and disasters, which I generally know about but am not an expert on. When you interview people who went through a particular conflict, you want to get the details right. And you don't want to offend -- even as you need to ask uncomfortable questions. For example, which tribe are you from - when they do not want to talk about tribes anymore - implying, are you from the tribe that did the killing or the one that got killed? But in these conflicts, there's really very little black and white. Some of the reading I did was incredibly gruesome, difficult, sad, esp. about Rwanda and DR Congo. On another note, the perseverance of African refugees reassures me. Their ability to move on past disaster, to go on with their lives... Projects such as this one go a long way in helping the community heal.

African refugees find common ground with enemies through dialogue
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/african_refugees_find_common_g.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
December 01, 2009

Vincent Chirimwami and Marie Abijuru did not know each other when they met in Portland. She was a refugee from Rwanda. He had fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Actually, they didn't want to meet. A 15-year-old conflict that cost millions of lives in Africa still haunted them, even in Oregon. They hated and feared each other so much that being in the same room seemed implausible.

"Talking with whom? The Rwandese? Whoa!" Chirimwami thought when approached about participating in a dialogue project. "How can we talk to the Rwandese?! They were the ones who invaded and killed us!"

Abijuru was just as skeptical. But the African Diaspora Dialogue Project became a turning point. Run by the Conflict Resolution Graduate Program at Portland State University and Portland's Africa House, the project allows refugees to help one another heal. While federal services for refugees focus on housing and job assistance, they don't tackle the social fallout of wars and conflicts.

"It's my tribe against your tribe, my clan against your clan," community leader Djimet Dogo said. "They don't talk because of what happened back home."

But when Hutus live upstairs and Tutsis downstairs, and warring Somali clans attend the same English class, "the people are afraid," Dogo said. "They don't know how to handle it."

If such historical conflicts go unaddressed, said PSU professor and dialogue facilitator Barbara Tint, they "stand in the way of refugees successfully integrating into American society."

Tension turns to talk

The dialogue project was launched in January 2008, financed by a two-year, $298,000 grant from the Andrus Family Fund, a New York philanthropic organization. The initial six-week dialogue session included about 30 participants and a half-dozen facilitators.

Launching the dialogue proved challenging, Tint said. Suspicion overflowed. Community leaders who became facilitators were insulted and accused of having a special agenda and taking bribes.

The project's tie to the university and its facilitation by Tint helped, Dogo said, because the teaching institution provided an air of neutrality and credibility.

It also was tough to get refugees, overwhelmed with survival in a new country, to commit to months of meetings, Tint said. Most are minimum-wage workers who can't afford baby sitters or bus passes. A stipend covered those costs.

Many participants were seen as traitors by friends and family, who told them, "Who gave you the authorization to talk to our enemies?" said Dogo, who runs Africa House.

For Chirimwami, who is secretary of the Congolese Community of Oregon,, curiosity won.

"I wanted to understand what the Rwandese think," he said. "I didn't go in thinking I'm going to make peace. I told my community, I'm going to do diplomacy with the enemy."

Abijuru decided to talk for her children.

"I wanted my kids to meet with other African kids and not see the conflict," Abijuru said. "We don't want to pass on the bad things to them. We need to resolve this conflict ourselves."

Chirimwami and Abijuru were part of the dialogue's first two groups, a dozen people in each. One group brought together survivors of the genocide in Africa's Great Lakes region -- Rwanda, Burundi and Congo. The second -- hostile Somali clans, which fought during that country's civil war.

From enemies to friends

At the start of the dialogue, some participants refused to talk or even eat the other group's food. Several dropped out.

"Dialogue is often about holding multiple truths simultaneously," Tint told them. "It's for people to tell their story, to feel like they can and have it heard and acknowledged."

The key, Tint said, was to create a safe space for people to share their experiences.

Eventually, Chirimwami and Abijuru learned each other's stories. The conflict that divided them stemmed from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by an extremist Hutu government and civilians.

Abijuru survived and left Rwanda with her baby to join her husband in the Ivory Coast. When her husband was killed, Abijuru applied for refugee status. She came to Oregon in 2004.

The strife in Congo nearly killed Chirimwami. After the Rwandan genocide, more than 1million Hutu militiamen poured into Congo and set up base in refugee camps.

In response, the Rwandan army and Tutsi rebel forces invaded Congo three times, carrying out massacres and sparking a war in 1998 that sucked in six other African nations and killed an estimated 5.4 million people by 2008, known as "Africa's World War."

As a teacher, Chirimwami tried to protect his students. He was branded a traitor and nearly executed, but his family bribed the soldiers to release him. Chirimwami escaped to Tanzania, where he lived for six years before coming to Oregon as a political refugee.

The six-week dialogue changed Chirimwami's and Abijuru's perspectives.

"When I listened, I heard that the Rwandese were also victimized," he said. "I started to separate them from the problem."

Chirimwami shared his ideas with his community. Instead of blaming each other, they decided, the Congolese and Rwandese should work together to educate the American public about the conflicts.

As for Abijuru, when a Congolese family recently moved to her Portland neighborhood, she helped them "as people, as human beings," she said. Before, she would not have been comfortable even stepping into their house. But now, "I am over these conflicts. Our stories are similar."

And in October, Chirimwami and Abijuru's families met at a Rwandan family wedding in Portland.

"What happened back home is not our fault," Abijuru said, "so why should we hate each other?"

Unity at last?

Dogo and others say the dialogue project was long overdue. For years, African community leaders have struggled to bring together the multinational, multilingual community that includes at least 15,000 Africans from a dozen countries.

Even after Africa House opened three years ago in Southeast Portland, fear and divisions caused by old conflicts persisted, Dogo said.

"This project gave us a boost," he said.

Tint and Dogo hope to expand the dialogue to Africans from other nations. Chirimwami, Abijuru and other participants are preparing to facilitate their own groups in January.

"Before, it was us versus them," Dogo said. "Now, it's, 'How are we going to work together?' This is their home now."

For Abijuru, that means leading a normal life in Oregon.

Healing, she said, will take time, but it's indispensable for all Africans.

"It's not easy to move forward for refugees," Abijuru said. "History will remain, nothing can change that. But people can change. I have hope."

-- Gosia Wozniacka

From Russia with...

2009-11-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing an opera star. I have seen a few operas in my life, liked some of them, but am by no means an expert. The world of opera is pretty removed from my life, and as a result has some magical appearances to it. So it was nice to be able to ask questions of an opera soprano singer! She was a wonderful interview, very eloquent and colorful. Here is her story.

From Russia with persistence: Opera star now trains Oregon's youth
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/index.ssf/2009/11/from_russia_with_persistence_o.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
November 14, 2009

Who knows what would have happened to Anna Kazakova were it not for the sore throat and the long Russian winters...

Raised 25 miles from Moscow in the 1960s, Kazakova was a frail child, constantly sick. Kazakova's mother, tired of taking time off from work, believed that singers exercise their throat muscles and that would be a remedy. She signed up her 8-year-old for a children's choir, a part of the Young Pioneers communist organization.

Kazakova stopped getting sick. Not because she trained her throat muscles, she says, but because she loved singing. Twice a week, Kazakova took a bus alone to the choir building, never missing a rehearsal.

"My home was music, the song of the soul," she says. "My soul was singing since that time, and I was happy."

The choir had an ambitious repertoire: Bach, Vivaldi in Latin, as well as Russian songs. She learned solfège, or sight-reading, music theory and piano.

As a teenager, Kazakova rejoiced in the appearance of vinyl records, but she skipped the Beatles and rock music for Maria Callas and classical recordings.

She didn't consider professional singing until she was 16, when she met an uncle, a retired opera singer. Her parents, both engineers, could open few doors for her, she says, but they were able to pay for private voice lessons.

She learned to recognize a symphony's strict rules and grew fascinated with how composers build melody; she realized that opera masterpieces had the same passions and strong characters as good books or films.

"A good opera," she says, "raises your understanding of yourself as a person."

Kazakova majored in voice in college, then studied at the prestigious Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

Her first professional leading soprano role was in 1998 as Elvira in Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Ernani." As she sang on stage, Kazakova felt like she was "flying above everything, above the ground." She was like a channel for the music, she says, and she didn't have any fear.

She felt a powerful gift: be on stage and express the masterpieces that give the audience new ideals to strive for.

"Each time you love somebody, that's opera," she says. "Each time somebody is leaving you and you're unhappy, that's opera. Each time you're happy and whistling something joyful, that's what it is. That's opera."
***

Kazakova's career took off. She was accepted as a soloist at the Moscow State Philharmonic Society. She sang leading roles at the Moscow State Musical Theatre of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Later, she was lead soloist for the Helikon-Opera theater in Moscow. She performed in Europe and in the United States.

She took on opera roles as varied as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin," Micaëla in George Bizet's "Carmen," and Mimi in Giacomo Puccini's "La Bohème." She also sang soprano in classical works by Bach, Haydn and Verdi.

Yet life as an opera singer in Moscow had its challenges. The Soviet Union had broken up in 1991, leading to political and economic turmoil.

Like the Soviets, the new Russian government considered opera and ballet sacred and supported these arts. Artists were allowed to tour the world. The opera and theater were almost a "separate world," Kazakova says. "It was some kind of an escape."

Yet even as a leading soloist, she was paid an official monthly salary of about $50 dollars and needed to earn extra money to survive.

In 2001, the year she won the Golden Mask, the prestigious Russian theater award, Kazakova was invited to sing in Seattle. A friend asked her to stay for a few months in the U.S. to rest. Then Kazakova met an American man from Portland, fell in love and moved to Oregon. The couple had a child, Galina, now 5 years old.

Though the couple later divorced, Kazakova decided to stay with her daughter in Northeast Portland. She found professional musicians to share her passion, such as pianist Anne Young, founder of the Lake Oswego Music Academy, and voice teacher Linda Brice, who runs Transformational Voice Training in Northeast Portland.

The 43-year-old Kazakova has found new passions in Oregon. For the past two years she's worked as an instructional assistant for English Language Development class at Scouters Mountain Elementary School in Happy Valley. She also teaches Russian to kids at Firebird Studio, a Russian Saturday school in Beaverton, through interactive games, dance, song and theater performance.

Kazakova remains a musician and performer at heart. Most recently, she sang with the Concert Opera of Seattle. She hopes to bring to audiences in Oregon and the Northwest her knowledge of Russian opera and culture. With Young, the pianist, she plans to promote a program of Russian song and music.

"I can bring a pretty authentic style," she says, "and translate what Russian songs, opera and poetry are about. I will never give up my music."

Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Farmworkers - sidebar

2009-11-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

Workers, growers share view of farm labor's plight

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/stable_farm_labor.html
Experts, growers and data show that most farmworkers in the United States are foreign-born Latinos. White, non-Hispanic, U.S.-born farmworkers are "not a dying breed, it's a dead breed," says William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. An Oregon grower and two workers talk about why that's the case:

Dick Joyce, owner, Sherwood-based Joyce Farms

Dick Joyce's father started the family farm in 1910 and over the years sold everything from grain to dairy products, cattle and hazelnuts. During harvest, Joyce says, neighboring farmers would go from farm to farm with a community threshing machine to cut the grain.

When the Joyce farm grew to include cherry orchards, during harvest time the family bused in pickers from Portland's West Burnside Street, Joyce says. Most were "Anglos," he says, and a few were black.

"Some people termed them as 'winos,' others as 'fruit tramps,'" Joyce says. "These guys would travel and follow the crops."

At other orchard, nursery and berry operations, women and children worked during summers to pick crops, Joyce says. When laws restricted children's work in agriculture, "the children didn't get training, they didn't get the incentive to work," he says.

And more Oregonians left the rural areas for city life, Joyce says. "Over time, as their economic situation improved, people were not interested in farmwork."

In the 1980s, the state saw a rapid influx of Mexicans, who filled the hole in the labor market, Joyce says. "Nobody was displaced as a result of their coming."

Joyce, who has sold most of his land, now runs a 40-acre fruit tree nursery and a maintenance business. He employs about 20 permanent workers -- all Latinos. Many have worked for him for more than two decades, he says, and he now employs their children.

"Culturally, white Americans have moved away from agriculture, and it isn't a matter of money at all," Joyce says. "There's no amount of money that you can lay on the table to make them work."

Joyce hopes to see a change in immigration law that would tighten borders and allow farmworkers to gain legal status.

Monty Smith, former farmworker, Scio

Monty Smith has been doing farmwork since he was 12. He has worked on horse ranches, dairy farms, berry farms, plus cattle, sheep and goat farms. His family, originally from Oklahoma, followed crops from state to state.

"I love farming; sometimes it's very rewarding," he says, "though it could be a real pain."

Smith, 38, says most of his family and neighbors have dropped out of agriculture. He lives in rural Linn County south of Salem, but none of his friends do farmwork.

"Farming is just something the American people don't do anymore," he says.

Most of the time, Smith has worked with Latinos and was "the only white guy working." White, non-Hispanic Americans shy away from agriculture, he says, because of low pay.

"It seems to me like a lot of Oregon workers are looking for higher-pay jobs -- $11 to $12 an hour -- not minimum wage," Smith says. "It takes a lot for a person to raise their family, and farms don't pay that."

Farmwork can mean eight- to 18-hour days, toiling in the scorching sun or cold rain, relocating and having little family time. And many farmers don't pay overtime.

Smith was a farmworker, he says, because he didn't have family obligations (he separated from his wife eight years ago, and his two children live in Missouri). But this spring, he got a job as a heavy equipment operator with Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, patching potholes and fixing water pipes. He doesn't plan to return to farmwork.

Anne Trujillo, farmworker, Carlton

Anne Trujillo, 45, entered farmwork last year because she was unemployed and many companies in Carlton, southwest of Portland, had shut down. Neither her parents nor her grandparents worked in the fields.

"It's nothing I ever thought I would do," she says. "If the economy wasn't this way, I would never do this kind of work. It's the hardest work I've ever done in my life."

Trujillo left Carlton and ended up packaging lettuce in Yuma, Ariz. Most of her friends were surprised she worked on a farm. None of them had ever worked in agriculture.

"They're in their comfort and don't want to leave home," she says.

Trujillo is used to life on the road. She was in the military and has held jobs in manufacturing and as a corrections officer. "It has never bothered me to move to new places," she says. "I'm pretty lucky, I have no kids or husband, so I'm able to pick up and go."

Work in the lettuce fields would start before sunrise and continue into the night, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, she says.

Trujillo says she was the only white, English-speaking farmworker. She was told no other white Americans had applied. All the other workers were Latino immigrants and spoke only Spanish, she says.

Trujillo is partly Latina -- her great-grandparents on her father's side came to the United States from Mexico -- but she doesn't speak the language or know the culture.

It took her awhile to learn how to do the job, she says. "I was nowhere near the speed of some of these women."

The company she worked for bought two apartment complexes to house employees, "outfitted with brand-new sheets and mattresses, fridges stuffed with food," she says.

The experience persuaded her to continue with farmwork. In April, Trujillo took a job in a California planting, staking and picking tomatoes. But she quit after two weeks, she says, because "I just couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the Latino men."

Now she's back in Carlton, looking for a job -- any job -- including in agriculture. "You have to do what you have to do."

--Gosia Wozniacka

Farmworkers - part I

2009-11-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

The first part of my series on U.S. farmworkers is running tomorrow on the front of the Business section. It's already available online:
Stable farm labor seems elusive in global economy
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/stable_farm_labor.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Faith Cathcart and Ross William Hamilton, The Oregonian
November 07, 2009

Labor has always been the Achilles heel of U.S. agriculture. But today, globalization is causing the ultimate strain.

In the past two decades, U.S. producers of labor intensive crops have not kept up with the growth in the market. They have lost both global and domestic market share to foreign competitors, primarily because of cheap labor and lower production costs overseas.

That's particularly true in regions that produce fruits, vegetables, and nursery products. Six states -- Oregon, California, Florida, Texas, Washington and North Carolina -- account for half of all hired and contracted farmworkers. Growers depend on them to increase productivity and get fruits and vegetables to our plates.

And yet, the people vital to our diet and to our nation's economic vigor have rarely been a stable labor force. Foreign-born immigrants, most without legal status, make up the majority of those working in the fields. Critics of illegal immigration say they should be deported, replaced with legal American workers, and shut off from re-entering by a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

But stabilizing the agricultural labor force is not as simple as putting up a wall. Everywhere policy makers have turned for the past 50 years -- guest worker programs, legalization -- they have encountered roadblocks. And most agriculture experts agree that U.S.-born workers are not likely to ever fill those jobs.

Due to industrialization, Americans have left farm work in droves. Now most won't work for minimum wage doing some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the nation. And if growers paid more, trying to attract local workers, the low-cost global marketplace would quickly put them out of business.

The question remains, how to secure a stable, agricultural labor force?

A defining societal shift
When Bob Terry, owner of Fisher Farms near Gaston, advertised for entry-level field work positions a few months ago, he expected at least a few white, Anglo job seekers.

"With unemployment being as high as it is, we thought we'd have at least some Caucasians," Terry said. "But we had none."

Several hundred job seekers showed up, all Latino, Terry said, and most spoke broken English. The company, which produces more than 3.5 million plants on 300 acres at three sites, hired 80.

This is how it's always been, said Terry, who has worked with the company for 16 years.

"We always hear, 'You don't hire Americans, you hire the others, immigrants, because they're cheaper,'" Terry said. "And it's just not true. We don't discriminate, we just take them as they come in."

Monumental changes in the structure of agriculture have affected who works in the fields and how Americans feel about agricultural jobs, experts and data show.

Family farms, passed down through generations, were once the agricultural engine. But technology led to increased production and pushed farms to consolidate into large, industrial-sized operations. Although small family farms still exist, the bulk of production has shifted to large-scale family and corporate operations, which hire more non-family workers.

At the same time, millions of American farmworkers left rural areas for industrial and commercial jobs and the lure of the city. Farm wages were too low to compete, plus farmworkers were excluded from most labor protections, then and now. According to the 2006 Current Population Survey, crop farmworkers earn less than workers in similar low-skilled occupations, such as maids and janitors.

The societal shift away from farm work means that working in the fields is no longer part of American culture and is not a job most U.S.-born Americans are skilled in or find desirable, even during a recession, experts and growers say.

Even farmers and their families have been driven away from farm work by expanding nonfarm economic opportunities, said William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

"We have a market where you can find alternatives," Kandel said. "Some pay less than agriculture, but are easier work and transportation-wise, and don't require the ability to move and follow the crops."

Lessons learned, forgotten
To fill entry-level farm jobs, agribusinesses and policymakers have turned to a variety of solutions, but many proved problematic.

One solution was to bring in immigrants to work the fields. But the Bracero Program, a guest worker program instituted by the government as the United States entered World War II, established a new instability.

Nearly five million Mexican farmworkers came on temporary contracts to the United States, including 15,000 to Oregon. Braceros brought with them large numbers of unauthorized workers, whom U.S. growers recruited and gladly hired. During the peak of the Bracero Program, in 1954, apprehensions of illegal border crossers by the U.S. Border Patrol sky-rocketed. Apprehensions fell as the program ended in 1964, amid reports of worker abuse. But the pattern was set.

From the mid-'70's on, under the U.S. government's tacit approval, illegal border crossings ballooned and U.S. growers continued to hire undocumented workers.

In 1986, immigration reform tried to legalize undocumented farmworkers and proffer farmers a stable, legal workforce. But it failed to deter illegal immigration.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted legal status to more than a million agricultural workers. It also introduced sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers and increased border enforcement.

But as the unauthorized workforce turned legal and gained job mobility, there was substantial "leakage" of legal workers away from agriculture to better paying, or more stable, employment, the National Agricultural Workers Survey shows. Ten years after IRCA, half of all farmworkers were again illegal, the survey shows.

The farmworkers who had gained amnesty left farm work, Kandel said, just as American farmworkers had done before. They were replaced with others crossing in illegally. While sanctions threatened to penalize employers for "knowingly" hiring undocumented workers, the law turned out to be obsolete. It requires employers to inspect identity documents and complete I-9 forms, but not to verify the authenticity of those documents.

"The cycle started all over again," said Robert Emerson, professor emeritus of Food & Resource Economics at the University of Florida.

Globalization brings uncertainty
According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, more than 90 percent of today's farmworkers are Latino, and only about 20 percent are U.S.-born. Over half don't have legal status, both nationally and in Oregon.

The question, Emerson said, is how to prevent the illegal immigration cycle from reoccurring when another reform is passed. Some experts, worker advocates and immigration critics say it's time to mechanize harvests and raise farm wages to attract and retain U.S.-born and legal immigrant workers.

"Growers may have to increase wages, mechanize, or use other kinds of agricultural methods to reduce reliance on hired farmworkers," Kandel said.

But globalization could impede that effort.

Employers can't afford to invest in mechanization or raise wages, because "costs of production are going up," said Gary Furr, general manager of J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., a large nursery based in Boring. Companies must remain competitive in a global marketplace, Furr said, or "you go out of business and push production to Third World countries."

That shift to other countries is already happening, Emerson said, especially among producers of labor-intensive crops. Since 1990, U.S. producers have lost a substantial chunk of the domestic fruits and vegetables market, data show.

In 1999, the United States became a net importer of fruits and vegetables for the first time in history. The import-export gap widened to a nearly $8 billion deficit in 2007, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Paradoxically, loss of competitiveness comes at a time of increased demand year-round from consumers for fresh fruits and vegetables, Emerson said.

Shifting the costs of higher farmworker wages onto U.S. consumers -- who spend less of their income on food than anyone else in the world -- is also not viable, Emerson said. Growers have little control over prices, he said, and suppliers can simply bring cheaper goods from overseas.

"There's no silver bullet to this problem," Emerson said.

With competition from cheap wages overseas, it's unclear how to retain legal workers in low-paid U.S. farm jobs, he said, because U.S. agriculture has become a revolving door even for immigrants. Once they learn English, understand the job market and are legal, they, too, leave for jobs with better pay and conditions.

"The majority of workers stay in agriculture only for a few years," Emerson said. "Most people don't look at it as a permanent job."

The existing guest worker program, called H2A, is wrought with bureaucratic red tape and used by a scant number of growers. But it may the future of U.S. agriculture, experts like Emerson and Kandel say, because it's unlikely U.S.-born workers will return to the fields.

"When you have an industry that's reliant on a set of conditions distinct from all others," Kandel said, "it's difficult to turn around as an employer and say, I'm going to up my wages so I can attract native-born workers."

--Gosia Wozniacka

Oregon Latinos and who dislikes them

2009-11-05T16:49:00.000-08:00

It seems like every story about Latinos generates the same type of angry comments. It's hard to argue with those readers to whom any mention of Latino comes down to "deport all the illegals." I try to remind them that the majority of Latinos are U.S.-born citizens.

Oregon Latinos seek power in numbers
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/oregon_latinos_say_theyre_read.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
November 05, 2009

Like California's 30 years ago, Oregon's growing Latino population is reaching a tipping point: A critical mass of Latino professionals is starting to organize and influence state and local politics.

Inspired by telltale demographics and political under-representation, Latino leaders throughout the state have formed a group to plan a summit and develop a legislative platform relevant to Latinos.

The initiative -- dubbed Latino Agenda for Action -- unites statewide community organizations and leaders to build recognition, set priorities and eventually start a research institute or similar entity to inform the public and legislators about the state's largest ethnic group.

"The demographics are clear. Latinos are part of the fabric of this community, and they're here to stay," said Consuelo Saragoza, senior adviser of public health for Multnomah County and a convener of the group. "But there seemed to be a void. A lot of people felt that we needed a statewide voice."

Latinos made up 11 percent of Oregon's population in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than half are U.S. citizens, and many families have lived in the state for several generations. Their numbers have increased most dramatically over the past three decades and keep growing, mostly because of high fertility rates, data show.

Yet only one Oregon state legislator, Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, is Latino.

Latino issues are still "off the radar in many places," said Daniel HoSang, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. Latinos need dedicated groups to champion their causes, he said, "to make sure the issues don't get lost in the shuffle," as in the case of immigration reform taking a back seat to health care reform.

"This community hasn't been a part of Oregon's consciousness," HoSang said. "It may not have to do with hostility or a political position, it's just new water."

Latino Agenda for Action, a nonpartisan effort, is out to change that. Latinos have high buying power and own businesses, Saragoza said. But they also suffer from elevated rates of teen pregnancy, high numbers of student dropouts, and limited access to health care, among others.

Latino diversity

Pockets of individuals and groups already advocate for Latinos, but tend to be small and disconnected from one another, she said. There is no larger recognizable entity that encompasses all Oregon Latinos, or that reflects their diversity. Latinos are not just Mexicans -- they also hail from Puerto Rico and countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador.

"It's important to signal to the state, to elected officials and government agencies that Latino leadership is coalescing to respond to issues and to make ourselves visible," said Andrea Cano, one of Latino Agenda's facilitators.

The response from Latino leaders has been extraordinary, Cano said, with groups from every region calling to join. Agenda organizers brought them together for a second "salon" in October. Supported by the Oregon Consensus Program at Portland State University, several committees are planning various aspects of the summit, to be held next fall.

The group is continuing to identify participants in key regions, with the hope of putting together a database of Latino leaders and organizations. Organizers are also partnering with existing groups, such as the Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs.

What makes Latino Agenda for Action different, they say, is that it's a grass-roots approach driven by the community. Its aim is to represent and benefit rural and urban Latinos, newcomers and native-born, and to cut across generational and cultural differences, Cano said. It will include Latino artists, indigenous communities, youth and university students, as well as non-Latino allies.

The statewide summit will be a forum to gather existing research and expertise, identify priorities for the community, and develop public policy and legislation benefiting Latinos.

Research hub envisioned

A future public policy institute or research group, to be based at a local university, would be the authority on Latino issues in the state, said Carlos Crespo, professor and director of the School of Community Health at Portland State University.

"We want to be able to provide a neutral, secure place where people with different points of view can share ideas based on what the data says, and not on philosophical or political points of view," Crespo said.

Having a central place for data and policy provides continuity, which is badly missing in Oregon's debate, he said. A research institute could also help build leadership among Latinos, especially among young people.

The lag between Latino population growth and representation is partly due to Oregon Latinos' disproportionate youth population, said HoSang, the political science professor. One in every six students in Oregon schools is Latino. As they come of age, they will help shape the state's political scene, HoSang said.

Crespo and Saragoza hope the summit will set the stage and help "identify the Latino community as viable," Saragoza said.

"It's sad that such a large group is invisible, and that's why we need action and policy to solve our problems," Crespo said. "We Latinos are here, and we want the same thing everybody wants. We want Oregon to be a better place."

-- Gosia Wozniacka

Marching with the dead

2009-11-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

Photo by Faith Cathcart

A costumed procession gives Day of the Dead a Portland twist
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2009/11/a_costumed_procession_gives_da.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
November 02, 2009

Fog wrapped around buildings as they gathered -- skeletons, ghosts, an angel, a king with a sumptuous headdress straight from the Brazilian carnival, Marie Antoinette's parrot in epoch laces and a curly white wig, and other creatures...

Two bicycles arrived, one carrying a witch with a broom, the other a sorcerer and a child witch seated in a casket. A devil with red flashing horns blew giant bubbles.

They lit candles for a procession to honor the dead that would take them 15 blocks up Northeast Alberta Street, on this cool Thursday night.

"It's something we don't do a good job of in our culture and something we all need -- to remember those who have passed over and remember that we, too, will die," said procession organizer Stella Maris, who describes herself as a spiritual community leader.

It was inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead, during which people commune with their dead relatives, but was an unusual American interpretation by mostly non-Latino Portlanders, Maris said, an event to which people bring all kinds of creative expressions.

"It's just magical," said a masked skeleton, aka Betsy Aldrich of Portland, who participated in the procession for the second year. "We're the only culture that doesn't honor the dead. So this is a way to do that."

As a maiden in white handed out marigolds and the scent of incense rose through the air, Maris shook her gourd. It was time.

"Before you go," she said, "we're going to call them in. We're going to walk with our beloved ones."

And the skeletons, ghosts, and witches called out the names of their dead: Uncle Jerry, Tom from Vermont, Nina, grandpa Joe ...

"Beloved ones ... sisters, neighbors, teachers, ancestors," Maris intoned. "We've come here to march with you."

The crowd let out high-pitched yelps, then moved as one to the wail of accordions. A troupe of gypsy skeletons swayed to the music, gliding down the street. Death with a scythe marched down in the company of ghosts. And skeletons in white dresses floated down on stilts.

As the procession passed by a drum circle of Native American chiefs, the thud of drums and the chiefs' cries blended in, as if they were calling their own dead.

Then the procession turned into a dark alley, where a masked creature waited under a tent, rattling a tambourine, summoning the skeletons, witches and ghosts to an altar.

It was lit with dozens of candles, displaying photos and names of the dead.

The rowdy crowd hushed. They stood quietly, holding candles and incense. They wrote the names of their dead, pinned them to the altar, to be remembered by the living.

-- Gosia Wozniacka

from the Cambodian killing fields

2009-10-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

His boyhood spent in a slave labor camp, Kilong Ung survives, excels and now wishes to heal
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/his_boyhood_spent_in_a_slave_l.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
October 16, 2009

For more than 30 years, Kilong Ung, a Portland software engineer, struggled with haunting memories of nearly starving in a slave labor camp, the deaths from exhaustion of his father, mother and little sister, and the extinguishing of 1.7 million other Cambodians by starvation, disease, torture and execution under Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime.

Ung, then a boy, miraculously survived and came to the United States as a refugee, reaching the pinnacles of the American Dream: a Reed College education, graduate school, and lucrative jobs in the corporate world. But despite the successes, he could not forget.

He dreamed of creating a way to share the horrific past with his two Oregon-born children. And he wanted to honor the people who didn't survive, as well as those who helped him make it in life.

Ung decided to write a book, to simultaneously get rid of the memories and preserve them. This summer, he self-published his memoir, "Golden Leaf, a Khmer Rouge Genocide Survivor."

But the book is only a means to an end, the 49-year-old Ung said. He wants his memoir to "leverage the past" and help Cambodia. The goal: to use some of the proceeds from the book to build a school in his country of his birth. He plans to name the school "Golden Leaf."

The book describes the cruel, dirty, hunger-filled life inside a labor camp. Ung buries his grandmother, catches and eats a rat, cradles his emaciated mother, and is arrested and degraded for stealing a coconut.

When the Vietnamese drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, Ung fled Cambodia by foot to Thailand with his older sister and her boyfriend. They eventually settled in California as refugees, and within a year moved to Oregon.

Because of his experiences, Ung writes that he saw himself as "a leaf at the mercy of the wind." But while other "leaves" were crushed, he persevered and became a "golden leaf."

What sets Ung apart from fellow survivors, said Mardine Mao, president of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon (CACO), is not just perseverance, but also a vision to transform past suffering into something positive.

"I've lost so much," Ung said, "and if I do nothing with the past, all that has happened would have happened for nothing."

Ung and CACO will organize a fundraiser in March with the goal of collecting $50,000 for the school project. Mao is visiting the Siem Reap province in Cambodia this month on a humanitarian mission and scoping a site for the school.

Area Rotary clubs are also interested in supporting the project, said Gene Horton, a member of the Hillsboro Rotary Club, who plans to help Ung raise funds.

"I'm quite impressed with Kilong," Horton said. "He's come so far; it's an amazing story. He's forceful and dedicated enough to make this idea happen."

Ung's other hope is to inspire Oregon's Cambodian community. He has served as a Cambodian language teacher, youth mentor, and past president of CACO. Under his leadership, the organization grew and formed support groups for youth, women, and elderly, a heritage banquet, and a public forum to discuss the Khmer Rouge tribunal, among other programs.

"Many Cambodians would rather forget the past, because it's too painful to relieve the memory. Kilong found the courage to speak up," Mao said. "His work is a great example that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. It provides an inspiration to those of us that may want to share similar stories."

But perhaps Ung's biggest contribution is guiding fellow refugees into the midst of the American mainstream. He wants to serve as a bridge between the Cambodian and American communities, Ung said. His higher education, active participation in the Rotary club and the Royal Rosarians, fluent English and other achievements can be a model of success.

In the end, Ung's story is a deposition against the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

"A book becomes evidence," Ung said. "It becomes a legacy, a document."

His final message is of forgiveness and recovery. Ung is converting his sorrow into action: his family has put down roots in Oregon. Against all odds, "a leaf at the mercy of the wind... became a tree."

-- Gosia Wozniacka

Oaxacan Guelaguetza in Oregon

2009-10-11T20:06:00.001-07:00

And here is the rest of it.

for the gods of water and corn

2009-10-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Celebration is a tribute to the gods, and a restoration of indigenous villages in Mexico
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/celebration_is_a_tribute_to_th.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Gosia Wozniacka
October 09, 2009

The Guelaguetza, a cultural celebration that attracts throngs of tourists to the Mexican state of Oaxaca, is coming to Oregon.

A tribute to the gods of water and corn, the Guelaguetza brings together 16 different indigenous communities from seven diverse regions of Oaxaca (pronounced whah-hawk-ah). Through music, colorful dances, food and arts, it keeps alive the centuries-old cultures and traditions of the Zapotecs, Mixtecs and Triquis, among others.

Guelaguetza means "offering" in Zapotec, and the word denotes a system of mutual assistance between communities or individuals.

Oregon's Guelaguetza is a sign of a community coming of age. Indigenous people make up one of the largest groups of Mexican immigrants in Oregon, about 40,000, according to Santiago Ventura Morales, who heads an organization that connects Oregon's indigenous Mexicans to each other and to outside resources. The majority are Mixtec, and some Zapotec and Triqui. They live mostly in Gresham, Canby, Woodburn, Cornelius and Corvallis, he said.

Many came to Oregon since the 1980s, are U.S. citizens, and have dreamed of holding a Guelaguetza for years. It's an important stepping stone for a community that's often isolated and discriminated against – even by fellow Mexicans – because of traditional characteristics like darker skin color, long hair, or speaking an indigenous language.

"We need to teach others about our culture, to show the diversity of Mexico and of Oaxaca," said Ventura. "We want our children, who are born here, to continue practicing their parents' customs and speaking their language, so that they're not ashamed to be an indigenous person."

Justo Rodriguez, 29, who came to the United States in 1999 to join his father in Woodburn, still remembers going to the annual Guelaguetza in the city of Oaxaca (the capital of the state of Oaxaca). Rodriguez and members of his village, San Mateo Tunuchi, would perform the Danza de los Diablos, the devils' dance, as part of the celebration. The Danza is a village tradition dating before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century.

Rodriguez last attended the Guelaguetza in 1997, and he missed the custom. After moving to Oregon, he and his father Leonardo Rodriguez – who also used to dance – decided to start a Los Diablos troupe. Members hail from the same village, but several were born in the United States. For weeks, they have been practicing to perform in Oregon's Guelaguetza.

In addition to sharing the rich traditions and culture of Oaxaca, the Guelaguetza's goal is to unite the Oaxacan community and further the work of organizations that help their villages of origin, said Donaciano Garcia, one of the event's organizers.

Garcia, who hails from the town of Barranca Fierro Mixtepec, started a hometown association three years ago, Generación Barranca 2006 Inc., to support the economic development and children's education in the village where he was born.

That's the only way to break the chain of dire poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and migration to the United States, he said.

"The idea is that the children who live in Oaxaca shouldn't have to come here, shouldn't have to risk their lives to cross the border in order to have a better future," Garcia said. "We can help change their ideas by making them see that getting educated is an option. They can become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer in Mexico, and help solve the problems over there, without coming here."

To date, Garcia's association has raised more than $12,000 from fellow members. The group purchased computers for the village school, a copy machine and a concrete mixer for the town, and planted more than 100 fruit trees. Next project: a village library.

Generación Barranca 2006 Inc. is one of dozens of hometown associations organized by Oregon's Oaxacans, which will be featured at the Guelaguetza.

"If one small group can make a difference in their village, then so can another," Garcia said. "The Guelaguetza is a great chance for us to work together and help those less fortunate."

The Guelaguetza may also help save Oregon's Oaxacan community, organizers say. Under pressure from mainstream American and Latino culture, indigenous languages and customs are threatened, said Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas, who hails from Oaxaca, speaks the Mixtec language, and did research on indigenous languages at Oregon State University.

"The Guelaguetza is like a Oaxacan powwow," he said. "Families get together, share and recover their languages and cultures, which is something that many have lost."

-- Gosia Wozniacka

Chinese immigrants, transformed

2009-10-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

A once-despised immigrant group grows strong...

Portland's Chinese community finds a new pride to replace old perceptions
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photo by Abby Metty, The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2009/10/portlands_chinese_community_fi.html

Gold miners, poor and exotic foreigners confined to Portland's Chinatown. Not worthy to own land or become U.S. citizens. This was life for arrivals from China at the turn of the 20th century and well beyond.

State and federal laws that discriminated against the Chinese have been annulled. And with China's modernization have come changes in perceptions. But stereotypes dissolve slowly.

The China Design Now exhibit at the Portland Art Museum, a dazzling display of that country's ingenuity, pop art and business potential, could further change how Oregonians think about China and, consequently, about the Chinese Americans in our midst.

But the branding of a new China is also transforming the local Chinese community, which is spreading beyond Chinatown and more diverse than ever. Once marginalized, Oregon's Chinese are gaining new clout and visibility.

Positive images of wealthy, creative Chinese people -- such as those at the upcoming exhibit -- aren't yet prevalent in Oregon, says Louis Lee, an accountant and Hong Kong native who has lived in Portland's Chinatown more than 20 years.

"It (the exhibit) shows a different aspect of China and Chinese people, not known to the Western world," Lee says. "It's risky, because you're fighting the current."

That current runs long and often negative. Chinese immigrants arrived even before Oregon became a state, searching for gold. They built rail lines and roads, worked in fish canneries and farms, and dug canals. Chinese laborers often earned less, were subject to laws that prohibited interracial marriage, and could not become U.S. citizens.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning Chinese immigrants. Violence against the Chinese was common in the Northwest; mobs raided and burned Chinese homes in Portland. The law existed until 1943.

Parts of Portland's Chinatown, Lee says, added to the negative image: its pagodas and lions fit Westerners' one-dimensional vision of a Chinese enclave. Add to that the fact that most Chinatowns, including Portland's, were forced to locate in down-and-out neighborhoods, he says, and "that creates an image for the Chinese people. We have to fight that image."

Oregon and America have embraced Chinese immigrants -- but the old China image lingers, says Stephen Ying, vice president of the Oregon Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. The group was formed in the late 19th century to assist Chinese individuals with discrimination and U.S. regulations.

"We're not just restaurant or laundromat workers, or gold diggers," Ying says. "There is modern China now and modern Chinese."

Oregon's Chinese community -- about 28,000 people -- is diverse, Ying says. Immigrants hail from mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. Others are American-born. The small number doesn't account for Chinese people who claim more than one racial/ethnic group on the census.

Ying came to Oregon from Hong Kong 30 years ago. He graduated from Rex Putnam High School, worked at Intel and lives in Milwaukie. His life defied old stereotypes. But he still remembers Oregonians telling him, "Go back to where you belong," and a child in a restaurant pointing him out, "Mom, look, a Chinese." Today, that might make Ying proud.

Old China still has its place.

In her Beaverton home, Mary Leong frames old photographs for an upcoming exhibit about Portland's Chinatown. The elegant, slender woman, who is 87 but looks about 60, says she would hate to see China stripped of its legacy. Leong was born in Tualatin, but her parents were Chinese.

"The U.S. will realize that all this modern stuff is not really China," she says. "It's a copy of the United States."

Leong's father came to Oregon in the 1880s; her mother in 1918. When Leong's family settled in Portland before WWII, Chinese immigrants were not allowed to own property or live outside Chinatown.

Leong was proud of being Chinese; she speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. "It was very important that I never lose my heritage," she says. Leong has visited China twice, most recently in 1993, witnessing first hand the rapid changes in her parents' homeland. But, she said, China will eventually go back "to what's originally Chinese ... like Confucius, the songs, the plays, they'll go back to that."

"It's like a kid who gets a tattoo," she says. "Eventually, when he gets older, he wants to get rid of it. Eventually, you go back to your heritage."

But preserving the old doesn't have to negate the new, says calligraphy teacher Yan Buliang. He emigrated to Portland 10 years ago to join his two Oregon-educated sons. Though an engineer by profession, he has studied and practiced calligraphy all his life and comes from a family of artists.

During China's Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, Buliang watched art and creativity restricted and degraded. Antiques, books and artifacts were destroyed; traditional customs and concepts suppressed. Some artists were arrested, while others were reduced to writing and illustrating Communist slogans.

"You couldn't say or do things," Buliang says through a translator, "because the government controlled your mind. Their goal was to 'break the old and establish the new'."

After the revolution ended, Buliang retired and founded a calligraphy association at a Beijing university. He loved the art form and wanted to make sure it survived. At the same time, he saw China transformed and welcomed the changes -- even though he admits to sometimes having a hard time understanding them.

"I'm happy, because China is progressing," he says. And traditional Chinese art is more than 3,000 years old, he adds, so people won't discard it just because of new trends.

"Art reflects the lives of ordinary people," Buliang says. "People change, so art changes with them. You can't be stationary. You have to change and open up in order to progress."

Like China, Oregon's ethnic Chinese community has also changed, its leaders say. And it's connected to China more than ever.

"The world has shrunk," says Lee, the accountant. "In my day, you were oceans apart. Today, you are just next door."

It's now less expensive to fly, so Oregon's Chinese visit China, some -- like Lee --– as often as once a year. They communicate with their families there regularly by phone or Internet. They know China is changing, because they witness it themselves.

When Ying went to China for the first time in 1990, his relatives lived in a "poor and stinking" farming community on the outskirts of Shanghai. When he went again a few years later, their village had become a city and a highway cut through what was once their home. "Now it's big buildings, taxis and McDonald's," he said. "I'm amazed at how China has changed. It's so big, so creative. It has a lot of hidden talent."

The changes make him proud to be Chinese.

"As Chinese immigrants, we are proud of the changes, because China has become a powerful nation," Ying said. "Everyone wants to learn Chinese and go to China. We used to be afraid to be Chinese, but now we're afraid of people not knowing we're Chinese. You just lift your head up, because China got so strong."

Even the local government in Oregon pays more attention to the Chinese community, Ying says. "Because China is doing so great, city hall listens." This week, Ying flew with Speaker of the House Dave Hunt and other officials on a trade mission to China.

And because of opportunity created in China, there is a new phenomenon among Oregon's Chinese: "Back paddling," Lee says. "The tide has turned." Students, lawyers and engineers are going back, he says.

Lee's adult son, who was born in Oregon and works as a marketing coordinator in Baltimore, is taking intensive Mandarin classes. His hope, Lee says, is to widen his future job opportunities. It's a huge shift from when Lee was a university student and speaking Chinese was of more a hindrance than a plus.

"Gradually, Chinese people see something different. China is more attractive to them; it's a way to find an edge," Lee says. "They are seeing the possibility, no, the necessity, of their career taking them there."

Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Morning Coffee

2009-09-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

I continue my exploration of the world through visual means. Words can rest for a while. Outside my bedroom window, the pumpkins that I planted from last year's seeds are gaining width and color.

And here is the rest of it.

Athens on the Web

2009-09-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about the whole idea of "citizen journalism" - which seems to be one of the hot topics among journalism innovators and the money-giving foundations. How does that trend play out in terms of the journalism we do and newspapers' future online? For me, in the context of immigration coverage, it of course goes back to those who relentlessly send angry comments, mostly anti-illegal immigrant in nature. But also, it's a question of how journalism will look like in the future as we head towards more interaction, more reader inclusion. The NYT had an interesting article last Sunday addressing internet public participation. With that, two other articles to add to the mix. What are the implications for journalists?

"Athens" on the Net
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/weekinreview/13giridharadas.html

Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gop-fringe14-2009sep14,0,940651.story

House Passes Resolution Rebuking Rep. Wilson for Outburst
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091502943.html?hpid=topnews

And here is the rest of it.

Photo of the day - little girls' birthday

2009-09-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

The sun came out just in time for this birthday.

And here is the rest of it.

Photo of the day - by the lake

2009-09-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

The evening light was gentle at the lake of Laurelhurst Park. It was a dizzy day. At work, I was humbled to find out that I won a Blethen award for distinguished journalism.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009888989_apwablethenawards.html

And here is the rest of it.

Photo of the day - in my garden

2009-09-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up at 6 am. It gave me time to notice what I usually don't see in my haste. New roses opened up, and dozens of spider webs are strategically extended all over the garden, catching rain and flies.

And here is the rest of it.

Some facts on the healthcare debate

2009-09-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

Here are the facts on the uninsured, just released by the U.S. census.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf

A study on what immigrants contribute to the insurance system:
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/7/1322

Newsweek article about why insuring undocumented/illegal immigrants might be good:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/215340

And here is the rest of it.

To consider

2009-09-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

From a Taize letter from Kenya:

"Let us consent to what we are or what we are not; let us even take responsibility for all we have not chosen."

And here is the rest of it.

A life

2009-09-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

As a reporter, you enter people's lives suddenly and you exit them suddenly. Today, I entered the life of a family whose son was stabbed to death. It was a simple, poor family, whose faith helps to understand the world. I was there in the middle of their living room, asking about their dead son and looking through his artwork, wondering why people offer journalists like me intimate pieces of their lives. I felt very humbled, very touched, and saddened by this unnecessary death.

Slain Beaverton teen was never in a gang, police and family say
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/09/slain_beaverton_teen_was_never.html#more

And here is the rest of it.

Where my soul flies

2009-08-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

"Grand-père disait que, selon Dâmollah Saîd Mostafa, pendant le sommeil, l'âme s'en va ailleurs, et que si jamais tu te réveilles avant qu'elle soit revenue dans ton corps tu te retrouves dans un cauchemar sans fin, livré à la stupeur et à l'effroi, sans voix et sans forces, et ce jusqu'au retour de l'âme" -- Atiq Rahimi "Les milles maisons du reve et de la terreur"

In loose translation... "Grand-father used to say that, according to Dâmollah Saîd Mostafa, during your sleep your soul flies somewhere else. And if ever you awake before she returns to your body, you will find yourself in a nightmare without end, delivered into a stupor and into fear, without voice and strength, and that until the return of your soul."

And here is the rest of it.

Sz(ch)-icago

2009-08-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

"We Bring Fear"

2009-08-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

Don't miss this story.

A reporter flees the biggest cartel of all—the Mexican Army.
—By Charles Bowden
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/we-bring-fear

And here is the rest of it.

Healing in their own way

2009-08-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

Healing in their own way
Refugees turn to tradition to treat emotional wounds
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/forum_documentary_aims_to_help.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photo by Jamie Francis, The Oregonian
Wednesday August 12, 2009

The stories did not come easily.

"Please describe your experiences during the war," 18-year-old Davin Mao stiffly asked his grandmother and his father, both refugees from Cambodia.

"I cannot describe them, I am scared," Van Chim, the grandmother, said, as the cameras rolled.

But slowly, the white-haired woman and her son, Mony Mao, opened up. They told of being forced out of their home, eating leaves and rats, and witnessing executions of friends. And of waiting. To starve or to be killed, as happened to 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge regime.

The family was one of a dozen in an oral history project organized by the Portland area's Cambodian community that culminated in a documentary to be shown this week. Youth and elders broke down in tears and hugged one another as the stories spilled out.

The Cambodians have taken healing into their own hands partly out of necessity. While Oregon is one of the receiving hubs for refugees, the state has few culturally appropriate services to treat the emotional wounds many refugees grapple with.

The scarcity fuels a conflict about how best to heal. Services that exist are not always seen as viable by the refugees because of barriers to access them and because they rely heavily on Western-style psychotherapy and pharmaceuticals. The goal, advocates say, is to develop options, including community-based healing, and to acknowledge the vast array of religious and spiritual healing practices.

"This is painful, but we're in this together; our community will heal together," said Mardine Mao, president of the Cambodian American Community of Oregon, who organized the oral history project as an alternative form of healing. "By sharing, you can talk about your memories more freely. You don't choke; you don't have that chest pain."

Since 1975, more than 56,000 refugees have fled to Oregon from war-torn countries, squalid refugee camps, jungle battles, rapes, famines and persecution, according to local resettlement agencies. That doesn't include refugees who moved here from other states or arrived through family reunification.

While new arrivals from Asia, Africa or Eastern Europe focus on adjusting to the U.S. way of life, community advocates say refugees' psychological needs tend to be the most pressing and most ignored.

"We are still carrying the scars of war," said Kayse Jama, a refugee from Somalia and the director of Portland's Center for Intercultural Organizing. "You can heal the physical scars by going to a doctor, but the mental scars are more difficult to recognize or deal with it."

Healing refugees' psyches is difficult, too, because of the associated stigma.

"In all of Africa, we consider mental health as a taboo," African community leader Djimet Dogo said. "If you have mental health issues, that means you're just crazy, so people try to hide it."

Doctors and other service providers, hindered by language and culture barriers, may confuse symptoms for signs of physical illness, said Dr. Phyllis Lee, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Oregon State University. And refugees may ignore their own problems.

"The people themselves may not even recognize the physical signs as mental illness," Lee said. "They may not be able to sleep or eat, and they don't know that trauma did that to them."

Another hurdle, Dogo said, is confidentiality, a novel concept for most refugees. Afraid that the community will find out -- about the person being raped in a refugee camp, for example -- some newcomers refuse to work with interpreters from their own community, because they fear "there may be a leak."

For those who do seek help, culturally fitting services are limited. One of the few offering mental health treatment for refugees, the Intercultural Psychiatric Program at Oregon Health and Science University, is controversial with some.

The clinic treats 1,200 people who speak nearly two dozen languages. Counselors hail from the same countries as the patients and act as interpreters. Treatment consists of therapy and medication to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, socialization groups and referrals to other resources, said psychiatrist J. David Kinzie, director of the Torture Treatment Center at the clinic.

"Almost everyone who comes at the beginning is severely impaired," Kinzie said. "They can't function, they can't sleep, they can't cook, they can't take care of their kids, they have nightmares and hallucinations."

Some community leaders chafe at Kinzie's approach. They say refugees can become dependent on medication.

"The community is overmedicated," said Assefash Melles, an Ethiopian therapist who works with African women. "Moms are asleep; people are drowsy. Medication has its place, but we need to ask how has it served the individuals and their families."

The damage of trauma is hard to eliminate, Kinzie said. Half his patients have frequented the clinic since it opened more than 30 years ago. The other half come for short-term treatments, from six months to a year.

"No one knows why some people are impaired for life, while others with massive traumas just move on," Kinzie said.

Kinzie estimates that his clinic sees only 10 to 20 percent of the refugees who could use its services. The others "suffer privately," he said.

Not everybody needs therapy or a PTSD diagnosis, Melles said. Some refugees thrive when connected to their culture, supportive people and "things that feed their soul."

"They lived through these horrible things, but it doesn't define them," she said. "They can cope. The human psyche is very strong."

When Asians first arrived in the 1980's, many were sent to the Intercultural Psychiatric Program and placed on disability, said Mao of the Cambodian American Community of Oregon. Medication worked in some cases, Mao said, but "it made others just relax and not want to do anything."

In response, 13 families formed CACO, to "unite, preserve and empower" Cambodians. Healing became one of the goals -- and the oral history project and a community "healing forum" gave it structure.

"We want to stay away from professional psychiatric help, if we can," Mao said.

Kinzie said collective healing can be helpful to some and harmful to others.

"Sometimes people tell their stories, and the trauma gets reactivated," he said. "I tell our patients: 'Do not feel pressured to do this.'"

For the most part, Kinzie said, the scope of the problem is too great and should be addressed by professionals. "We are seeing people who are pretty damaged," he said, "way beyond what a community setting could fix."

But others say a multitiered approach is necessary.

"The problem is that there is only one option, and that's not sufficient," said Ronault Catalani, immigrant and refugee program coordinator with Portland's Office of Human Relations. "There are people sorrowing and healing in different ways."

Acceptance of nonmedical practices is growing, Lee said. Cambodians pray at Buddhist temples, and Hmong seek out shamans. Ethiopians flock to churches. Somalis find solace at mosques or cure psychological pain through the ceremony of quraan saar, a reading of Quran verses over the sick person.

Other African cultures call on medicine men and animal sacrifices, because "in African culture," Dogo said, "mental health is like like a genie," a supernatural power.

Two years ago, when a Somali Bantu woman was struggling with mental health issues, the community held a ritual dance to chase the bad spirit away, Dogo said.

Aside from rituals, community conversations about trauma have been difficult, Dogo said -- especially among Africans who come from tribes and clans that were at war with each other.

This year, the African Diaspora Dialogue Project, organized by Africa House and the Conflict Resolution Program at Portland State University, brought together Oregon's African leaders. It took time, Dogo said, but eventually they opened up about the massacres of their families, people slaughtered in front of them and other atrocities.

They -- just like the Cambodians -- will train others to speak about their haunting pasts.

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Obama and race

2009-07-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

Given the controversy over the arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week and the way Obama commented and then apologized, I found this article very interesting:
Meet the new elite, not like the old
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weekinreview/26cooper.html

And here is the rest of it.

Guest workers, or doves

2009-07-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a series of stories about farmworkers and the guest worker program that allows U.S. employers to bring foreign-born workers when there are domestic labor shortages. It's a very complex issue, and many people I interviewed speak in code. But behind the policy debate and the coded messages is a tale that affects human beings. I recently found this beautifully written story from the St. Petersburg Times, called La Vida Mejor - A Better Life - which traces the lives of guest workers from their villages in Mexico to their jobs in North Carolina
Read "Leaving Palomas" and the other parts here:
http://www.sptimes.com/News/51099/palomas/palomas-splash.html

And here is the rest of it.

Driven to distraction

2009-07-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you (of us!) who still think texting and driving is ok (or talking on the cell phone and driving, for that matter), think again. Studies show drivers who use cell phones are much more likely to cause an accident than other drivers!
Read this excellent New York Times article if you still have doubts:
Dismissing the Risks of a Deadly Habit by Matt Richtel
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/technology/19distracted.html

And here is the rest of it.

Immigrant victims get protection, status

2009-07-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Little-known visas free immigrants from abuse
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/littleknown_visas_free_immigra.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photo by Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian
Saturday July 18, 2009

When 14-year-old Magdalena Juan Felipe set out to illegally cross the border from Guatemala to Mexico and then into the United States, she was drawn by the hope of leaving the dire poverty of her home for a chance at an education in Oregon.

But the half sister who urged Juan Felipe to come to Portland forced her to work at a food processing plant, confiscated all her money and beat her. The girl -- who spoke no English or Spanish and did not know where to turn for help -- was reduced to living in servitude.

Ironically, relief came when Juan Felipe was caught in an immigration raid. She qualified for a special visa available to victims of crime and trafficking who cooperate with police and prosecutors, despite fear of deportation. The relatively unknown visa allows Juan Felipe, now 21, to legally live and work in the United States.

Only recently has the government started approving the "T" and "U" visas, although the law meant to protect undocumented immigrants who are victims of crime has been in place for nine years. Thousands of such visa petitions have been filed across the country, including 200 by Portland-area lawyers.

The sudden flurry of approvals -- several dozen were granted in Portland just last month -- illustrates the Obama administration's move toward protecting illegal immigrants exposed to abuses at home and in the workplace instead of prosecuting and deporting them.

The goal is safer communities for all, Oregon lawyers and law enforcement officials say, because immigrant victims, even if here illegally, can help police bring those who abused them to justice.

"If someone is a victim, they need protection to come forward," said Portland immigration attorney Philip Smith. "The real purpose is to reduce criminal activity, which affects everyone. You don't want rapists and armed robbers roaming the streets."

Backlog of applicants
Congress created two new nonimmigrant visa categories with the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.

The T visa provides legal status for victims of trafficking, including those who are recruited for labor or services through force, fraud or coercion.

The U visa is designated for victims of crimes such as murder, assault, rape and sexual exploitation. The criminal activity must violate U.S. laws and/or occur in the United States.

Both visas allow applicants to secure legal status and a work permit for four years, as well as petition for certain family members. T visa holders are also eligible for a year of public assistance. After three years, visa holders may apply for a green card. As few as 1,500 T visas have been approved nationwide since the law went into effect.

For U visas, the government did not issue regulations until 2007, and not a single visa was granted until last summer. Only 60 visas were approved in 2008, although about 13,000 people applied.

But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials recently announced they intend to use the 10,000 visas available this fiscal year to reduce the backlog. This year, more than 1,600 U visas have been granted, many of them in recent months.

Critics say the system could be abused by illegal immigrants who report bogus crimes to get the visas.

"Having a green card at the end of the process as a guarantee makes it more likely for people to submit fraudulent applications," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which favors reduced immigration.

But the law leaves little space for fraud: A federal, state or local law enforcement official must attest that the visa petitioner "has been helpful, is being helpful or is likely to be helpful" in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity.

"It's not like they're making up a story," Smith said.

Because of the backlog of applications, many petitioners are stuck without legal status or work permits.

"The people are in dire financial situation while they're waiting for the decision," Smith said. "They have little children; what are they going to do?"

The backlog also means most apply for the visas after investigation and prosecution are finished, said Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Rod Underhill, partly defeating the purpose of the law as a shield for victims. Underhill has certified 50 U visas to date.

But U.S. immigration spokeswoman Sharon Rummery says the amount of time it took to establish the regulations should not invalidate the victims' qualifications to get visas, because "by law they deserve them; they qualified for them at the time when they first applied."

And protecting victims is especially important after the investigation and prosecution have been completed, said Portland immigration lawyer Siovhan Sheridan-Ayala.

"Often what happens is that the victim takes risks in helping the prosecution," she said, "and then the perpetrator is extremely angry and is just waiting to meet them on the other side of the border."

Nowhere to turn
A petite young woman with jet black hair, Juan Felipe says she wanted to leave her village in Guatemala because her family was poor and the future looked dismal.

Juan Felipe's education ended at fifth grade. She herded goats while her parents worked in the fields.

When a half sister asked Juan Felipe's family to send her to Oregon to help with the children, the girl set out on a monthlong journey by bus and on foot.

"The goal I had was to study English, to go to school," Juan Felipe said in Spanish. "Over there, they say many beautiful things about America. I didn't think something could go wrong."

But when Juan Felipe arrived, her half sister forced the girl to work full time, in addition to baby-sitting. The half sister had bought a fictitious Social Security number and green card for Juan Felipe and had filled out an application for her at Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., a large food processing plant in North Portland.

The half sister confiscated all the money Juan Felipe earned, telling the girl she had to repay the debt she incurred by being smuggled across the border, in addition to room and board.

Juan Felipe was also forced to cook and do housework. Her half sister beat her when she protested. The girl was confused and isolated, because she could communicate only in her native Q'anjob'al, a Mayan language. She did not know Portland or anyone in the city.

"I didn't know where to turn. I was devastated," Juan Felipe said. "I wanted to go back home to my parents, but I didn't know how."

After one fight with her half sister, Juan Felipe ran outside with a bloodied head, and a neighbor called for help, according to a 2005 police report.

Police arrested the half sister, and 17-year old Juan Felipe was placed in juvenile custody, because there was no other place to keep her safe, according to a Department of Human Services report. Released a few months later, she attended an alternative school to learn Spanish and English, while "kind strangers" offered her a place to live.

Juan Felipe eventually went back to work at Fresh Del Monte Produce because Hurricane Felix had struck Guatemala and her parents needed money. A year later, she was caught in an immigration raid. Because she was pregnant with Jorge, the first of her two sons, she was released from custody for humanitarian reasons and awaited her court hearing.

Within a few months, Juan Felipe met lawyer Sheridan-Ayala, who identified her as a victim of forced labor. Juan Felipe helped police and immigration officials with the investigation of her half sister and was granted a T visa. She also has a pending U visa application.

"Changing the culture"
In recent months, other unauthorized workers caught in immigration raids across the country have filed for the visas based on abuses in the workplace.

In the Portland area, several U and T visas were granted to other workers who were caught in the Fresh Del Monte Produce raid, said Multnomah County Deputy Sheriff Keith Bickford, the Oregon human trafficking coordinator, who certified the visas.

The most common problems for which visas were certified, Bickford said, were the lack of bathroom breaks, "so that some workers ended up going in their pants," long hours with no overtime pay, and very cold and wet work conditions.

Portland-area lawyers estimate that U and T visa applications from about 20 former Fresh Del Monte Produce workers are pending, and others have approached Bickford about similar abuses.

As for Juan Felipe, "I learned that people should not abuse you," she said, and "to have faith in the government."

The more U and T visas are approved, the more immigrants like Juan Felipe understand how the U.S. justice system works and will want to cooperate, Sheridan-Ayala said.

"Basically," Sheridan-Ayala said, "we are changing the culture and the understanding of the relationship with law enforcement that the immigrant community has."

Each new visa also acts as a deterrent and pressure on the abusers, Bickford said.

"The more victims come out and talk about it, the more it will curb the abuse," Bickford said. "People will start thinking that maybe they shouldn't be doing this, maybe they should pay a little more attention to how they treat immigrants, including those who have no documents."

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

My student reporters

2009-06-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

It's the final night of journalism camp and I am so proud of my student reporters, Nora Sanchez and Danelly Muniz. I could see how happy they were holding copies of The Pride that arrived this evening right off the press. They worked really hard on one of the most complex stories, and did not bow under pressure. They took their work seriously. And they made me a better editor. Here is the story they wrote:

Community garden helps fight obesity epidemic among Latinos
By By Nora Sanchez and Danelly Muniz June 27, 2009
Photos by Nora Sanchez
http://blog.oregonlive.com/teen/2009/06/community_garden_helps_fight_o.html

Magdaleno Nunez takes a long stick and drags it through the soil, making a long, narrow groove. He bends over and places two pea seeds every three inches. His wife, Hirlanda Nunez, waters tomatoes on the other side of their small garden plot at Westside Community Church in Corvallis.

"We are thankful that the church allows us to use their property to grow our vegetables and fruits," said Magdaleno Nunez. "The community offered us (a way) to grow healthy food. We can save money during the winter."

Obesity and diabetes among Latinos in Benton and Linn counties are increasing rapidly, and organizations are responding to help with what some call an "obesity epidemic among Latinos."

The garden is one part of the solution. It brings Latinos together to grow organic produce, so their families can eat healthy foods, watch their diets and not become overweight.

Obesity is a problem that affects all communities across the United States. But Latinos, including Latino children, have the highest rates. Nearly 70 percent of Latinos in Benton County are overweight or obese, compared to 54 percent of all residents, according to a recent study by the Oregon Department of Human Services.

Because more Latinos are obese, they are also more likely to develop diabetes, a condition in which the body is unable to control the level of sugar in the blood, according to Rocio Munoz, a chronic disease outreach specialist at the Benton County
Health Department.

"Latinos are healthier when they first arrive from their native countries," said Munoz.

Lack of affordable food and resources lead to "epidemic"

There are many reasons for the obesity problem among U.S. Latinos, said Marcela Arredondo, a coordinator of the Congregational Wellness Project in Corvallis. Latinos have jobs that are low paying, so they cannot afford to buy healthy food, she said. "Healthy is expensive."

Many of the Latinos are undocumented, Munoz said, and they isolate themselves because they are afraid of being deported. They also feel like they don't belong in this country, because they are discriminated against. They are overprotective with their children for the same reason and they don't allow them to go outside to play and interact with other kids.

"People are living with fear, and it's not healthy," Munoz said. "They become emotionally unstable, because they are unable to feel free."
When they become depressed, she said, they lose interest in their surroundings, isolate themselves and eat more.

Another problem is a lack of grocery stores near Latinos' homes. In the south part of Corvallis, Arredondo said, there are few places where Latinos can purchase vegetables at affordable prices. Sometimes their only option is to go to the nearest 7-Eleven and buy junk food, which makes them more at risk of becoming obese, she said.

Many Latinos are low-income and don't have health insurance, meaning they don't have regular access to health care, Munoz said. They also may not know organizations and other resources that are available to them.

"Men in the Latino community think that everything is OK with them, because they don't look sick," she said. "They don't get medical care until they start feeling sick, instead of coming for regular checkups."

And because some Latinos work multiple jobs, Munoz said, they don't have the time to cook healthy meals, sit down and eat with their families, or see a doctor regularly.

Garden promotes health

Faith community leaders began seeing the epidemic of obesity in the Latino community within the past 10 years, as the Latino population increased in Benton and Linn counties. They are creating projects that prevent obesity and promote physical activities and nutrition.

The community garden is one of those projects. It is run by the Westside Community Church, which had land that wasn't being used. The church got money to set up the garden from Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. Nineteen Latino families and two churches grow tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, beans, tomatillos and peppers.

All the families are low-income Latinos. The church asks for a small donation of $5 to $35 to cover water and seeds, but if the families cannot pay, they do not have to.

The garden helps Latino families come together in a place where they can feel safe, grow their own vegetables so that they don't have to buy them, and learn with and teach one another, said Sue Domingues, the garden coordinator and a member of Westside Community Church.

Domingues worked at the Bruce Starker Arts Park community garden last year and she noticed that only two Latino families participated. So she decided that her church's garden would focus on Latinos and recruited Magdaleno Nunez to help.

Nunez, who came to Corvallis from Oaxaca, Mexico, with his wife in the early '90s, learned to garden in Mexico from his father, who grew sugar cane. Now he is a garden mentor to the other gardening families, and brings his four children to work in the garden.

"It is very beautiful, because they get to grow their food and we teach them," Magdaleno Nunez said. He added that if one day the family is in need, or has to go back to Mexico, the children will be able to survive.

Magdaleno and Hirlanda Nunez say the garden allows them to save money, because they don't need to buy expensive vegetables at a grocery store. Hirlanda Nunez freezes and stores organic tomatoes, tomatillos and peas to use during the winter.

"We use the vegetables to make healthy foods like salads and salsas," Hirlanda Nunez said. "We prefer to grow them ourselves, because we know what's in them." The couple plans to give any leftover produce to other needy families.

The garden also builds community. Westside Community Church hosted a community gathering this year and invited the Latino gardeners and Anglo church members. The Latina women made salsa and the two groups interacted with each other, said Domingues.

Finally, the garden encourages Latino families to re-introduce the tradition of eating dinner together as a family, which many immigrants lose when they come to the United States, Arredondo said. The garden program helps inform the families that if you prevent bad eating habits now, in the long run you will save money on doctor visits, she said.

In addition to the community garden, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon administers three other pilot projects to help Latinos become a healthier community. Cooking classes at a church kitchen allow Latinos to learn how to cook healthy, the Farmers Market links families with local farmers, and the Buying Club allows low-income Latinos to use food stamps to purchase vegetables.

Overall, the projects are about "food justice," said Liv Gifford, a project manager with Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. Like many Americans, Latinos may not be aware of how, when and where their food is being produced, she said. Their food could be traveling 1,500 miles from the farm to their home.

"Food became industrial, and we're trying to make it natural again," Gifford said. To make the food healthier, Latinos need to "put a face on their food," she said, just like the Latino gardeners are doing.

"It shouldn't be just people with a lot of money who have access to fresh foods," Gifford said.

As population grows, a community unites

The Latino population in Benton and Linn counties has increased steadily in the past two decades. U.S. Census figures show that during the 1990s, Benton County had only 1,735 Latinos and Linn County had 2,177.

But over the next 17 years, in both counties, the number of Latinos has nearly tripled. According to the 2007 American Community Survey, Benton County has a Latino population of 4,800, and Linn County of 6,700 -- in both counties, Latinos make up 6 percent of the total population.

Latinos come to Corvallis, Albany and other towns in the area to find work in nurseries or in the fields, in janitorial and housekeeping services, and in restaurants, said Erlinda Gonzalez-Berry, the founder and director of Casa Latinos Unidos of Benton County.

Gonzalez-Berry started Casa Latinos Unidos because she wanted to create "a place that's run by Latinos for Latinos," so that the bridges between whites and Latinos can be connected, she said.

The organization, which opened in February at the Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center, offers interpreters, an immigration lawyer and English classes. Gonzalez-Berry also advocates for Latinos and helps them learn about their rights.

"I just see it as a great resource for our community," she said.

While some Latinos in the area are native born, some are not, she said. Many are undocumented, but some of their children are U.S. citizens. One in every six students in Oregon schools is Latino. In the future, Gonzalez-Berry said, that number will increase to one in four. The number of Latinos in Linn and Benton county continues to grow.

While many Latinos work in low-income jobs now, that will change with time, Gonzales-Berry said.

"There is a greater awareness among Latinos," she said, "that having an education will lead to more job opportunities and a successful future."

Journalism camp

2009-06-21T22:59:00.001-07:00

I'm teaching at a journalism camp this week, in Corvallis, OR. It is a camp for minority high school students. I'm working with two great students and we're reporting a story about Latinos and health issues. Here is the camp's blog. By the end of the week, the students will publish a 44-page newspaper.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/teen/journalism_camp_2009/

And here is the rest of it.

A tide of anger on immigration

2009-06-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is a controversial project of mine, which ran this Sunday in the Opinion section of the Oregonian. The comments have passed 250. My mailbox is, as usual, flooded. It's fascinating, because everyone saw in this article something completely different.

A tide of anger on immigration
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Saturday, June 20, 2009
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/06/a_tide_of_anger_on_immigration.html

They are angry. Angry at their government. Angry with the news media. Mostly, angry at illegal immigrants and the problems they believe are caused by people who live in Oregon without proper documentation. Some are even angry at what they perceive to be too-high levels of legal immigration.

Their e-mails, calls and online comments seem to skyrocket every time The Oregonian publishes a story that mentions "Hispanic," "Latino," "Mexican" or "immigrant," regardless of whether the subject's citizenship, legal status or national origin is mentioned or relevant.

These people say the news media ignore, misrepresent or equate their views with being racist. And, they say, news and feature stories are routinely framed to elicit sympathy for people living illegally in the United States.

Comments range from the seething ("What don't you get? ... We cannot let the entire world move to America.") to the extremist ("The Mexicans are all illegal, they're dirty, they're criminals, they're popping babies out as fast as they can make them and we just want them gone.") to the ridiculous ("You did not mention that the Spanish regard dogs as a source of food.")

One recent story about a legislative proposal to offer in-state tuition rates to undocumented Oregon high school seniors triggered 142 online comments and dozens of e-mails, phone calls and letters to the editor.

A feature story about so-called "food deserts" that tracked a Portland woman's efforts to buy groceries for her family, in the face of limited transportation and supermarket options, unleashed 88 comments and several letters. The woman happened to be Latina.

And just last month, a news story that cited U.S. Census figures in reporting a surge in Oregon's Latino population drew 158 online comments within a few hours of the story appearing on OregonLive.com, in addition to numerous e-mails and phone calls. Most news stories on other topics draw only a smattering of comments; some none at all.

Who are these commenters? And why are they so irate?

Few recent Oregon polls or other studies exist on the topic. An April 2008 survey, conducted by Portland-based polling firm Moore Information, found that 70 percent of Oregon voters surveyed were "very concerned" (39 percent) or "fairly concerned" (31 percent) about illegal immigration, while 28 percent were "not concerned" and 2 percent "didn't know."

Those who said they were "very concerned," the survey found, tended to be Republican, over the age of 45 and reside outside of Multnomah County. The survey of 1,000 people was commissioned by the Coalition for Working Oregon, a group of Oregon employers that favors immigration reform.

Vulnerability feeds fear
Fear of change and competition fuels negative views about immigration and illegal immigration, said Rita Simon, professor of public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. National polls show, Simon said, that people with lower levels of education and a lower socioeconomic status, as well as older people, are more likely to feel threatened by illegal immigrants.

"They're anti-immigrant because they are vulnerable," she said. "They're concerned that immigrants come in, take their jobs and replace them."

Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, disagrees. He said OFIR, which opposes illegal immigration and wants legal immigration severely reduced, includes 1,500 members and attracts "people of every walk of life and from all ethnic backgrounds."

Ludwick, 68, a retired pharmaceutical salesman who lives in McMinnville, said he believes most Oregonians support OFIR's message.

"Americans have the sense of the rule of law and they are outraged when people put themselves above the law, like illegal aliens do," Ludwick said. Oregonians "value the livability and the environment of Oregon, and don't want to turn it into an overcrowded state."

But other analysts, such as Daniel HoSang, a political science professor at the University of Oregon, say those concerns don't necessarily transform into action. Last fall, Oregonians rejected Measure 58, which would have mandated English immersion and restricted bilingual education.

And in April, a judge declared a Columbia County measure that would punish businesses employing illegal workers unenforceable and moot because of conflicts with federal law and various state authorities.

"There's not much interest in scapegoat politics," HoSang said. "There isn't the audience, and the parties realize there's costs to this kind of strategy."

In Oregon, restrictionist organizations like OFIR or the Minutemen "are close to becoming fringe organizations," HoSang said, and they don't represent large numbers of people.

"You see their presence in debates like driving licenses or tuition equity," he said, "but we should not overestimate their ability to get people elected."

The anger, though, is bound to stay, Simon said, because it's part of an old pattern. What characterizes the American public's attitude toward immigrants, she said, is the belief that immigrants who came earlier were better; those who are coming now are either not as good or downright dangerous.

"When the Irish immigrants first came, there were riots. When the Chinese came, they were banned," Simon said. "Now the Irish and the Chinese are looked upon as a positive experience. Because many recent immigrants come from Mexico and are illegal, they now tend to get the ire."

Listening sessions to understand anger
As the newspaper's immigration reporter, I've come to expect emotional, angry responses to my stories and others. I've tracked and saved these responses for nearly a year, and they add up to hundreds critical of Latino immigration.

Some people identify themselves. Many do not. Either way, they far outnumber those supportive of immigrants, including immigrants who may be here illegally.

As President Barack Obama renewed his promise to tackle immigration reform and the nation geared up for another round of the debate, I set out to understand the reasoning and complexity behind their anger. I contacted about 40 people who had responded in the past, as well as OFIR. My goal: to see for myself what drives people's negative emotions and their interest in immigration.

While Simon suggests it's fear of change, and Ludwick argues Oregonians fear an erosion of their quality of life, the answers proved less simple.

Eleven people accepted my invitation for a face-to face interview: one-on-one at The Oregonian office, lasting an hour. Interviewees agreed to share some personal information and could bring materials to support their arguments.

The interviews were not meant to confirm facts, dispute opinions or legitimize views. Rather, they were listening sessions.

The interviewees, while polite and often friendly, spoke passionately. They did range in age, gender, education and ethnic background, and all live outside Multnomah County. While some didn't understand how the U.S. immigration system works, most were genuinely concerned about their families, their state and their country.

Behind their anger, I discovered personal stories, diverse views and solutions, even traces of tolerance and empathy. And yes, some fear and misconceptions, too.

Gosia Wozniacka covers immigration and Latino affairs for The Oregonian. Reach her at 503-294-5960 or gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

To read interviews with these folks and listen to some audio clips, click here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/06/illegal_immigration_whats_to_b.html

Does Omelas exist?

2009-06-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I attended an interesting event, where writer Ursula Le Guin and philosophy professor Lani Roberts discussed morality and self-deception, among people and among writers. The discussion was based on the thought-provoking story by Le Guin called "THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS". You can read the story below, it is well-worth the few minutes. Omelas is a city where everyone is happy... but that happiness depends on a very difficult condition. Does Omelas exist? What is this story about? In a discussion after the event, we went beyond the Third World country comparison, to think about what Omelas means for each of us, and of course for our society at large (our Western society, as differentiated from others).
What I just wrote will make more sense of you read this great story. Click on the title for an easier copy in PDF.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the
city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.
The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In
the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens
and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were
decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry
women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a
shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance.
Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights, over the
music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the
great water-meadow called the Green' Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mudstained
feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The
horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of
silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they
were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own.
Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air
of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold
fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to
make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the
broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and
nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled
and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the
words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this
one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next
for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a
golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or
keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I
suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also
got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I
repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They
were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants
and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual,
only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and
the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise
despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have
almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How
can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children – though
their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives
were not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you.
Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time.
Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the
occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that
there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the
people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is
necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle
category, however – that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury,
exuberance, etc. -- they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains,. washing
machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources,
fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't matter.
As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming
in to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked
trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though
plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far
strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an
orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue
beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man
or woman, lover or stranger who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that
was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas – at least, not
manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about,
offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh.
Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of
desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these
delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas
is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is
puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of
the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then
after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost
secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not
habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else
belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did
without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right
kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a
magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and
fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer; this is what
swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really
don't think many of them need to take drooz.
Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of
cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children
are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are
entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the
starting line of the course. An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a
basket, and tall young men, wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at
the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile,
but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes
wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune.
He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.
As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the
pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender
legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks
and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope. . . ." They begin to form
in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and
flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe
one more thing.
In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the
cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no
window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a
cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of
mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little
damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a
mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl.
It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or
perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and
occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits haunched in the corner farthest
from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its
eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will
come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes-the child has
no understanding of time or interval – sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a
person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand
up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl
and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door
never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember
sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I
will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good
deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often.
It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal
and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its
own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it,
others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them
understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their
city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars,
the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their
skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever
they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young
people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well
the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened
at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger,
outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child.
But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile
place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were
done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and
be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in
Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the
chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.
The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.
Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the
child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time
goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good
of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too
degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its
habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would
probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own
excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible
justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and
the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their
lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not
free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence,
that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity
of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if
the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could
make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the
first morning of summer.
Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to
tell, and this is quite incredible.
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to
weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls
silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down
the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the
beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth
or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the
houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go
west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the
darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable
to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not
exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Copyright 1973 by Ursula K. Le Guin;
First appeared in New Dimensions 3; from The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)

What would Chavez do?

2009-05-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

Chavez would take high road on Portland street renaming
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/05/chavez_would_take_high_road_on.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Saturday May 30, 2009

DELANO, Calif. -- The old adobe building sits among open fields, past the edge of the small San Joaquin Valley town. No sign leads you here, no plaque or statue reveals that a Mexican American named Cesar Estrada Chavez led a five-year strike and a national boycott that broke down powerful grape growers and improved conditions for America's farmworkers.

The man, it turns out, was as unpretentious as the United Farm Workers office that continues his life's work.

So if the road to his former headquarters isn't even named after him, what would Chavez think of Portland's two-year controversy to rename a street in his honor?

"He would scold everybody for wasting so much time on it," said his son, Paul Chavez. "He would remind us there's so much work to be done, and that's what we should spend our time on."

Granted, naming something after Cesar Chavez is an important recognition, Paul Chavez said, but his father would want it to go hand in hand with education and action.

"If it's just the street signs and holidays, that's nice, it's how you honor people; but it's got to be more," Paul Chavez said. "If you have an educational component, then it would represent who he was and (then) I could see him say, 'Yes, let's do the street renaming.'"

Chavez spent his life shunning praise and focusing the attention on the plight of farmworkers. Reluctantly he conceded his place as a role model for Latinos, family and friends say.

"He would have seen that there was a point of pride for people in this (renaming) debate," said Marc Grossman, Chavez's longtime aide and spokesman. "He would have seen people honoring him as a symbol that was more than just about him."

Humility, empowerment
Cesar Chavez was a modest man who had a difficult time accepting personal recognition or gifts, Paul Chavez said.

"He was very humble," his son said. "He knew there were countless workers who sacrificed and made the work possible. So recognition should not be lavished on him."

Born in Arizona in 1927, Chavez, his siblings and parents became destitute during the Depression and traveled to California as migrant workers. At the time, farmworkers were paid below poverty wages, slept in fields and cars, sent their children to work, were discriminated against because of their race and ethnicity, and sometimes were not even given water to drink.

Once he became an organizer, Chavez did not distinguish himself from the farmworkers, family and associates say. He never owned a car or a house, never earned more than $6,000 a year, worked grueling 16-hour days and left his children no money when he died.

From his base in Delano, Chavez traveled the length and breadth of the valley to organize workers and convince them that they were going to take on the rich, powerful agricultural establishment and that they were going to win.

"It was the whole underdog thing; it was a very American concept," Paul Chavez said. "Taking on the good fight, the good will trump over evil."

Cesar Chavez empowered farmworkers and persuaded hundreds to join the picket lines.

"Cesar used to say that the organizer's job was to help ordinary people do extraordinary things," Grossman said. "He told people that what everyone did was important. He made people believe in themselves."

It was Chavez's movement that coined the famous phrase "Si, se puede" -- "Yes, we can."

His cause touched a nerve because it was about restoring human dignity, his son said. Although they lost all possessions, strikers remained on the picket lines for five years in Delano, pressuring grape growers to sign contracts with them.

"My father used to say, 'There's no one fight that determines the future. There's a series of skirmishes,'" Paul Chavez said. "He never, never gave up."

Reluctant role model
Despite the growing popularity of his cause, Chavez didn't consider himself a Latino leader, peers say.

"When people tried to say Chavez is the leader of the Chicano movement, he would say, 'No, I'm the leader of the farmworker movement,'" union co-founder Dolores Huerta said. "He never identified himself like that, never tried to play that role, although people bestowed it on him."

Chavez was a practical man, said Paul Chavez, and "was wary of spreading himself too thin. He knew there was so much to do for farmworkers."

Politically savvy, Chavez knew how to choose his moment. He spoke often, especially at schools and universities, to bring Americans from all walks of life to support the farmworkers.

Hundreds of students, priests, activists and others responded to the grape boycott and organized across the United States and Canada, asking consumers not to buy grapes. At least twice, Chavez fasted in support of the boycott, ending the first in 1968 with U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at his side and the second in 1988 alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

By 1975, a Louis Harris poll showed 17 million American adults were honoring the boycott. A lot of leaders were developed as a result, Huerta said, and the Chicano movement grew out of it.

"It empowered people who otherwise would not be active," she said.

Eventually, Chavez accepted himself as a role model to Latinos.

"He came to see how his work had transcended farm labor," Grossman said. "He realized that in the process of creating the farmworker movement, it inspired a lot of other people."

In a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in November 1984, Chavez recognized the union's importance to Latinos and Latinos' impact on the United States.

"The union's survival -- its very existence -- sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us -- the poorest among us," he said.

"The message was clear: If it could happen in the fields, it could happen anywhere -- in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures. ... The coming of our union signaled the start of great changes among Hispanics that are only now beginning to be seen."

Chavez's legacy
Since Chavez's death in 1993 at age 66, numerous streets, schools, bridges and parks have been named after him. Eight states celebrate Chavez's birthday as a holiday.

Many of the renamings were controversial -- even in California's Central Valley, where Chavez started his movement. In 2002, the school district in Delano paid $100,000 for the renaming to the local grape grower who had donated land for the school. The grower, who was one of the first to be hit by the UFW strike, made the district liable for damages if it gave the school any name that causes "extreme embarrassment and emotional stress."

Paul Chavez wasn't aware of the controversy in Portland over the street renaming. But he also didn't feel like he should interfere.

"It's not my place to tell you how to honor my father," he said. "Every community has to make that decision. But it was his universal values that inspired people from all over the place and these are not values just for farmworkers or for Latinos."

Remembering Cesar Chavez should be done institutionally, across the country, Paul Chavez said.

"Wouldn't it be a shame," he said, "if Dr. (Martin Luther)King's legacy was only relegated to the South, because that's where the civil rights struggle took place?"

The National Farm Workers Service Center, which Cesar Chavez founded and Paul Chavez now runs, carries on the movement's legacy "to farmworkers, Latinos and all working people." It includes an educational institute that helps students succeed in school, an affordable housing program and a radio station. The center also develops community service projects with school districts across the United States.

"The 'Si, se puede' attitude is a message of hope to kids, especially now in the midst of the recession," said Sonia Rodriguez, the center's vice president. "It teaches them that you don't have to be a victim, that you have to take responsibility for yourself, for your community."

In Woodburn, where Latinos tried to name a school for Chavez in the late 1990s, the naming process turned into the chance for such teaching, said Alejandra Lily, coordinator of Woodburn-based Voz Hispana, a group that fought for the name change.

Although Chavez's name did not get the honor, the school district promised that on Chavez's birthday it would implement a special curriculum and an annual celebration of his legacy. This year, students and parents participated in a service day, building four community gardens.

"We showed the kids that they can benefit their whole community," Lily said. "Cesar would have liked that."

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Sex trafficking

2009-05-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

My friend and colleague Mimi Chakarova has spent more than six years reporting on sex trafficking in Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East. After nearly a year of production at the Center for Investigative Reporting, she brings us THE PRICE OF SEX, featuring a series of interviews with young women sold into prostitution against their will, multimedia video pieces, reporting notes, previous work that launched on PBS' Frontline/World, NGO resources and ways to get involved. This is honest, tenacious work, on a subject that rarely gets much attention -- but should. Please read and spread the word:
www.priceofsex.org

And here is the rest of it.

Chavez

2009-05-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

I'm in Bakersfield, CA on assignment with The Oregonian, reporting about Cesar Chavez, the incredible person he was.

“When we are rally honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us, so it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving life do we find life, that the truest act courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for other, God help us to be men.” -- Cesar E. Chavez

And here is the rest of it.

On a rainy day, the census

2009-05-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

Today was a long day at work. Outside, more rain. Inside, mid-way through the day, I found out I have to do a story on the newly released census numbers. That means looking at huge Excel files of raw data, doing lots of calculations and finding the hidden trends in it all. Very stressful in such a short period of time, but I think I managed to show something interesting.

Hispanic surge is reshaping Oregon
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/05/2008_census_estimates_hispanic.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Wednesday May 13, 2009, 9:01 PM

Since 2000, Oregon's white majority population has grown slower and had fewer children, while Hispanics continue to increase their share -- particularly with a big surge in people younger than 20.

The latest U.S. Census figures for the state mirror a nationwide trend, suggesting that Oregon will continue to diversify for a long time and should prepare for political and other changes, experts say.

The differences are starkest in the Portland area. Four of the metro area's five counties -- Yamhill, Clackamas, Washington and Columbia -- had a negative growth rate among non-Hispanic whites younger than 20. The equivalent Hispanic population in those counties had high growth rates.

Clackamas County, for instance, had almost 10,000 fewer white children in 2008 than in 2000, while Hispanic youths grew by 61 percent.

"The growth of the Hispanic population has offset the losses seen in public schools," said Risa Proehl, a demographic analysis coordinator at Portland State University's Population Research Center, "especially considering a downward trend in the already lower fertility rates of white non-Hispanics."

Higher fertility rates among Hispanics have contributed to the significant increases in their younger age groups, Proehl said. And it means that population will continue to get bigger, she said.

But Hispanics' high growth rates were across all age groups, Proehl said, because of continuing immigration.

As immigrants assimilate, Proehl said, their growth rates may drop somewhat, but "it will be over a long period of time, and I don't foresee it dropping dramatically. For now, we're seeing Hispanic growth rates accelerate."

The growth of Hispanics in Oregon -- especially the current and expected future growth among children -- will shape the state's political scene, experts say.

"We're heading in that direction, and it's already happening in certain places like Woodburn," said Daniel HoSang, a political science professor at the University of Oregon.

But, HoSang said, Latinos are politically diverse, so it's hard to say what that will mean.

"You can see it shape statewide politics," he said, "but we won't see that there's a single trajectory it will follow."

The real influence won't be felt for at least another decade, HoSang said, because there is a lag between arrival, naturalization and ongoing participation. In states such as California, he said, only recently have large numbers of naturalized citizens headed to the ballot box.

Parties and electoral organizations in Oregon must figure out how to draw Latinos to vote, HoSang said. The climate already is changing, he said, pointing out that voters last fall rejected Measure 58, which would have restricted bilingual education.

"There will be limited appetite for that kind of politics in Oregon," HoSang said, because "the parties have learned from the California experience that it has a limited short-term appeal."

In the metro area, only Multnomah County bucked the trend among the youthful population: The county saw a 13 percent increase in the 0-4 years old age group. Births in Multnomah County have almost consistently increased since 2000, with a big jump seen in 2005 and again in 2006, PSU's Proehl said.

While non-Hispanic whites are a shrinking share of Oregon's population, their raw numbers are still increasing, Proehl noted.

The state saw a slight increase in the Asian and Pacific Islander population, while the black and Native American populations remained stable.

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Best of the West

2009-05-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Nice news this morning. My story about Russian youth, "Clashing Cultures, Fractured Families" won 2nd place in the Best of the West journalism contest. The judges wrote "Thorough, original, reporting on an emerging and timely problem in the Slavic immigrant community. All parents can relate to challenges with teenagers. In this case, those challenges are magnified by a cultural, religious divide." Here are the two stories in the series:

"Slavic parents loose control of their Americanizing kids"
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/mariya_calls_her_childrens_sch.html
and
"Helping Slavic youths find the right track"
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/post_37.html

And here is the rest of it.

Another article

2009-04-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

Doctors from afar meeting rural Oregon's needs
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/04/doctors_from_afar_meeting_rura.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Friday April 17, 2009

Across rural Oregon, more people travel long distances to see a doctor, or wait weeks or months for appointments. It takes as long as two years for some health centers to recruit a single physician, because many want to work for better pay in metropolitan areas.

The remedy to this crisis comes from India, the Philippines, Canada, Syria, Pakistan and more than 20 other far-flung nations.

Since 2005, Dr. Geraldine Somera, a native Filipina, has worked as a primary care doctor at the North Bend Medical Center in Coos Bay. At the Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville, Dr. Atiq Syed from India has cared for patients while they are in the hospital.

Syed and Somera are two of 73 foreign-born physicians practicing in Oregon under a visa waiver program. It allows foreign doctors to remain in the United States if they accept employment in communities without enough physicians.

The program is a boon, Oregon health officials say, because many Oregonians have limited access to doctors -- there aren't enough U.S. doctors who want to serve them. Some Oregon towns "are so desperate for providers," said Jo Johnson, recruitment coordinator with Oregon Health & Science University's Office of Rural Health, that "foreign-born physicians can make the difference between having a doctor and having no doctor."

Last month, Congress renewed the visa waiver program for six months. Legislation to expand it and make it permanent was introduced.

"Foreign-born doctors are a big asset for us," Johnson said. "They don't fill the whole gap, but they are a key factor in the system."

Doctor shortage
In Oregon, most rural counties are already considered in crisis.

A 2004 report by OHSU's Office of Rural Health suggests a "looming shortage of physicians." The reasons: Population growth in Oregon exceeds growth in the number of physicians; nearly half of the state's practicing physicians are over 50 and approaching retirement; and the state is already experiencing shortages in rural areas and in several specialties.

An estimated 50 percent of Oregonians and 20 percent of Americans nationwide live in a Health Professional Shortage Area, a federal shortage designation. That can mean a geographic area; a population group such as farmworkers or homeless or low-income people; or an understaffed medical facility. The designated areas have a low ratio of doctors to patients and lack access to health care in surrounding areas because of distance, overuse or other barriers.

Projections show that by 2020, the nation could fall short by as many as 200,000 doctors. There is an average of five doctors per 1,000 residents in Multnomah County, for example, but only one per 1,000 residents in counties such as Tillamook, Linn or Jefferson, according to the Office of Rural Health.

"We're only a year or so away from a wave of baby boomers and a population that will require growing medical attention," Johnson said.

To prepare, Johnson said, Oregon is increasingly relying on the visa waiver program, which was initiated in 1994 by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. Each state is eligible for up to 30 waivers a year for foreign-born physicians. The physicians enter the United States on a J-1 visa to complete a medical residency and must return to their country for at least two years before applying for another visa. If they agree to serve a rural community for a minimum of three years, the return requirement is waived.

Oregon began participating in the program in August 2002 and may need foreign doctors for years to come.

Studies show American physicians prefer living and working in urban, high-income areas. They tend to specialize -- it pays more and offers flexible hours -- and they shun primary care, even as an aging population is increasing the need for primary care doctors.

Studies show nonmetro American physicians work longer hours, earn less, and get a higher percentage of their revenue from cumbersome Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.

Ethical issues
Recruiting foreign-born doctors can be a balancing act. Critics say the practice is unethical because it takes health care wealth away from impoverished nations. And recruiters have to entice medical school candidates from abroad to settle in small towns that have little to offer in culture and infrastructure.

Somera, who received her undergraduate education and medical degrees in the Philippines, along with a specialty in surgery, came to the United States because a close friend from medical school held a green card. And, Somera said, the move would allow her to become financially independent.

"If I became a doctor in the Philippines, I would never get paid enough to own my office, have a car or pay my bills," she said.

Somera completed her internal medicine residency training at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Still, Coos Bay -- where she administers Pap smears, cholesterol screenings and breast exams, treats respiratory tract infections and other acute conditions -- was, at first, a shock for the doctor who hails from a big city and had visited New York and Los Angeles.

"Coming from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, I used to be in the center of everything," she said. "Big city, great restaurants, great shopping, that's what I'm used to."

But Somera said she found unexpected positives in Coos Bay: cheaper rent, no traffic, living a few minutes from work, beautiful beaches, and a pace that's more laid back. She even found a small population of Filipinos.

For the most part, Somera's experiences have been positive. She speaks almost perfect English but recognizes that she practices in a historic rural fishing community and that some of her older patients might not understand her accent.

Still, Somera likes it so much in Coos Bay that after her three-year service was over, she renewed her contract with the North Bend Medical Center and is applying for a green card. More than 80 percent of foreign-born physicians who completed their visa waiver contracts in Oregon have remained with the same employer.

Somera said working in the Philippines was challenging because it's a Third World country. Many people live below the poverty line, and health care is so expensive that it's geared to treat patients in acute situations only. Medication and technology are limited.

"The system is so broken down back home that I don't see myself being able to work there," Somera said. "I feel there is more structure here, more financial reward and it's more rewarding to do the job."

Somera acknowledges the medical "brain drain" happening in the Philippines and other countries with physician shortages. A World Health Organization report released in 2006 shows the employment of foreign doctors by wealthy countries burdens the poor countries that financed their education.

Somera hopes to go on medical missions to the Philippines and in this way offer medical care to her country of birth.

Part of the solution
Foreign doctors such as Somera are just one piece of solving Oregon's rural health care puzzle, said Johnson, the recruiting coordinator. "They are not a solution to the problem."

The federal government needs to look at comprehensive change, she said. That includes making more children interested in science and educating more U.S. doctors, especially family medicine doctors. Higher reimbursements for primary care are part of the puzzle, as are lower school loans, she said. More emphasis also needs to be placed on prevention. Finally, nurse practitioners and other midlevel health professionals can play a bigger role in treating patients.

In the meantime, Johnson hopes Congress expands the visa waiver program and makes it permanent so more foreign-born doctors can relieve Oregon's shortage.

"We need physicians," she said. "It doesn't matter which country they come from."

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

NAFTA's results

2009-04-15T19:53:00.001-07:00

This week, I interviewed an agricultural expert from Oaxaca, Mexico. He talked about the North American Free Trade Agreement, its effect on Mexican farmers, and the reasons for massive immigration of undocumented workers to the U.S. It's a pretty interesting perspective and one that's rarely heard.

Mexican farm expert lobbies for NAFTA change
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/04/mexican_farm_expert_lobbies_fo.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Wednesday April 15, 2009

Oaxaca, Mexico-based agriculture expert Baldemar Mendoza Jimenez works with rural communities that abide by a traditional form of self-organization, including a system of community service.

But this system, Jimenez says, was nearly destroyed by the North American Free Trade Agreement, leading to massive migration of Mexican farmers to the United States and our current crisis with illegal immigration. NAFTA was implemented in 1994 to remove barriers to trade and investment between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Jimenez works for the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca, which teaches farmers how to restore traditional farming methods, including organic, sustainable agriculture and crop diversity. His organization's goal is to reverse adverse effects of NAFTA: save and share traditional farming methods, restore food independence and halt the migration of Mexican farmers to the United States.

Jimenez answered questions during a recent interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

15 years after the implementation of NAFTA, what are the results on the ground in Mexico?

In general, the free trade agreement has led to a breakdown of the community in Mexico. In indigenous communities, every person performs volunteer work for the good of the community, such as working on constructing a school, clearing a road, or digging a water well. NAFTA weakened the system of community duties, because there are fewer community citizens to do the work. They have abandoned the fields and migrated to the United States.

Those who come back have a hard time re-adapting and often don't want to perform communal labor. Many community obligations are left to women. But when a family stops performing communal work, they loose their rights in the community, for example the right to cultivate the land. It generates many conflicts and the fabric that binds our community is lost.

Why did so many Mexican farmers migrate to the U.S.?

NAFTA undermined traditional agriculture methods and created a dependence on pesticides. It took away government price guarantees for corn and other products. It left the free market to regulate prices. To keep up, Mexican farmers sowed more corn. Diversified crops were substituted with monocrops. The government and agrobusinesses encouraged farmers to use pesticides to increase yield from the fields.

The Mexican government also approved the experimental planting of GMO corn. Our native corn was contaminated with genetically modified corn and farmers stopped using native seeds.

As a result, farmers abandoned traditional, sustainable farming practices. Their soil was contaminated by the use of agrochemicals. It became dependent on the pesticides, so farmers had to pay more to buy them. Many could not make ends meet. They abandoned their lands, left to work in maquiladoras, and emigrated to the United States.

Because farmers were no longer cultivating diverse crops and they couldn't compete with market prices, Mexico started to import food from the U.S. Now, Mexico is completely dependent on U.S. foods. In 2003, out of every 100 agricultural products that Mexicans ate, 93 were bought from the United States -even corn, beans, and rice, the staples of Mexican diets. Despite the free trade agreement, the U.S. continues to subsidize its farmers, allowing them to dump huge amounts of corn into Mexico and driving Mexican farmers to abandon their crops.

Do you see any positive effects of NAFTA in Mexico, especially in Oaxaca?

From the point of view of our reality, none. There may be some positive effects in other parts of Mexico, but usually it benefits people who are close to the government, people who have money, and not farmers. We are told Mexico has reduced the amount of corn it buys from the U.S. But those who sell corn in Mexico these days are not farmers, and often they're not even Mexican. They are business people who are making money in this new reality.

What does this mean for the United States today?

Here in the United States, you criminalize the migrants. You talk about protecting your borders, being more vigilant because immigrants are dangerous. But there is no clear public policy to find real solutions to real problems. Migration will continue as long as Mexican farmers are loosing their way of life. Even if some are now returning from the U.S. to Mexico because of the economy, there are others in Mexico getting ready to cross the border. The loss of food sovereignty is growing, and the people who are coming back from the U.S. are not used to working in the fields. What we really need is to urge the government to renegotiate NAFTA.

Organic, sustainable agriculture is hot in the United States. What can Americans do to help farmers in Mexico?

Here in the U.S. and elsewhere, only those who have money have access to good food. At one point in time, it was the poor farmers who had access to it. We should go back to that. First, farmers should not sow to sell. They should think about growing healthy food. Second, we need to understand that we're part of a system, a globalized food market, and we can harm the farmers that grow our food.

In the United States, most people don't have food sovereignty. They buy it. But if you really want to eat healthy, every family should try to grow some of their food. This would reduce dependence on large corporations that produce food at the cost of the small farmer. And it would give people options to decide what to eat. Many already grow their own gardens. It's better to grow your own. Just because you see organic produce at the supermarket doesn't mean that the farmer gets a fair price from the sale of that product.

And those who can't grow their food can also do something. The idea of fair trade doesn't mean you have to sow your own food. It can mean choosing to eat local foods and thinking about how your food gets to your kitchen table. We know there are many people who want to change their way of life. If every time there is more of us, change will come.

--Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Immigration debate, continued

2009-04-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

Another comment-provoking story of mine, this time on the topic of tuition equity. It was interesting to cover, because I got to go to Salem to the capitol building and to sit in on a hearing of the Education Committee. I don't usually cover the political process. It was fascinating to see how a bill makes it - or doesn't make it - through the hoops.

Illegal immigration status, in-state tuition for Oregon colleges?
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/illegal_status_instate_tuition.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen
Monday April 13, 2009

SALEM -- Students who are unlawfully living in the United States would pay in-state tuition at Oregon's public universities rather than steep non-resident tuition under a bill debated by legislators Monday in front of an overflow crowd.

This is the fourth time that Oregon student leaders and administrators are trying to pass such a bill. They argue that affordable public higher education for those who reside in the state -- no matter their legal status -- benefits all Oregonians.

"You have the choice to let students continue their education or deny it and make it more likely they will be more dependent on the state in the future," Wim Wiewel, Portland State University president, told the House Education Committee by speaker phone.

"We're really denying it by charging out-of-state tuition, when the state has already invested so much in them."

House Bill 2939 provides that students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents can be considered state residents and pay state tuition if they attended a local high school for at least three years, graduated from it and have been accepted by a state university.

Opponents said these benefits would be another entitlement for illegal immigrants and would violate federal laws.

"The only people who would benefit would be people who are illegally in our country," said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. "If you reduce tuition for illegal aliens, American citizens and residents will have to pay more."

An analysis by the Legislative Counsel concluded the bill is not in conflict with federal legislation. Ten states have enacted laws that offer in-state tuition to undocumented students.

About 65,000 undocumented students who have lived in the United States for five years or longer graduate from high school each year. Up to 1,000 of them graduate yearly in Oregon. Only 5 to 10 percent of undocumented graduates go to college, according to a 2007 report from The Urban Institute, a non-partisan research group based in Washington, D.C.

Any student who meets admission requirements can attend Oregon's public universities, regardless of immigration status. But tuition and fees are nearly three times higher for undocumented students -- $19,941 at the University of Oregon, -- a financial barrier that prevents most from attending college, supporters say.

Vidal Fuentes Ramos, 22, told legislators he hoped to enroll at Portland State University to study international business when he graduated from Hillsboro's Glencoe High in 2006.

Fuentes came to Oregon illegally from Puebla, Mexico, with his mother when he was 15 years old. He quickly learned English, graduated with honors and participated in community service activities.

He was a peer mediator, an academic tutor and a member of the speech and debate team. As vice president of the Hispanic Club, he organized food and clothes drives for the needy. Every summer, he volunteered at a homeless shelter and with a drug, alcohol and suicide prevention hot line.

"Community service has been one of the biggest parts of my life here," Fuentes said.

Because he couldn't afford PSU, Fuentes enrolled at Portland Community College. He graduates this spring with an associate's degree in business. He hopes to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

"It's time to stop judging undocumented students by the decisions their parents made," Fuentes said, "and start judging them by their own actions, by their willingness to improve Oregon."

If approved, the new law would start in fall 2010. Rep. Sara Gelser, chairwoman of the Education Committee, said she was hopeful the bill would move forward this time:

"We can't be slamming the doors of opportunity to children who can contribute to our state," Gelser said.

-- Gosia Wozniacka: gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Voices

2009-04-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

Imagined voices, and beloved, too,
of those who died, or of those who are
lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life-
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.

--C. P. Cavafy

And here is the rest of it.

Ellis Island

2009-04-07T23:19:00.000-07:00

Bardzo ciekawy artykul dotyczacy emigracji, po Polsku, w Duzym Formacie Gazety Wyborczej. Sa to fragmenty ksiazki. Polecam!
http://wyborcza.pl/1,75480,6436812,Amerykanska_selekcja.html
Amerykańska selekcja
Małgorzata Szejnert
2009-03-31

Rok 1912. Połowa imigrantów żydowskich, włoskich i rosyjskich nie radzi sobie z testami. Zostają uznani za upośledzonych umysłowo.

6 grudnia 1912 roku do portu nowojorskiego wchodzi statek "Königin Luise", dwa maszty, dwa kominy, zbudowany w stoczni Vulcan w Szczecinie. Ma dwieście dwadzieścia pięć miejsc w pierwszej klasie, dwieście trzydzieści pięć w drugiej, tysiąc dziewięćset czterdzieści w najgorszej - na "steerage". Należy do Północnoniemieckiego Lloyda i wypłynął z Bremy pod flagą niemiecką.

Pasażerowie "steerage" przechodzą z bagażami na prom Ellis Island i wysiadają na wyspie.

Gdyby na tym świecie panowała jakakolwiek równowaga, powinny się teraz odezwać wszystkie dzwony i dzwonki - na promie, na nabrzeżu Ellis, w rękach dozorców i na biurkach sekretarek. Prom powinien być ozdobiony chorągiewkami, przynajmniej tak pięknie jak dwadzieścia lat temu, gdy na stacji postawiła nogę pierwsza jej klientka, Annie Moore z Irlandii.

Z promu schodzi Franciszka Jagielska. Wiemy o niej tyle co z listy pasażerów zwanej manifestem, ale wystarczy, żeby mieć pewność - to ta sama Franciszka Jagielska, którą mąż przywoływał do siebie, strasząc, że w "Ameryce dużo żonów można nabyć za małe pieniedze". Franciszka nie mogła się przestraszyć tej groźby, bo list do niej nie dotarł. Zatrzymała go wraz z setkami innych listów z Ameryki carska cenzura.

"Pochodzenie: Rosja, polskie

Ostatnie miejsce zamieszkania: Dulsk, Rosja

Wiek w dniu przybycia: 42

Stan cywilny: Mężatka

Wzrost: 5 stóp, 3 cale [metr sześćdziesiąt]

Ile ma pieniędzy: Nie ma

Czy była przedtem w Stanach: Nie

Z kim płynie: Sama

Kto kupił bilet: Mąż

Gdzie mąż mieszka: W Pensylwanii, Pittsburgh [nazwa miasta niezupełnie czytelna]

Dokąd się udaje: Do męża

Umie czytać, pisać: Nie

Poligamistka, anarchistka: Nie, nie

Zdeformowana, kaleka: Nie

Stan zdrowia, fizyczny, umysłowy: Dobry

Budowa ciała: Foremna

Włosy: Blond

Oczy: Niebieskie

Znaki szczególne: Brak"

Nikt jednak nie wita Franciszki Jagielskiej ani dzwonkiem, ani chorągiewką. Być może przyjechał z Pittsburgha mąż Józef. Miejmy nadzieję, że Franciszkę wpuszczono do Stanów. Nie ma kaucji dwudziestu pięciu dolarów wprowadzonej niedawno przez komisarza Williamsa, ale na pewno mąż przywiózł jakieś pieniądze. Nie grozi jej za to test z czytania, ciągle nie został wprowadzony.

Peter Mac

Bagażowy Peter Mac w okrągłej służbowej czapce, w białej koszuli i spodniach na szelkach (posada jest dobra i Peterowi zarysował się brzuszek) kieruje ruchem dobytku przywiezionego z różnych stron świata. Niektóre rzeczy, które obserwuje, są oczywiste, a inne ciągle go dziwią. Przyzwyczaił się na przykład do tego, że każda nacja inaczej obwiązuje sznurami swoje toboły - i wie, które pętle i supły zrobiono w bliskiej jego sercu Irlandii (skąd ma żonę), które w Szwecji, które we Włoszech, a które w Szwajcarii.

Bagaże Duńczyków, Szwedów i Norwegów są upchane najbardziej. Według Petera ci ludzie biorą ze sobą więcej niż ktokolwiek inny: materace, piernaty, łóżka, szuflady, krzesła kuchenne, i choćby się im tłumaczyło, że zapłacą krocie za ich transport do miejsca przeznaczenia, nie chcą się z tym rozstać, jak z życiem.

Walizki Anglików i Francuzów są w lepszym stanie niż inne i zdecydowanie najbardziej nowoczesne. Grecy i Arabowie mają toboły wielkie jak góry, zbierają pięćset lub sześćset funtów rozmaitych rzeczy, ugniatają je razem i zawijają w dywany i chusty. Taką sztukę musi czasem nieść sześciu mężczyzn.

Peter, który stoi na straży waliz i tobołów i twierdzi, wbrew rachunkowi prawdopodobieństwa, że nigdy nic nie zagubił, dziwi się zachowaniu Polaków. Wprawdzie w dokumentach podróży są oni zapisani jako Rosjanie, Austriacy lub Niemcy, ale po tylu latach pracy w Castle Garden Peter Mac rozróżnia brzmienie różnych języków. Otóż ludzie, którzy mówią po polsku, nie lubią zdawać bagaży na przechowanie i taszczą je wszędzie ze sobą. Największą wagę przywiązują do pierzyn. Niosą je nieraz na głowie albo ramieniu i podtrzymują jedną ręką, podczas gdy drugą ciągną kufer z uczepionymi do niego dziećmi.

Potokowi ludzi i rzeczy przygląda się także uważnie doktor Victor Safford, któremu zaproponowano posadę lekarza na Ellis Island. Widowisko na Ellis Island tak go fascynuje, że gotów jest przyjąć pensję dużo niższą niż ta, którą ma obecnie, aby poznać bliżej to niezwykłe miejsce. Przewiduje, że dostarczy mu ono wyzwań zawodowych.

Jego także, jak Petera Maca, uderza to, że imigranci nie chcą się rozstać z dobytkiem, i jak przystało na chirurga, zwraca uwagę na niebezpieczne skutki tego uporu. Pół biedy, gdy człowieka taranuje wiklinowy kosz, bo wiklina jednak ustąpi i nie połamie żeber. Gorzej, gdy nacierają pudła i paki najwyraźniej pełne żelaznych obiektów. Należy także uważać na wielkie toboły na ramionach silnych słowiańskich dziewcząt. Te bele "zdają się miękkie i puszyste, ale poza jedną lub dwiema pierzynami zawierają prawdopodobnie parę rusztów do pieca, żelazne czajniki lub garnki i różne inne wschodnioeuropejskie lary i penaty o podstawowym praktycznym znaczeniu".

Jeśli dziewczyna weźmie nagły skręt, każdy, kto ma nieszczęście znaleźć się blisko, odczuje energię, jaką uzyskał ładunek w trakcie obrotu. Najzłośliwsze są jednak zdaniem doktora Safforda te wysoko oceniane przez Petera Maca zgrabne kuferki Anglików - nie tylko twarde, lecz na dodatek okute na rogach, tak że zadają rany.

Sześciosekundowi

Imigranci weszli do wielkiego westybulu na parterze głównego gmachu stacji, a teraz wspinają się na pierwsze piętro (w amerykańskim porządku - na drugie) pod uważnym wzrokiem lekarzy, którzy, jak już wiemy, noszą uniformy przypominające mundury wojskowe. Przybysze z podbitych państw Europy niczego i nikogo nie boją się bardziej niż mundurowych, uosabiających opresję w ich miastach i wioskach, więc czynią wszystko, by zniknąć z pola widzenia, schować się za kimś większym, wsiąknąć w kapotę, zasłonić tobołkiem. Te naiwne sposoby zostały szybko odkryte, skatalogowane, opisane w instrukcjach i lekarze dobrze wiedzą, kogo wyłuskać z tłumu do dalszych badań.

Lekarz inspekcyjny, który obrzuca imigranta szybkim spojrzeniem, musi zwrócić uwagę na sześć elementów: skórę głowy, twarz, szyję, ręce, sposób chodzenia i ogólną kondycję - fizyczną i psychiczną. Jeśli któryś z tych elementów nie jest widoczny gołym okiem, lekarz zatrzymuje imigranta, aby się upewnić, czy nie ma w tym czegoś podejrzanego.

Wysoki kołnierz. Należy go rozpiąć i sprawdzić, czy nie czai się pod nim wole lub wrzód.

Kapelusz. Kryje często strupień woszczynowy albo grzybicę.

Bujne loki. Jak wyżej.

Czapka z daszkiem nasunięta na oczy. Może osłaniać zapalenie spojówek albo jaglicę.

Ręka schowana pod płaszczem, szalem, bagażem. Może się okazać zdeformowana, sparaliżowana, bez palców, ze strupniem.

Bagaże. Mogą maskować wady postawy. Imigrant musi zostawić je na podłodze i przejść bez nich około dziesięciu stóp.

Dzieci powyżej dwóch lat uczepione matki. Matka ma postąpić jak wyżej.

Obliczono, że w dniach większego napływu, kiedy Ellis przyjmuje cztery - pięć tysięcy osób, każdy lekarz ma na zeskanowanie wzrokiem jednego człowieka mniej więcej sześć sekund. O doktorach inspekcyjnych, zwanych także liniowymi, mówi się coraz częściej - "sześciosekundowi".

Jeżeli "sześciosekundowy" coś zauważy i uzna, że potrzebne są dalsze, dokładniejsze badania, musi im nadać kierunek za pomocą kredy. Na ubraniu osoby podejrzanej o defekt psychiczny rysuje X. Jeśli defekt psychiczny jest bardzo prawdopodobny - ujmuje X w kółko. B to grzbiet (back), C - zapalenie spojówek (con junctivitis), CT - jaglica (trachoma), E - inne choroby oczu (eyes), F - twarz (face), Ft - stopy (feet), G - wole (goiter), H - serce (heart), K - przepuklina (hernia), N - szyja (neck), P - badanie i płuca (physical and lungs), Pg - ciąża (pregnancy), Sc - skóra głowy (scalp), S - otępienie (senility).

Czasem nie stosuje się kamuflażu, lecz maluje kredą całe słowo, na ogół na piersiach lub plecach imigranta: ręka, noga, skóra, paznokcie (krótki rzeczownik: nails).

Osoby oznaczone kredą obserwuje teraz inny lekarz, ustawiony w dobrze oświetlonym miejscu, przy wielkim oknie. Nazywają go na wyspie "człowiek oko". Bada dokładniej podejrzane oczy, głowy i ręce. Czasem o coś zapyta - z pomocą tłumacza. Może uwolnić imigranta od podejrzenia albo je potwierdzić. W tym drugim przypadku kieruje pacjenta do któregoś z pokoi lekarskich na dalsze badanie, czasem psychologiczne.

Do 1998 roku historia wyspy nie znała przypadku, by komuś udało się wymknąć z niewoli znaków kredowych. W tymże roku przypłynęła na Ellis osiemdziesięcioczteroletnia Hiszpanka Espuga Manuela Carnero. Wyemigrowała do Ameryki w 1920 roku z matką i bratem. Miała sześć lat, ale zapamiętała, że inspektor oznaczył kredą płaszczyk braciszka. Matka tak szybko i zręcznie ściągnęła z niego ten płaszcz, że nikt niczego nie zauważył. Nie wycofano chłopca z szeregu i nie rozłączono z rodziną. Espuga Manuela Carnero przypłynęła na Ellis, by to opowiedzieć i nagrać, ponieważ nigdy nie jest za późno na mówienie innym, że trzeba walczyć do końca, nawet gdy opór wydaje się beznadziejny.

William Williams

Komisarz Williams podpisuje swoim nazwiskiem regulamin sprzątania na Ellis Island.

Każdy pracownik jest wyposażony w wiadro, twardą miotłę, szorstką gąbkę, szorstkie ręczniki i szmaty, i trzy szczotki różnego rodzaju.

Wszyscy mają pracować z energią, jakiej wymagają prywatne korporacje i indywidualni pracodawcy w mieście Nowy Jork. Kto tego zaniedba, spadnie z listy płac.

Najpierw myje się toalety. Potem dormitoria męskie.

Zdjąć koce. Odłożyć te, które wymagają czyszczenia. Wytrzepać i porządnie złożyć pozostałe. Wszystkie koce zmieniać w poniedziałki i w piątki (to zdanie dopisano ręcznie na dokumencie).

Oczyścić ramy łóżek terpentyną i naftą. Umyć ściany.

Podwiesić równo łóżka na pasach.

Umyć podłogi.

Teraz wszyscy przechodzą do dormitoriów kobiecych. Robią to samo co w męskich.

Potem rozchodzą się do swoich rewirów. Zdezynfekować podłogi karbolem. Zdezynfekować toalety. Umyć pokój zatrzymań kobiet, pokój dochodzeń, pokój agentów kompanii okrętowych.

Między siódmą piętnaście a dziewiątą piętnaście rano napełnić wszystkie zbiorniki na lód.

Stale opróżniać kosze i spluwaczki. Po pierwszym obchodzie zrobić następny. Także w nocy. Wszystko spalić.

We wtorki, czwartki i soboty usunąć insekty z łóżek, grzejników i szczelin.

Zrobić to specjalną maszyną.

Co dziesięć dni umyć okna.

Sprzątacze dzienni (sześćdziesiąt sześć osób, w tym dziewięć kobiet) wypływają na wyspę z Manhattanu o szóstej dwadzieścia rano i pozostają na Ellis Island do piątej trzydzieści po południu. Przerwa na lunch od dwunastej do dwunastej czterdzieści pięć. Załoga nocna liczy piętnaście osób, w tym pięć kobiet.

Nie wiemy, czy komisarz zlecił spisanie tych zasad swemu pracownikowi, na przykład Byronowi Uhlowi, czy sporządził to sam. Nie można wykluczyć, że sam. Jest drobiazgowy.

Kwiatuszek La Guardia

W okresie szczytu imigracyjnego na Ellis Island pracuje trzydziestu sześciu tłumaczy. Według listy sporządzonej w biurze komisarza posługują się następującymi językami: angielskim, arabskim (syryjskim), ormiańskim, albańskim, czeskim, morawskim, słowackim, bośniackim, chorwackim, hercegowińskim, dalmatyńskim, serbskim, słoweńskim, czarnogórskim, macedońskim, węgierskim, bułgarskim, rumuńskim, rosyjskim, rusińskim, polskim, litewskim, duńskim, norweskim, szwedzkim, holenderskim, fińskim, flamandzkim, francuskim, niemieckim, greckim, włoskim, portugalskim, tureckim, perskim, jidysz.

Jednym z najlepszych tłumaczy jest Fiorello, Włoch z pochodzenia, niewysoki, okrągły, ruchliwy, o pogodnej twarzy. Wszyscy go nazywają Kwiatuszek, naruszając poniekąd powagę służby. Nikomu także nie przyjdzie do głowy, i przyjść nie może, że pomijane nazwisko Kwiatuszka będzie kiedyś znane na całym świecie jako nazwa jednego z najbardziej ruchliwych lotnisk w Ameryce, a on sam spoglądać będzie na pasażerów z marmurowego pomnika; rzeźbiarz nadał okrągłym rysom modela energiczną twardość.

Fiorello Raffaele Enrico La Guardia zna następujące języki: włoski, serbsko-chorwacki, niemiecki, jidysz, trochę francuski i naturalnie angielski, bo urodził się w Nowym Jorku. Pracuje na wyspie od niedawna. Przedtem przez parę lat był amerykańskim konsulem w Fiume nad Adriatykiem.

Wszyscy tłumacze są w służbie rządowej USA, ale ciągle jeszcze należą duchowo do kraju, z którego wyszli, do środowiska, które opuścili, i powinność pracy na rzecz rządu i jego ustaw walczy w nich z litością dla przybyszy. To straszny ciężar, bo od przekładu wiele zależy. Zeznania przed radą do specjalnych dochodzeń mogą człowieka uratować, kiedy są zręczne, i mogą pogrzebać, gdy są naiwne, zwłaszcza że rada rozstrzyga setki spraw dziennie i zawsze się śpieszy.

Niektóre ustawy budzą zresztą tyle wątpliwości, że trudno im się podporządkować. Tak jest na przykład z pracą kontraktową.

Na wyspie pracuje grupa inspektorów, którzy pilnują, czy imigranci nie przypłynęli do Stanów Zjednoczonych jako konkurencyjna siła robocza. Według La Guardii ustawa jest sprzeczna ze zdrowym rozsądkiem. Wiadomo, że człowiek emigruje po to, żeby pracować.

Fiorello uważa, że nigdy dosyć ostrożności, gdy się jest imigrantem przed komisją.

"Odpowiadając na pytania inspektorów, imigranci muszą bardzo uważać, bo jeśli ich oczekiwania będą zbyt entuzjastyczne, mogą zostać zatrzymani jako osoby, które przybyły z pogwałceniem prawa o pracy kontraktowej. Ale mogą być także wykluczeni, jeżeli będą zbyt enigmatyczni, nie będą nikogo znali, nie będą wiedzieli, dokąd się udać, aby dostać pracę ".

Tłumacz nie może niczego doradzać, nie może być stroną. Może jednak w odpowiedniej chwili dać do myślenia zawieszeniem głosu albo spojrzeniem. Może rozładować napięcie spokojem, stonować pytanie albo odpowiedź. Jednym słowem - czuwać. To jest potrzebne nie tylko tym, którzy podlegają śledztwu, ale i inspektorom, ponieważ, jak twierdzi La Guardia, większość z nich to porządni ludzie i chcą zachowywać się przyzwoicie.

Tymczasem komisarz Watchorn, którego Fiorello bardzo szanuje i który dał mu od razu bardzo dobrą pensję (tysiąc dwieście dolarów rocznie, zwłaszcza za tak potrzebny język chorwacki), jest stanowczym zwolennikiem ustawy - jako były działacz związkowy. Wprawdzie sam przyjechał przed laty pracować w kopalni, ale wtedy ustawa jeszcze nie obowiązywała, a poza tym wynalazł sobie robotę na własną rękę - no, może z pomocą braci metodystów.

La Guardia, który dziwi się ustawie, dopuszcza jednak do siebie myśl (być może pod wpływem komisarza), że ten akt, ograniczający dopływ siły roboczej, ogranicza też wyzysk w kopalniach, stalowniach, fabrykach samochodów, tkalniach i rzeźniach Ameryki.

Wielki i mały komisarz Watchorn

Ustalenie, czy Robert Watchorn jest wysoki, czy niski, to zadanie prawie niemożliwe. Nie ułatwią tego zdjęcia wykonane przez Augustusa Shermana.

Na pierwszym Sherman ustawił Watchorna i jego zastępcę Josepha Murraya obok człowieka, który nie ma na zdjęciu ani nazwiska, ani imienia. Na odbitce napisano tylko "Rosyjski gigant". Olbrzym, niezmiernie elegancki, w kamizelce, z cylindrem, w ogromnych lśniących kamaszach, opiera protekcjonalnie ręce na ramionach obu urzędników, a jego biała dłoń jest pewnie niewiele mniejsza niż lewe płuco komisarza, nad którym zawisła.

Na drugim zdjęciu Watchorn i Murray stoją obok człowieczka, którego określono jako

"Birmańczyka". Człowieczek ten jest taki maleńki, że zmieściłby się w szufladzie biurka komisarza, i równie wytworny jak olbrzym.

(Obaj, gigant i karzełek, zachowują godność tak jak obdarzony czterema kończynami Perumall Sammy. Nie wiemy, czy ich wpuszczono do Stanów, ale żaden z tych trzech nie wydaje się upośledzony umysłowo ani psychicznie i na pewno nie będzie ciężarem społecznym w kraju, gdzie tak bardzo kocha się rekordy).

Fakt, że Robert Watchorn raz wydaje się mały, a raz wielki, stanowi właściwy komentarz do jego sytuacji. Na tym stanowisku każda decyzja podlega natychmiast krańcowym ocenom.

Komisarz nie pozwala na to, by pobożni chrześcijanie podchodzili na wyspie do Żydów i wciskali im do rąk religijne teksty przetłumaczone na hebrajski lub jidysz. Wyjaśnia, że większość Żydów uciekła do Stanów przed dyskryminacją, także z religijnych powodów, i że zainteresowanie misjonarzy musi w nich budzić niepokój, zwłaszcza gdy okazują je na terenie placówki rządowej. Zyskuje wdzięczność organizacji żydowskich, ale jedno z towarzystw chrześcijańskich skarży się na niego do Białego Domu.

Wyrzuca z Ellis Island prawników, którzy wyciągają z imigrantów ostatnie pieniądze, obiecując im załatwić beznadziejne sprawy. Tę czystkę rozpoczął już William Williams; od roku 1904 do 1908 pozbyto się dwudziestu pięciu takich adwokatów. Tutaj komisarze nie mogą się spodziewać niczyjej wdzięczności.

Robert Watchorn odnosi się do zarządzeń organizacyjnych Williama Williamsa z wielkim szacunkiem, ale wycofuje nałożony przez niego na imigrantów obowiązek pokazania dziesięciu dolarów wraz z biletem do miejsca przeznaczenia w Stanach. Stwierdza, że wiele sprawnych osób deportowano tylko z powodu braku pieniędzy - jako potencjalny ciężar społeczny, podczas gdy z innych względów zasługiwali oni na przyjęcie. Organizacje etniczne przyjmują to z uznaniem, ale zwierzchnicy z niechęcią, bo ich zdaniem komisarz rozluźnił gorset inspekcji.

Za to podczas kadencji Roberta Watchorna w kwietniu 1906 roku z Ellis Island odpływa tysiąc imigrantów wydalonych jako robotnicy kontraktowi. Deportacje budzą rozpacz odrzuconych, gniew wytwórców potrzebujących taniej siły roboczej i aprobatę związkowców.

Trudno odmówić racji Watchornowi, kiedy skarży się swemu zwierzchnikowi w rządzie: - Na tym miejscu nie zadowoliłby nikogo nawet święty z nieba, wspierany przez całą swoją świątobliwość.

Thomas Salmon

Doktor Salmon, którego nie można posądzić o żadne uprzedzenia, twierdzi, że stan zdrowia psychicznego nowej imigracji jest niepokojący. Kiedy jeszcze pracował na Ellis Island, zbadał statystyki oddziałów psychiatrycznych w stanie Nowy Jork. Okazało się, że jest w nich nieproporcjonalnie dużo pacjentów urodzonych poza Stanami Zjednoczonymi. Przybysze spoza Ameryki stanowili dwadzieścia sześć procent populacji stanu, ale aż czterdzieści sześć procent chorych psychicznie w nowojorskich szpitalach.

Doktor Salmon przedstawił następujący rachunek: deportacja pięćdziesięciu dziewięciu imigrantów z powodów psychiatrycznych w 1905 roku zaoszczędziła stanowi Nowy Jork prawie dziewięćdziesiąt tysięcy dolarów. Obliczył to na podstawie kosztów leczenia, utrzymania i oczekiwanej długości życia tych chorych. Była to wówczas ogromna suma. Według doktora Salmona roczna inspekcja imigrantów kosztuje mniej, a na dodatek wydalenie chorych jest aktem profilaktyki wobec USA.

Jak jednak poradzić sobie z oddzieleniem (żeby nie używać słowa "selekcja") chorych umysłowo od zdrowych? Felery fizyczne łatwo zauważyć, załoga Ellis Island ma w tym doskonałą praktykę. Choroby umysłowe są tajemnicze i często ukryte. Ale i w tej dziedzinie medycyny wynaleziono narzędzia diagnozy. Postępowi lekarze w wielkich miastach Europy stosują testy na inteligencję. Pionierem tej metody jest francuski psycholog Alfred Binet. Jego prace trafiają do Stanów dzięki Henry'emu Goddardowi, który rozpoczął karierę życiową jako trener futbolu, nauczyciel łaciny, historii i botaniki w południowej Kalifornii, a z czasem, już jako doktor filozofii, został dyrektorem do spraw badawczych w szkole dla upośledzonej młodzieży w stanie Nowy Jork.

Pracując w tej szkole, tłumaczy na angielski skalę Bineta i rozpowszechnia ją w dziesiątkach tysięcy kopii w Stanach Zjednoczonych.

Wiadomość o tym musi zainteresować Williama Williamsa, nie tylko jako komisarza wyspy imigrantów, ale także jako członka światłego Klubu Uniwersyteckiego. Tak więc w 1910 roku Williams zaprasza Goddarda na Ellis Island w nadziei, że pomoże w diagnozach.

Henry Goddard, mimo iż stosuje postępowe metody badawcze, jest radykalnym eugenikiem i chętnie propagowałby sterylizację upośledzonych. Ale ponieważ obawia się krytyki społecznej, proponuje tylko ich odosobnienie, najlepiej w specjalnych ośrodkach-koloniach.

Zastosowanie na wyspie testów na inteligencję przynosi natychmiastowy efekt - liczba deportacji dramatycznie rośnie.

Połowa imigrantów żydowskich, włoskich i rosyjskich nie radzi sobie z testami. Zostają uznani za "feeble-minded" - upośledzonych umysłowo.

W 1912 roku "New York Times" informuje nie - jak przedtem doktor Salmon - o oszczędnościach wielotysięcznych, ale o milionowych. W tym roku zarządzono prawie o pięćdziesiąt sześć procent deportacji więcej niż w poprzednim.

Liczba chorych psychicznie w szpitalach stanu Nowy Jork zmniejsza się z około dwóch tysięcy trzystu do pięciuset siedemdziesięciorga trojga. Według Stanowej Komisji Szpitalnej cytowanej przez dziennik od 1904 roku pozbyto się ze stanu Nowy Jork prawie pięciu i pół tysiąca pacjentów. Prawie trzy tysiące stu deportowano, a około tysiąca pięciuset wysłano do innych miejsc w Ameryce. Gdyby pozostali w stanie Nowy Jork, kosztowaliby go prawie milion sto tysięcy dolarów rocznie.

Dziewczynka z gór

Fiorello La Guardia zapisał w autobiografii:

"Kilkunastoletnia dziewczynka z gór w północnych Włoszech znalazła się na Ellis Island. Nikt nie znał dobrze jej szczególnego dialektu, a ponieważ wahała się przy odpowiedziach na pytania, których nie rozumiała, została odesłana do szpitala na obserwację. Mogłem wyobrazić sobie skutek, jaki to wywarło na dziewczynce, zawsze starannie chronionej, której nigdy nie pozwolono na przebywanie z mężczyzną sam na sam, gdy lekarz nagle opukał jej kolana, zajrzał w oczy, obrócił na plecy i połaskotał grzbiet, aby wywołać odruchy. Dziecko zbuntowało się - i jak! To był najokrutniejszy przypadek, jaki widziałem kiedykolwiek na wyspie. W dwa tygodnie to dziecko zupełnie oszalało, chociaż kiedy przybyło na Ellis Island, było rozsądne i normalne".

Henry James

Kiedy pisarz Henry James w 1904 roku przypływa z Europy, gdzie spędził większość dojrzałego życia, do Ameryki, z której pochodzi, jest po sześćdziesiątce i cieszy się sławą. Wydał powieści "Daisy Miller", "Portret damy", "Dom na placu Waszyngtona", "Bostończycy". Przygląda się zmianom w swoim starym kraju. Porusza go napływ nowej ludności. Chce zobaczyć bramę Ameryki, stację na Ellis, i komisarz Williams chętnie mu ją pokazuje.

James określa Williama Williamsa jako "wybitnego komisarza tej wspaniałej służby" (imigracyjnej) i składa mu w ten sposób podziękowanie w powieści-eseju "The American Scene" wydanej w 1907 roku.

Jest mu wdzięczny za gościnność i swobodę, za to, że Williams pomógł mu zobaczyć dramat tego miejsca, "przejmujący i niezapomniany".

"Przed tymi drzwiami - pisze James o imigrantach na Ellis - które otwierają się dla nich tylko ze stokrotnymi formalnościami i ceremoniami, z mieleniem i zgrzytaniem klucza, stoją, błagając i czekając, uszeregowani, zbici w stado, podzieleni, podpodzieleni, posortowani, przesiani, obszukani, odkażeni ".

Henry James jest przekonany, że wrażliwy obywatel Stanów Zjednoczonych, któremu zdarzyło się widzieć pracę Ellis Island, nie będzie po powrocie z wyspy tym samym człowiekiem. "Zjadł owoc z drzewa poznania i ten smak na zawsze pozostanie mu w ustach".

* Fragmenty książki-reportażu "Wyspa klucz" Małgorzaty Szejnert, która ukaże się 6 kwietnia nakładem wydawnictwa Znak

Małgorzata Szejnert

food revolution

2009-04-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22food.html
By ANDREW MARTIN
The New York Times
Published: March 21, 2009
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- AS tens of thousands of people recently strolled among booths of the nation’s largest organic and natural foods show here, munching on fair-trade chocolate and sipping organic wine, a few dozen pioneers of the industry sneaked off to an out-of-the-way conference room.

Although unit sales of organic food have leveled off and even declined lately, versus a year earlier, the mood among those crowded into the conference room was upbeat as they awaited a private screening of a documentary called “Food Inc.” — a withering critique of agribusiness and industrially produced food.

They also gathered to relish their changing political fortunes, courtesy of the Obama administration.

“This has never been just about business,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, the maker of organic yogurt. “We are here to change the world. We dreamt for decades of having this moment.”

After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.

To read the rest, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22food.html
And here is the rest of it.

Wiosna

2009-04-02T22:16:00.001-07:00

Rain has been falling on Portland for days. Today, the sun came out for the first time. Wiosna - Spring! I took a break at work and went for a walk. I discovered a neighborhood nearby, where the streets are lined with flowering trees, wild cherry and plum. It smelled so wonderful!

Przedwczoraj znalazlam - by coincidence - piekny wiersz Szymborskiej pt. "Jablonka". Chociaz to jeszcze nie maj, dzisiaj poczulam sie jak w tym wierszu. (przepraszam za brak polskiej trzcionki)

Jablonka

W raju majowym, pod piekna jablonka,
co sie kwiatami jak smiechem zanosi,

pod nieswiadoma dobrego i zlego,
pod wzruszajaca na to galeziami,

pod niczyja, ktokolwiek powie o niej moja;
pod obciazona tylko przeczuciem owocu,

pod nieciekawa, ktory rok, jaki kraj,
co za planeta i dokad sie toczy,

pod tak malo mi krewna, tak bardzo mi inna,
ze ani nie pociesza mnie, ani nie przeraza,

pod obojetna, cokolwiek sie stanie,
pod drzaca z cierpliwosci kazdym listkiem,

pod niepojeta, jakby mi sie snila,
albo snilo sie wszystko oprocz niej
zbyt zrozumiale i zarozumiale -

pozostac jeszcze, nie wracac do domu.
Do domu wracac chca tylko wiezniowie.

The complexities of the immigration debate

2009-04-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

My former Oregonian colleague Angie Chuang, now a professor at American University, mentions my recent project in her diversity column on Poynter:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=58&aid=160739

And here is the rest of it.

Kahneeta

2009-03-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

I spent two serene days on the Indian reservation of Warm Springs. So much space -- the expanse of red-greyish sand and stones, with wild horses and roaming cows... (You can enlarge each photo - kazde zdjecie mozna powiekszyc klikajac na nie).

Click to see more photos. Jest wiecej zdjec!

Anouk van Dijk choreographs

2009-03-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I went to see a dance performance by a choreographer from the Netherlands. It was intense and pretty interesting. The audience was seated in a very tight, small square, about ten people to a row, with barely space in the middle to dance. It made some people uncomfortable, to be put in such close quarters. The dance examined the relationship between performer and audience, often time it seemed the audience was the performer and the performer was watching us! Mid-way through the piece, the chairs were removed, and the dancers mingled with the (confused) crowd. I loved it. Here's an excerpt:

And here is the rest of it.

Remade in America

2009-03-15T14:41:00.001-07:00

The New York Times is running a series of articles about immigration, with some really fantastic graphics.
Today, a very interesting story on how the latest influx of immigrants is affecting schools and how immigrant children are being taught. Well worth the reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/us/15immig.html
To see the entire series when they add more articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/immigration
And make sure to look at this graphic, it is AMAZING:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
It shows how different ethnic groups settled across America over our last few centuries.

And here is the rest of it.

As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero

2009-03-11T23:26:00.001-07:00

A very scary prospect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12papers.html?_r=1&hp

And here is the rest of it.

an angry immigration debate

2009-03-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Here is my latest article from The Oregonian, on the topic of immigration reform. What's new is that businesses are now pushing for this reform -- a year or two ago, they would keep mum when asked about undocumented workers. What's not new is how much anger the debate generates. As of this morning, the article posted at the Oregonian site generated more than 100 comments. Most pretty angry. Worth a reading in themselves - for a pulse of what some folks are thinking.

Oregon groups unite on immigration reform
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/oregon_groups_unite_on_immigra.html

Though immigration has dwindled as an issue in Washington, D.C., overshadowed by the economic crisis, local groups in Oregon and other states are pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, hoping to jump-start the conversation.

Despite historic differences, three unlikely bedfellows -- businesses, unions and faith leaders -- are teaming up to lobby legislators, raise awareness and add economic arguments to an often emotional debate.

"It's very symbolic that we've decided to go in the same direction on the issue of immigration," said Jeff Stone of the Coalition for a Working Oregon, a group of 20 Oregon employer associations. "It doesn't mean that businesses have gone to the left, or unions to the right. Both sides still have their opinions, but we're setting them aside."

The three groups are asking lawmakers to halt all immigration-related legislation on the state level and declare support for swift federal action. Along with their counterparts in other states, they are pushing Congress for a September vote on immigration, and they want local legislators to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting President Barack Obama's reform agenda.

That agenda includes securing borders, creating a system to regulate the flow of workers, and allowing undocumented immigrants in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line to become citizens.

The three groups come to reform with different perspectives. Employers want access to a reliable, legal work force. Union leaders want workers to have legal status, so that they don't have to hide in the shadows and are not taken advantage of. And faith leaders want to show how the immigration system affects individuals and their families.

"We came together to talk sense, to explain that there are consequences to enforcement-only actions, and to change the debate to a more reasonable, humane, realistic conversation, instead of vilifying a whole ethnic group," Stone said. "Ultimately, we're going to have to live together as a community."

Francisco Lopez, coordinator of the immigrant-rights group CAUSA, said the groups wanted a more "holistic" approach to immigration reform.

"Our goal is to find common ground," he said.

Business speaks up
So far, the groups say their common goal is to keep people in the country working and living legally while their immigration status is resolved. An estimated 150,000 such immigrants live in Oregon, according to a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study.

Businesses are the newest player in the battle for reform. Until recently, most employers kept quiet when the subject of employing illegal workers came up. But the federal "no-match" rule, which would require businesses to fire undocumented workers, galvanized them.

The Coalition for a Working Oregon says employers can't afford to lose the workers -- there aren't enough native Oregonians to do the jobs -- and they need a better mechanism to get a legal work force.

"We realized we'll lose our workers and we're always playing defense," said Stone, co-chairman of the coalition. "Clearly, we either needed to articulate our voice and help shape policy, or have policy shape us."

The coalition, which represents more than 300,000 workers in nurseries, construction, dairy farms and other top industries, has held a series of immigration debates in chambers of commerce around the state, lobbying state lawmakers, and building a base of supporters to blanket legislators with calls when the time is right.

The unions want unauthorized immigrant workers legalized so leaders can better advocate for employee rights in the workplace. The unions include PCUN, or Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, with more than 5,000 registered members, and the Service Employees International Union, which represents 45,000 workers in Oregon.

"We want to make sure workers have a voice on the job, and it's very difficult for workers to have a voice when some are forced to work in the shadows," said Arthur Towers, political director for SEIU Local 503.

PCUN and CAUSA are holding leadership training and house meetings to mobilize supporters, especially Latinos who are U.S. citizens. They are also lobbying state lawmakers and planning a march to bring several thousand Oregonians to Salem on May 1.

"We need to show that we have the capacity to mobilize," Lopez said. "We need to make noise locally so it's reflected on the national level."

And faith leaders in dozens of congregations across the state are putting a human face on the debate by holding presentations on immigration and planning legislative action to push for reform, including writing letters, phoning, holding rallies and visiting legislators.

"We're going back to our basic faith values around justice, human dignity and the inherent value of all people," said Sarah Loose, coordinator of Oregon New Sanctuary Movement, which unites more than 20 congregations that support immigrants' rights, no matter their legal status.

"It's about seeing people as more than labor, as our fellow brothers and sisters who have the same needs as people everywhere," she said.

The opposition
Opponents of legal and illegal immigration advocate a different kind of overhaul. Enforcement and a severe reduction of current immigration levels should be its pillars, said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. In the meantime, the state should help fix the system.

A handful of Republican lawmakers in Salem have introduced a dozen immigration-related bills, ranging from requiring proof of legal presence to be hired by the state to requiring employers to verify employees' legal status through the federal E-Verify database.

"Yes, the immigration system needs to be fixed, but I don't see that happening anytime soon," said Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer. "And I don't picture some of these issues being addressed by Congress."

But the political reality in Salem doesn't favor Thatcher's bills. At a recent meeting at the Capitol, Debbie Koreski, legislative director for House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, told reform proponents that most of the bills would not even get a hearing. Republicans don't have the votes because of the Democratic supermajority in both house. And legislators are still raw, Koreski said, from last year's discussion about stricter driver's license requirements -- blocking undocumented immigrants from getting a license -- and are not eager to take up the debate.

The economy has also eclipsed the conversation. Though the crisis and the plight of unemployed Americans may slow reform, proponents agree, it won't stop it. Because for the most part, Stone said, laid-off American workers don't want the jobs that immigrants held.

"Americans don't choose to do those kinds of jobs anymore," he said. "It's hard work, with your hands. Try working 10 hours in the rain all day digging trees."

If the economy grows worse, small movement across job sectors may be seen, he said, but this argument also distracts from solving the overall issue.

"Once the economy rebounds, we'll be stuck with the same problem," said Bill Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Oregon Restaurant Association. In fact, he said, the economic crisis might be the perfect time to resolve immigration. "If you want to get the economy to where it was, you have to meet the work force demand."

And enforcement alone could be counterproductive to economic recovery.

"You can't in the same stroke that you try to repair the economy use enforcement measures which are harming those very sectors of the economy," Stone said.

©2009 Oregon Live

switching identities

2009-03-08T18:43:00.000-07:00

I came across this very interesting article in last sunday's NYTimes, about Franco's regime in Spain taking children away from dissident parents and switching their identities. I'm always fascinated by identity, by how some leaders sought to manipulate it, how human identity can be switched, erased, deleted entirely and replaced by something else that's a pure creation. Manufactured people? Sounds like a story from a novel, but it actually happened. Remember communist leaders deleting others from photographs when they fell out of grace? Remember reeducation camps? It's quite amazing, what human beings can do to others, how they can seek to engineer each other.

Families Search for Truth of Spain’s ‘Lost Children’
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/europe/01franco.html?scp=4&sq=spain&st=cse

LOMBILLO DE LOS BARRIOS, Spain — The truth, if ever it emerges, will come too late for Emilia Girón. For 65 years, Ms. Girón, a hard-bitten mother of seven, ached to know what had become of her son Jesús. Born in the early 1940s during the vengeful first years of Gen. Francisco Franco’s 36-year dictatorship he was taken from her to be baptized shortly after his birth. She never saw him again. (...) click on link above to read more.

And here is the rest of it.

Sri Lankan cricketers attacked in Pakistan

2009-03-04T23:33:00.000-08:00

Pakistan seems to be at the brink of chaos on many days. In addition to frequent news about extremists -- the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and local militant outfits like Laskhar -- now a cricket team gets targeted by armed gunmen who apparently (given how well prepared they seemed) were planning to take the teammates captive and kill them off. If you know how popular cricket is in Southeast Asia, you know this is serious. Many people in Pakistan, esp. cricket fans, are not happy. Newspapers in Pakistan declared it the requiem for the sport. Sri Lankans were the only ones who agreed to play there, and now no one will want to come. It's as if suddenly baseball was banned in the US.
If you want the latest on the cricket attack, go to Pakistani newspaper The Dawn at http://www.dawn.com
Also, in case you imagine Pakistan as a backwards, uncivilized land, I encourage you to read this article about the arts and culture in Lahore, from the Smithsonian Magazine. A city I dream to visit.
Letter from Lahore: Reinventing Pakistan
Welcome to Lahore, where an explosion of art and media is offering a vibrant alternative to the strictures of religious conservatives and is transforming one of America's most important and most ambivalent allies
By Mohsin Hamid
Smithsonian magazine, July 2004
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/pakistan.html

Polo Catalani provides a 'bigger voice' for immigrants

2009-02-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

Ronault "Polo" Catalani provides a 'bigger voice' for immigrants
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2009/02/ronault_polo_catalani_provides.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Rob Finch, The Oregonian
Saturday, February 28, 2009

After an alarm went off at Roosevelt High School, Portland police arrested two Hmong teens, members of an ethnic group from Southeast Asia. The youths later were released and found innocent. The police apologized, but many of Portland's Hmong refugees from war-torn Laos remained frightened and confused.

Ronault L.S. Catalani, a Portland-area lawyer and community activist who also hails from Asia, advised an odd repayment.

"I explained to the policemen that, for us, saying sorry is not enough. We have a proverb: 'Respect is not in words, respect is in deeds.' You have to give something to heal the break."

So, one morning Catalani ushered the officers into a Hmong leader's home. The policemen wielded two live chickens. Hmong elders and their families crowded in.

The chickens were sacrificed in a special ceremony, their lives given in an effort to repair the relationships that had been breached. The sacrifice is part of a long-standing shamanic cultural tradition that attempts to heal with offerings to the spirits.

"Then," Catalani said, "we ate like there was no tomorrow."

For more than three decades, lawyer-activist Catalani has mediated
between the Old World of immigrants and refugees and the "new world" they encounter in Oregon, easing cultural tensions, solving conflicts and connecting newcomers to resources.

Known to friends and colleagues as "Polo," Catalani -- also a columnist for the Asian Reporter -- is a humble, quiet man. His speech is deliberate, accented, sometimes almost poetic. He will call you "Sister" ("Saya") or "Auntie," or "Elder brother." "Terima kasih," he likes to say, or, "I offer my love and thanks."

But behind this mild-spoken manner is a tenacious philosophy of how best to welcome and protect Oregon's immigrants and refugees, whose numbers have climbed during the past three decades. Foreign-born residents now make up 10 percent of the state's population, 13 percent of Portland's, 18 percent of Gresham's and more than 22 percent of Beaverton's, according to census figures.

"Polo is always fighting for us," said Mardine Mao, president of the Cambodian American Community of Oregon. "We're a small voice, but with Polo, because he's connected to many different communities, we feel like he's our bigger voice. He represents us."

As Oregon becomes increasingly diverse, it is more and more clear that one method cannot be used to work with all communities. That is why Portland hired Catalani as the immigrant and refugee program coordinator with the new Office of Human Relations. His task: to invite newcomers into city hall and to teach them how to share their cultural capital with the mainstream, in addition to mediating conflicts.

But his methods have been unconventional. Some may find his depictions and vocabulary too ethnic or stereotypical, his work counterproductive to acculturation. His approach, he writes in his book, "Counter Culture: Immigrant Stories From Portland Cafe Counters," is not bent on integration and assimilation.

"My work is not to force access into the mainstream but to defend from the mainstream," Catalani said. "With time, all immigrants will integrate. The effort now is to preserve our integrity as a community."

In problem-solving, Catalani relies on Old World tactics that immigrants are familiar with. He has urged government officials and activists to strive for a community-based reconciliatory approach rather than legalistic methods. It's a system in which individuals are part of a greater whole and take responsibility for each other.

Catalani aims to keep families together and to prevent divorce, custody battles and foster care. Sometimes, he says, it's better to wall off social workers and police and to solve problems "around the kitchen table" instead of in the courtroom. Or counsel victims to call on community elders rather than police, and to accept repayments rather than pursue legal battles.

"The state should not monopolize problem-solving," he said.

His sensibility was shaped by the dislocation and chaos of his childhood in post-colonial Indonesia.
One morning, neighbors barged into Catalani's family home and carried out all of their belongings. The neighbors were Manado, full-blooded Indonesians, while the Catalanis were Indos, a mix of white Catalan and Manado. Rage and riots erupted.

The family ran. All Catalani remembers is his father throwing him and his brother onto a roaring propeller airplane. The family flew to Singapore, then boarded a ship for the Netherlands, where they would be considered stateless. Four years later, the Catalanis gained refugee status from the United States and came to live in Salem.

Catalani's mother went to work at a cannery, while his father toiled as a janitor. In school, some white students used racial slurs against Catalani, and spit on and made fun of him, he said.

He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Oregon. Within a year, he had declared a triple major in psychology, philosophy and political science. He went on fellowships to Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Iran to research political revolutions and community development.

When he graduated, Catalani became a social worker with the Department of Human Services in Coos County. But he saw cruel or neglectful parents from a different angle than most other social workers at the time.

"More often than not, the woman was beating her baby because she's angry and frustrated at her man," he said. "Or the father is humiliated, has a bad job and comes home with anger, then drinks or beats his wife and child."

Removing an individual from a home or jailing him didn't seem efficient to Catalani, he said, because "if there's trouble with a person, the family is in trouble and that family should be addressing that issue together."

Catalani's father -- a hakim, or community justice/mediator in Indonesia -- taught him that the family and community should be responsible for healing.

"It's a very Asian position, this tendency to find a viable way of getting along," said Robert Textor, a retired Stanford University anthropology professor and Southeast Asia scholar. "The notion of justice and fairness is present, but it is not as emphasized as in the U.S. Extended kin is taken very seriously in Indonesia."

A year later, Catalani quit social work to study law.

At the time, Oregon schools, hospitals and courts became overwhelmed with a new wave of Southeast Asian refugees, and Catalani saw his calling. He noticed many Asian refugee children were being taken away from their homes because of alleged abuse and neglect by their parents, and placed in mainstream American families, causing cultural and linguistic disorientation.

Catalani worked with refugee organizations and state legislators to draft the Oregon Refugee Child Act. The bill, passed in 1985, provided special protection for refugee children and created the Refugee Child Advisory Committee, which individually reviews child welfare cases of refugee families. When possible, it places refugee children with extended family or another family of the same ethnic background and language.

After a rise in Southeast Asian gangs in the 1990s, Catalani drew up the contract for a Hmong American Community Policing agreement in North Portland. Day-to-day policing of the Hmong community was turned over to its community leaders, family heads and elders. Hmong leaders also trained Portland police in their community's customs.

As an attorney, Catalani represented refugees in courts, for everything from criminal matters to child welfare cases. In one case, involving Andy Cha, a young Hmong man with developmental disabilities who committed an assault with a firearm on a Portland-area couple, Catalani negotiated for the community to take responsibility for Cha, instead of sending him to jail. Hmong elders took on the task of supervising and helping Cha, who was able to stay with his wife and children.

"Polo donates his time and his equities for the community, and he doesn't ask for anything in return," said Thach Nguyen, program manager of the Juvenile Counseling and Court Services for Multnomah County. Nguyen worked with Catalani and school officials to help close the achievement gap for refugee children.

Catalani says his work has empowered community members: "It has given the confidence to our elders and clan leaders to solve problems," he said.

At Portland's Office of Human Rights, Catalani leads training in civic engagement, works on broadening access and inclusion for immigrants and mediates conflicts. He hopes his work can continue, although his position was funded by the city council for only one year, until the end of June. It's not certain whether it will be renewed.

Other Oregonians might also benefit from Catalani's methods.

"He has a worldview that says, 'We're in this together,'" Stanford's Textor said, "'so we should respect each other and we should find solutions together.'"

Read an interview with Catalani.

Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Ronault L.S. Catalani

About those initials: L.S. stands for: Latang (the sound the heart makes) and Sayang (song); together it means "compassion."

Nickname: Polo, short for Apollo

Born: Dec. 15, 1953, in Kota Ambon, Ambon, Republic of Indonesia

Family: Wife Chompunut Xuto Catalani ("Nim"), painter, art educator and immigrant arts organizer; 29-year-old daughter Caricia C.C. Veneziale, completing doctorate in public health at University of California, Berkeley, and co-founder of nonprofit community organizing group Video Voice; 26-year-old son Aden S.O. Catalani, painter and graphic artist. Father Leopoldo Catalani and mother Vilma Eleanora Catalani, both of Kaneohe, Hawaii

Favorite books: Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and Duong Thu Huong's "Memories of a Pure Spring"

Quote: "Always leave a place better than when you arrived. This is your duty. This all our responsibility, to each other." -- Leopoldo Catalani

Online: http://www.asianreporter.com/columns.htm
http://www.coloredpencilsbooks.com/

behind the murder of a Polish engineer in Pakistan

2009-02-21T16:01:00.000-08:00

For Wprost, Poland
Feb 12, 2009
Stanczak's murder: The tragic human cost of a larger war
By Beena Sarwar in Karachi, Pakistan

The horrific cold-blooded murder of a kidnapped Polish engineer in
Pakistan has saddened and shocked people. It is the first such murder
of a foreigner in Pakistan since the beheading of the American
journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 by his captors who are
believed to have links with Al-Qaeda.

"It was very cruel. These people (the murderers) are animals," said a
young housewife, Saima, coming out of a yoga class in Karachi in
sweatpants and t-shirt. Her colleague Seema agreed. "They are
barbarians. They never spared the great prophets, how can we expect
them to spare us ordinary people?" she added, adjusting a printed
headscarf over her long black coat.

The 42-year-old geologist, Piotr Stanczak who worked for Geofizyka
Krakow, an oil and natural gas exploration company was kidnapped on
Sept. 28, 2008 by militants who ambushed his vehicle, killing three
Pakistanis traveling with him, in Attock district in Pakistan near the
Afghan border, 85 km from the capital Islamabad.

His captors, the
banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (`Taliban Movement of Pakistan',
TTP) which has links to Al-Qaeda, were holding him in Darra Adamkhel,
Orakzai, one of the seven tribal agencies that form Pakistan's
FederallyAdministered Tribal Areas (FATA). They demanded that the
Pakistan government halt military operations in the area and release
61 Taliban prisoners in exchange for Stanczak's life.

Such groups continue to hold other foreign hostages, including an
American U.N. worker and a Chinese national for similar demands. Not
operating under a central chain of command makes negotiations with
them difficult.

The TTP group holding Stanczak hostage beheaded him on Feb 7,
releasing a video of what Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gillani
has condemned as an "absolutely barbaric act". Pending confirmation of
the report, he said he "would want to condole with the Polish people,
the Polish government and his family." Stanczak, he said, was working
to help Pakistan's development, making his death even more tragic.
"The government of Pakistan condemns it in the strongest possible terms."

Poland has blamed Pakistan for not doing enough to tackle the
terrorism that led to the killing. Polish Justice Minister Andrzej
Czuma told reporters, "The structure of the Pakistani government is
behind this apathy. Pakistani authorities encourage these bandits."
The situation is more complicated than that. Pakistan does have a
historical link to these forces, `jihadis' or holy warriors. But for
the first time, an elected government is genuinely working against
them, recognizing that Pakistan's very survival lies in eradicating
them. As President Asif Ali Zardari has stated, the target of these
`jihadi' forces is not just to control some areas, but to overrun the
entire country.

This is a marked departure from the previous policy, particularly
since the Afghan war against the Soviet occupation of the 1980s during
which Pakistan armed and trained `jihadi' forces, backed by the
Americans, Saudis and others, turning a nationalist struggle for
liberation into a global `religious' war. In 1996, in the power
vacuum of post-war Afghanistan, the `Taliban', a plural word that
literally means `students', who came from religious seminaries in
Pakistan that had been set up by Pakistan, America and Saudi Arabia to
indoctrinate cadres for the Afghan `jihad', swept into power. They
have since then been a threat to women, pluralism, and democracy in
the region.

The Afghans initially welcomed the Taliban for their `speedy justice'
but were alienated by Taliban's oppressive measures like closing
girls' schools and pushing women out of the public sphere. Forced to
give up their jobs, thousands of women, the sole bread-earners for
their families, had three choices: beg, starve, or prostitution. Yet
the Pakistani establishment supported the Taliban in an attempt to
provide Pakistan with the `strategic depth' apparently needed to
counter the perceived threat from long-standing rival India, projected
by the Pakistani establishment as `the enemy' on the eastern border.

Many in Pakistan, like the independent Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan, urged the authorities to severe links with the `jihadis' for
the country's own survival. But it was only after being pushed by
Washington following the attacks in New York of September 11, 2001,
that Pakistan's President and also Chief of Army Staff Pervez
Musharraf officially renounced Pakistan's ties to the Taliban, turning
against the very forces Islamabad had been cultivating to counter
India and bleed it in the disputed valley of Kashmir.
Pakistan now allowed its territory to be used by US military forces
and committed military forces to combating `terrorist' elements.

Given the absence of democratic rule in Pakistan, the `war on terror'
also gave the government a pretext for crushing political dissent as
in the western province of Balochistan bordering Iran, where a
nationalist insurgency has been festering for years.

After the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban began
re-grouping in Pakistan's tribal belt. As they gained ground, they
have been `banning' girls' education, shutting down or demolishing
over a hundred girls' schools in the area. Over 100,000 girls have
been forced to discontinue their education. Schoolteachers have been
killed for going to work, even if covered in the all-enveloping
`burqa'. These measures are alienating many locals who have a basic
education and want their children, including girls, to be educated for
a better future.

The Taliban's murder of women and mutilation of bodies are also
eroding sympathies for the their ostensibly Islamic agenda. They have
violated the time-honoured code that allows people to `punish' women
of their own family for transgressions, but not those of others. They
have been kidnapping and killing women they accuse of `immoral
activities'. Over the past five years, the mutilated bodies of more
than 150 pro-government maliks (tribal elders) have been dumped at
various hamlets.

Locals in some areas have begun refusing to harbour Taliban and even
aggressively chasing them away. Without local support, the Taliban
cannot operate here. In one incident on September 25, 2008, a militia
comprising hundreds of armed volunteers, Mullagori tribesmen in Khyber
Agency set Taliban hideouts on fire and chased out some eighty TTP
militants. During the fighting, the tribesmen suffered huge financial
losses, but pledged to support the government against the militants.
Many Jirgas (tribal councils) have warned locals against sheltering
Taliban or being punished with fine, expulsion and demolition of the
violator's home. Such incidents have taken place in Waziristan,
Bajaur, and Khyber tribal agencies and in Swat, a settled area in the
North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The Pakistan government – the first popularly elected government in
over a decade – believes that the problem's resolution lies in
political rather than military means, although it needs the full
support of the Pakistan Army. However, many in Pakistan, including in
the agencies that were earlier charged with cultivating links with the
`jihadi' elements, still see the Taliban as an anti-imperialist force,
forgetting that the Taliban pre-date the American invasion of Iraq,
bombing of Afghanistan, and drone attacks in Pakistan. These `jihadis'
have the ideological upper hand because they play the religion card.
They release videos of captured Pakistani soldiers – including their
executions -- in which they are asked whether their first loyalty is
to the country or to their religion. This is a difficult proposition
for any Muslim, particularly soldiers who have since the years of the
Afghan war been ideologically conditioned to see themselves as an
`Islamic army'. Sometimes they release captured soldiers making them
promise to quit their jobs.

Meanwhile, the mighty Pakistan Army is unable to even neutralise the
FM radio station from which daily announcements are made of the
Taliban's next targets. Although the Army chief recently stated his
resolve to support the civilian government more completely, there
still seems to be a lack of will to do so.

It is a tough bind for the Pakistan government. Locals oppose its
military offensive in FATA because of the high rate of civilian
casualties and `collateral damage'. Many have ethnic and tribal
affiliations with the Pakistani Taliban who tend to be ethnically
Pashtun like themselves. The tribal code of honour (`Pakhtunwali')
forbids abandoning someone who has approached you for refuge. Injured
Taliban seek the help of locals, who provide them with medicines and
bandages out of fear or compassion. Many feel caught between the devil
and the deep blue sea, their homes, families and lands destroyed by
American drones and the Pakistani military action on the one hand, and
by Taliban elements on the other. An estimated 3-400,000 have fled
the area over the past few months. The American done attacks in FATA
since July 2008 have generated great resentment in Pakistan, making
things more difficult for the civilian government and benefitting the
`jihadi' elements.

(ends)

Latinos march in St. Helens

2009-02-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

Latinos march in St. Helens to unite with community
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/latinos_march_in_st_helens_to.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Olivia Bucks
Thursday February 19, 2009

ST. HELENS -- Several hundred Latinos and supporters marched through St. Helens on Wednesday afternoon to protest Columbia County's anti-immigrant ordinance and the racial tensions they contend it has caused in the community.
The Procession for Respect and Dignity put a face on Latinos who march organizers said have been under attack since voters approved a ballot measure for the ordinance in November. It would punish employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Two weeks ago, Columbia County Circuit Judge Ted Grove delayed implementation of the ordinance after a challenge by a coalition of social justice groups and business owners represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. It's under legal review.
Yesenia Sanchez, president of a new group, Latinos United for a Better Future, helped organize Wednesday's march. The group's goals are to promote a positive image of Latinos, offer support and build bridges to the community.

"We want to break the stereotypes people have of Latinos," said Sanchez, 20, a University of Oregon junior. "We're decent and hardworking. We're people you know, students and neighbors.

"We want to be able to work together with the rest of the community so we can make it better and united."

Sanchez said racial tensions in the county have soared since a St. Helens contractor, Wayne Mayo, started gathering signatures for two ballot measures.

One measure to penalize employers of illegal immigrants passed, 57 percent to 42 percent. One failed that would have required billboard-sized signs on county job sites claiming "Legal Workers Only."

The employment measure has led to insults, intimidation and open discrimination, said Latinos who participated in the march. Some marchers wiped away tears.

"People look at me strange now, like if I was a bad person," said Esmeralda Tapia Garcia. She has lived in the St. Helens area for four years with her husband and 2-year-old daughter and works at a local fast-food chain. "I hope that when my child goes to school, this racism will end."

Other Latinos said when they speak Spanish in public, some have been told to "speak English," Sanchez said.

Local blogs teem with negative comments about Latinos, including threats to call federal immigration agents and take down license plate numbers. Classroom discussions about the measure have led to ethnic slurs.

A handful of counter-protesters mostly remained quiet during the march, which went from the First Christian Church to the county courthouse.

"Illegals, go home! This is America!" Dennis Gump of St. Helens shouted to the crowd.

A few homes along the route posted signs reading, "We welcome legal immigrants" and "My country, my jobs."

Rick Demings, a bus driver from Yankton, carried a sign reading, "Which laws can actual Americans break?"

Mayo, who spearheaded the employment measure, did not attend the march. He said earlier Wednesday that his measure did not target Latinos.

"The measure is about employers that employ illegal aliens, and they are feeling the pressure," he said. "I have no ax to grind with the Hispanics at all."

Linda Madden, a registered nurse from Scappoose, said she came as "a member of the human race." Other participants included members of Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity and the Rural Organizing Project.

"What's happening in this country is blatant racism," Madden said. "My fear is that people who are targeted by this measure will be scapegoated for social problems."

March organizers offered a symbolic basket of flowers to city officials.

"We're all children of immigrants," said Martha Olmstead, vice president of the new Latino group, "and we have to figure out how to get along and how to live together."

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian

the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process"

2009-02-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a brilliant analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the impossibilities it holds, written by my friend and former teacher Sandy Tolan. Sandy is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. It's a wonderful book that everyone should read.

Mitchell's Challenge
After Gaza, Five Questions about Palestinian and Israeli Realities
By Sandy Tolan
The deep irony of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" first struck me in 1996 as I was driving through the West Bank from Hebron to Jerusalem. I had turned off the potholed main road that passed through Palestinian villages and refugee camps and headed west into Kiryat Arba. In that Israeli settlement, admirers had erected a graveside monument to Baruch Goldstein, the settler from Brooklyn who, in 1994, gunned down 29 Palestinians in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs. From the settlement's creepy candlelit shrine I cut north, and soon found myself on a quiet, smooth-as-glass "bypass" road. The road, I would learn, was one of many under construction by Israel, alongside new and expanding settlements, that would allow settlers to travel easily from their West Bank islands to the "mainland" of the Jewish state.

How strange, I thought naively, as I traveled that lonely road toward Jerusalem on a gray winter afternoon: Isn't this part of the land that Palestinians would need for their state? Why, then, in the middle of the Oslo peace process -- barely three years after the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn -- would Israeli officials authorize construction that was visibly cementing the settlers' presence into Palestinian land?

To read the rest, click here and scroll down to the text.

Economy down the drain

2009-02-15T19:40:00.000-08:00

I consider myself lucky, I'm pretty insulated from the bad economy at the moment. I have my usual struggles with paying exorbitant school loans, but it's nothing compared to what some other people/families have to go through. I know my own family has seen leaner times than this. But the economic crisis really "drove home" to me when my brother lost his job a little more than a week ago. He was an excellent manager, with a clean record and outperforming results. And yet, from one day to the other, he is unemployed. Since then, I've followed the crisis with even more familiar urgency. Here are two articles from the world: Dubai and Europe, drawn into the same economic spiral.

Europe slump deeper than expected
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/14euro.html?_r=1&hp

Laid-off foreigners flee as Dubai spirals down
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?scp=2&sq=dubai&st=cse

Now for more sober newspaper news

2009-02-15T19:29:00.000-08:00

If you read the previous post, you might have felt good about the future of journalism. Here's a couple stories with a more realistic look at the business and the possibilities for saving it. (do not click "Read more" below, just click on the links below the titles)

WHEN NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS
The Atlantic magazine
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901u/fate-of-newspaper-journalism/1
by James Warren

HOW TO SAVE YOUR NEWSPAPER
Time magazine
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191-1,00.html
by Walter Isaacson

A NEWSROOM FLOURISHES
The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-onthemedia15-2009feb15,0,5233843.column
by James Rainey

And here is the rest of it.

Fact-Checked, Hand-Delivered, No Pop-up Ads. What's Not to Love?

2009-02-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

For those of you who tell me that newspapers are dying, here is something to consider.
In his last moments as editor of USA Today, Ken Paulson offered these insights:

I do think there's room for some perspective. Yes, it's true that there have been significant layoffs at America's newspapers, but there have also been huge layoffs at Home Depot, and no one is predicting the demise of hammers.

You have to separate the troubled economy from the special challenges facing the news industry, and it's important that we not undervalue the power of print.

I can certainly understand why newspapers are not viewed as trendy. After all, they were really the iPods of 1690. But humor me, and consider this alternate history: Imagine if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press, and that for centuries all of our information had come to us online.

Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the “newspaper.” That press conference might go something like this:

“We're pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.

“Just consider the hours you've spent on the internet looking for information of interest to you. We've hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.

“We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called 'fact-checking' in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.

“In addition to saving time online, you'll also save money. You won't need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.

“You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.

“You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.

“And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.

“It's also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane's radar.

“To top it all off, you don't need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you're not happy with this product on any day, we'll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”

I can see the headlines now: "Cutting-edge newspapers threaten Google’s survival.”

Finding Nouf, or the mysteries of Saudi deserts

2009-02-08T21:08:00.001-08:00

If you like detective stories, whodunit thrillers, then I recommend this intriguing book, a random pick at the library. I was sucked in and read it quickly - duszkiem, or in one sip, as we say in Poland.

Set in contemporary Saudi Arabia, "Finding Nouf" by Zoe Ferraris starts with Nouf ash-Shrawi, a 16-year-old rich Saudi girl who disappears into the desert three days before her marriage and has been found dead, several weeks pregnant.

What ensues is a detective tale, Saudi-style. A friend of the family is asked to investigate Nouf's death discreetly. He seeks the help of one of the Shrawi brothers' fiancee, who is employed in the women's section of the state medical examiner's office. As the two investigate, it becomes clear the dead girl's family has something to do with her disappearance. What's most fascinating, though, is the backdrop of this tale: the Saudi society, which we glimpse as the mysteries unfold. It's a strictly conservative society, where men and women live separate lives, where class is an important sign of status, where secrets are born of taboos, where men think thoughts such as “Allah forgive me for imagining her ankles.” This is not to make fun of Islam. Few of us westerners know much about Saudi society, and that's why this book was so good to read. You could actually get into the heads of characters, behind the women's burqas and the men's averted gaze, feel the emotions boiling over, understand why they have faith in God and in tradition and why they may doubt it.

The best part of the book...

... is the part about tracking footprints in the desert. There are Bedouins, the nomads of the desert, who can read footprints in the sand like fingerprints... there are groups renowned for tracking skills, and they are used by police and counterterrorist units like detectives. The trackers can tell the footprint of different people apart, whether they are men's or women's feet, what kind of person it was based on the weight of the foot. The desert sand - it seems so fragile to us - actually preserves signs of life.

In case you doubt any of it, the author has credibility: she spent years in Saudi Arabia with her-then husband and his Saudi-Palestinian-Bedouin family.

History of Immigration

2009-02-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

The latest of my articles, to run tomorrow in the O! section of The Oregonian. It's about how the debate over immigration runs in circles. If you think there's anger and anti-immigrant sentiment today, look back to the 19th century.
Click on the link, scroll down to "Coming to Oregon" box and you can download a graphic of Oregon's foreign-born from 1850 to 2007.

Oregon's immigration debate: More subtle, but no less heated

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon/index.ssf/2009/02/oregons_immigration_debate_mor.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Saturday February 07, 2009

On a Sunday in July, 50 men entered the houses of immigrant workers in Toledo, ordered them and their families to pack their belongings, and escorted them to cars and trucks waiting to drive them away.

They claimed the immigrants worked for substandard wages and took jobs from native Oregonians.

Sound familiar? The scene actually unfolded in 1925. The millworkers included 27 Japanese, four Filipinos and one Korean, most of whom were Oregon residents. Townspeople shouted as they left: "String them up!"

In a nation of immigrants, Oregonians' relationship with newcomers always has been ambivalent -- just like across America. Many immigrants have thrived, but at times, laws and prejudice limited rights or banned certain ethnicities altogether.

The history of Oregon -- one of the few states to completely bar African Americans -- shows an especially hard struggle with immigrants' race, which played out in widespread discrimination and fear as their numbers rose.

"Arm's length and open arms, those have been the two approaches to immigrants that reflected our state and national sentiments," says Bob Bussel, historian and director of the Labor and Education Research Center at the University of Oregon, who researched immigration history. "Oregon has really grappled with how to welcome some cultures."

The state extended the welcome mat to white immigrants, with policies and attitudes that favored northern and central Europeans. Oregon's treatment of blacks laid the foundations, says David Peterson del Mar, historian and author of "Oregon's Promise."

While Oregon was admitted to the Union as a non-slave state, Oregonians decided the way to avoid racial problems was to bar black residents altogether. Their argument was that by doing so they would abolish the inequalities between the rich and the working class. "I'm going to Oregon, where there'll be no slaves, and we'll all start even," said Capt. R.W. Morrison, a pioneer from Missouri, in 1844, according to historical accounts.

The same argument was later used to bar immigrants of other races: They would bring down wages and establish inequities.

"White Oregonians have associated people of color with hierarchy and disparities," Peterson del Mar says. "Owning slaves gave you an unfair advantage. Some thought wealthy people would use blacks and immigrants to get wealthier at the expense of regular white men."

Oregon was the only state admitted to the Union with a black exclusion law in its constitution (Illinois and Indiana had had similar laws, while other states made it difficult for blacks to live there). The state ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship for all U.S.-born people regardless of race, then rescinded its ratification. Oregon did not ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave African Americans the right to vote, until 1959.

Likewise, citizenship and voting were denied to arrivals from China, Japan and other Asian countries. The waves of Asian immigrants, unique to the West Coast, helped define its racial context, says William Toll, historian, author and adjunct professor at the University of Oregon. Far fewer Asians emigrated to the East and South.

"These people bring nothing with them to our shores, they add nothing to the permanent wealth of this country," claimed an editorial in Jacksonville's Oregon Sentinel, referring to Chinese arrivals.

Into the early 20th century, segregation ruled in practice and in law. Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese and African Americans sat in the balcony at Portland's Broadway Theater; only whites were allowed on the first floor. Mobs raided and burned Chinese homes in Northwest Portland. Oregon storefronts posted signs such as "Filipinos and dogs not allowed" or "No Japs wanted." Young Jewish and Italian men were accused of heightened criminal activity.

But all immigrants who were poor, unskilled and nonwhite felt the brunt, Toll says. As occurred elsewhere in the U.S., Eastern and Southern Europeans were viewed as a distinct and lower racial group -- too culturally different, inferior and taking away jobs.

Some Oregonians bucked the trend. Sherman Burgoyne, a Methodist minister, defended Japanese Americans in the Hood River Valley in the wake of World War II.

And Walter Gresham, a U.S. judge for the 7th Circuit, wrote to Gov. Sylvester Pennoyer in 1893 asking him to protect Chinese immigrants from violence after the Chinese Exclusion Act was extended. The city of Gresham was named after him.

*

Clearly, there's progress -- but the immigration debate today hasn't changed much, except for a modern twist. What's new, says Bussel, the University of Oregon historian, is the preoccupation with legal status, in Oregon as elsewhere. "Illegal aliens" are blamed for taking Americans' jobs and using government resources -- with most Latinos, especially Mexicans, lumped into the category.

Race, class and cultural strain still bubble near the surface -- though today people seldom acknowledge racism. While Oregonians are more sensitive about race and not as critical of immigrants, he says, racial issues come to the forefront when tensions arise.

There seems to be a real sense of threat associated with immigrants from Mexico, Bussel adds, because of their large numbers, and history seems to repeat itself.

"When you look at the history of Japanese and Chinese in our state, there are undertones that are similar in the discussion today. The Chinese and Japanese were 'aliens' and it was said that they couldn't assimilate," he says.

The sense of Oregon's "special status" as a pioneer state, he says, is used to argue for restrictions on immigration population.

"So there's the argument that our infrastructure and environment cannot be sustained if there are so many new people coming here," Bussel says.

But Oregon's history of immigration holds lessons. For one thing, there's a double standard when it comes to self-righteousness about undocumented immigrants breaking the law, says Peterson del Mar.

"Bear in mind that the Oregon pioneers who we celebrate were people who came here, took land and were also operating outside the law," he says.

And if we harness the energy of our newest immigrants by easing their integration, Bussel says, their contributions can be as great as the generations of immigrants who came before.

"Where there have been clear public and private efforts to help immigrants come and integrate," says Bussel, "we've done better than when we were repressive and discriminating."

Most of us are immigrants, after all, even if several generations removed.

-- Gosia Wozniacka, a Polish-born immigrant, covers immigration and Latino issues for The Oregonian
gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Photos by: Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian (Latinos carrying Virgin of Guadalupe flag at last May's immigration rally); courtesy of the BYROM-DAUFEL FAMILY (Chinese family at the turn of the century), courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society (Ku Klux Klan march in Austoria, OR in the 1920's)

Article 2: Why Latinos are not leaving

2009-01-24T19:03:00.000-08:00

The second article in my Sunday series on the economy and Latinos.

Immigrants aren't leaving, despite harder times in U.S.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/01/immigrants_arent_leaving_despi.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Friday January 23, 2009

As temperatures dropped below freezing and snow amassed on cars and rooftops, Maria, her husband Zenon, and their two small children huddled in the tiny kitchen of their unheated trailer. The entry door was broken, letting in an icy draft.

Nine years after arriving from the Mexican state of Michoacan, the undocumented parents are without jobs, barely scraping enough food for their U.S.-born children to eat.

Is the family thinking of going back to Mexico?

"We really have not thought about going back," Maria said. "It hasn't occurred to us."

That's true of many Latino immigrant families who find themselves out of work and resources in the lagging economy. There has been no exodus of area Latinos back to Mexico and Central America, and no such exodus on a national scale. The crisis, Latinos say, is still better than the poverty they faced back home. And with increased enforcement at the border, leaving the United States could mean never being able to come back -- a chance few want to take.

The choice between staying or returning to the country of origin is a matter of survival, especially for undocumented immigrants, experts say.

"Leaving is not a decision you just take one morning," said Demetrios Papademetriou, director of the nonpartisan Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. "These are acts of desperation."

Activists against illegal immigration, who want also to reduce the level of legal immigration, hoped that a bad economy and increased immigration enforcement would push undocumented Latinos out of the country.

"We won't get rid of all illegals, but we can have policies and an environment that cause deportation through attrition," said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, at an immigration debate in Wilsonville this month.

The opposite seems to be true.

A report released by the Migration Policy Institute this month, which Papademetriou co-authored, says no definitive return migration trend can be tied so far to the U.S. economic crisis. That's because return migration, the report says, is historically connected with improved social, economic and political conditions in the immigrants' countries of origin.

But the economy has dwindled also in Latin America, especially in Mexico, where about 80 percent of exports are bought by U.S. markets. Mexico's economy is probably headed for a recession, government officials there said this month. And a slowdown in money that U.S. Latinos send home may further hinder growth. Remittances make up nearly 3 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, according to the World Bank, and are the second source of foreign revenue after oil exports.

A tighter border
Similarly, stepped-up enforcement at the border has reduced circular migration and led more Latinos to settle in the United States with their families, Papademetriou said.
More patrols, improved technology and miles of border fences have pushed illegal immigrants to cross in areas more secluded and more dangerous. Many make dozens of attempts to cross before they succeed. The dangers and difficulties, in turn, have inflated the prices paid to smugglers to several thousand dollars a person.

Latino immigrants know that "if you leave the U.S. now, it will be extremely difficult to come back in," Papademetriou said.

Once immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens, going back becomes even harder. And Mexico's unstable security climate fueled by narco-trafficking adds to the hesitation.

"Going back home would be an act of total desperation," Papademetriou said, "almost equivalent to the one that made them take any chance necessary, including losing their lives, to cross the border to the United States."

Javier Serrano, an expert on migration at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, a university in the Mexican state of Tabasco, says another ephemeral factor may also keep immigrants in the United States: the fulfillment of a dream.

"Migration involves hopes, expectations and ambitions that don't necessarily adjust to economic calculations," Serrano said. "Once they have moved, immigrants try to fulfill their expectations, and they persist even when the situation becomes unfavorable."

No work in village
Maria and Zenon, who for fear of deportation would be interviewed only if their last names were withheld, left their villages in Mexico in 1999 because no work was available.

Since arriving in Oregon, Zenon has worked full time in nurseries. Maria raised the children, now 3 and 5 years old, and worked in the fields picking blueberries and other fruit. The couple saved their modest incomes and bought a trailer in the Portland area last year.

But six months ago, Zenon was laid off "because the plants were not selling," he said. Since then, the family has subsided on the bare minimum.

"We never thought it would be like this," said Maria in Spanish. "We don't even have enough money for lunch."

When Zenon gets work for a day or two -- covering berry shrubs, odd construction jobs -- the money goes toward paying rent on the trailer lot. They have lapsed in the mortgage on the trailer and their water bills. Their car broke down. Just last week, their electricity was cut off. They have no savings or assets.

The family survives on food donations from the SnowCap and Salvation Army shelters. They also receive food stamps for the two children, who are U.S. citizens. The couple are not eligible for any government benefits, such as unemployment. But the parents say they're waiting for jobs to come back because they want to give their children a better future, one without poverty.

"We're used to living here," Maria said. "And there is nothing to go back to."

There may be a tipping point in the decision-making of immigrants such as Maria and Zenon, Papademetriou said.

"At which point are horrible conditions over there better than the horrible conditions here?" he said. "If you have to live on the margins, with no income, in a place where people don't want you and don't help you, there is only so much time you can move in with relatives and tighten your belt before you hit bare bones."

If the recession continues for six to nine months, Papademetriou said, and if the recovery is "jobless," undocumented Latinos may reconsider. But the decision to return to poverty in Latin America would still be agonizing, especially in light of the potential for U.S. immigration reform.

"The deck is stacked and they are stuck," Papademetriou said. "The question is, which gives first, the economy, Mr. Obama with legalization, or a realization that I can't survive anymore."

Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

Article 1: Where recession hits hardest

2009-01-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

Here is the first of my two articles on how U.S. Latinos are affected by the economic crisis. It's running on the front page of the Business section this Sunday (but is already online). It took a lot of work to put all the data together.

Oregon Latinos hit hard by recession
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/01/oregon_latinos_hit_hard_by_rec.html
by Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Benjamin Brink
Saturday January 24, 2009

The national recession obliterating jobs in Oregon nurseries, construction sites and manufacturing facilities is hitting Latinos harder than any other group, primarily because they face distinct challenges that most people in the U.S. don't.

As a group, native and foreign-born Latinos often lack a financial cushion to sustain them in hard economic times, studies and data show. They tend to earn less and they financially support families in Latin America.

They're overrepresented in the industries most battered by the economy, may be at a greater risk of foreclosure because of risky loans and are ineligible for some government benefits, making them vulnerable to prolonged poverty.

"People want to work and they can't," said Carlos Hernandez, the Latino pastor at Gresham's St. Anne's church. "We had people who were established and lost everything, including their homes."

Though African Americans tend to have economic indicators similar to those of Latinos, Oregon's Latino population is much larger --10 percent of the population, compared with 2 percent -- so the economic crisis affects more Latino families.

Local agencies say they have seen unprecedented numbers of Latinos inquiring about food boxes, rent and utility assistance, and foreclosure advice, said Gloria Wiggins, director of El Programa Hispano.

More Latinos also are looking for emergency shelter, said Edith Murilla, shelter coordinator for Human Solutions, who gets at least half a dozen calls from Latinos each week.

"People are afraid," Wiggins said. "They are stretching their resources. Someone has a friend or cousin or uncle, someone is staying in someone's living room. Without that, a lot of people would be living in their cars or on the streets."

All groups losing jobs
Latinos, just like other racial and ethnic groups, have lost thousands of jobs in recent months. Nationally, unemployment rates have risen at roughly comparable rates -- from 4 to 6percent for whites, from 6 to 9percent for Latinos, and from 10 to 11.5 percent for African Americans.

Until the recession, Latinos were closing the unemployment rate gap with whites, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director for the Pew Hispanic Center. As recently as 2006, the gap had shrunk to historic lows of 1percentage point or less.

A fourth of Oregon's Latino families live below the federal poverty level, according to the 2007 American Community Survey, compared with 9percent of non-Latino white families, 10 percent of Asian families and 26 percent of African American families. The destitution is even greater for foreign-born Latinos, the survey showed. The federal poverty threshold for a family of four in 2007 was $21,200 -- about $400 a week.

Many Latino families lack any financial cushion to help survive economic emergencies. They earn significantly less and save less. The median weekly pay of full-time, salaried Latinos in 2007 -- $503 -- was lower than that of blacks ($569), whites ($716) and Asians ($830), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Oregon, the median income of a Latino family was $34,600, compared with $57,700 for the total population, according to the survey.

Latinos are less likely to have savings or even checking accounts. A 2008 study of low- to moderate-income individuals by the polling firm Encuesta Inc. found that three in four Americans are "banked" -- they frequently use financial institutions -- compared with fewer than half of Latinos. Using cash, the survey found, is part of the daily course for many Latinos.

Many send money to families
Though earning little, the majority of immigrant Latinos send monthly remittances to their families in Latin America. A 2006 study by Bendixen & Associates for the Inter-American Development Bank shows that 70 percent of Oregon's 177,000 Latin American-born and Caribbean-born adults send money regularly to their families, for a total of $383 million in 2006 -- about $257 a person each month. The national average for a Mexican immigrant, according to the Bank of Mexico, is $350 a month.

Other immigrants also send money home and may even send larger amounts -- China, India and Mexico are the top receiving countries for remittances worldwide -- but they tend to be wealthier than Latinos, so the money is a smaller percentage of their earnings. In recent months, Latin America's remittances have leveled from their record decade-long growth.

"I feel really bad, but I'm not able to send so much money right now," said Irene Robles, a legal U.S. resident who lives in Portland. She and her husband usually send monthly payments to the couple's elderly mothers in Mexico, but it's been sporadic in recent months. Instead, they help their adult son, who lost his job as a welder last year and has two children and a wife.

Latinos are overrepresented in some of the industries hardest hit by the economic crisis, such as construction, manufacturing, retail trade and leisure/hospitality, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In Oregon, those sectors lost the most jobs in December, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

The slump in the construction industry, which has been the mainstay of job growth for Latino workers, hit immigrants and undocumented Latinos especially hard, the Pew report showed.

Those Latinos may have more difficulty finding new employment than other groups, experts say, because of poor English skills, low education and, in some cases, the lack of immigration documents or driver's licenses. And the pressure to find a job can push workers into dangerous or unfair working conditions.

Latino homeowners may also be at a greater risk of foreclosure. At all income levels, Oregon's Latino and African American borrowers are more likely than whites to have received risky subprime loans, according to a 2008 analysis by the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Subprime loans usually have higher interest rates, which frequently are adjustable over time. The loans were typically made to people who could otherwise not afford buying a house.

The analysis showed that more than half of Latino middle-income borrowers received subprime loans in 2006, compared with 25 percent of whites and 47 percent of African Americans. The report showed the same trend for low-, moderate- and higher-income Latinos and blacks.

And undocumented Latino immigrants are not eligible for most government aid, such as unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Medicaid. Many legal immigrants who are not citizens are excluded from access to major federal benefits, such as welfare and food stamps.

Stores have fewer clients
As Latino families scramble to survive, their hardships are affecting local merchants.

"Our business has really slowed," said Raul Toro, owner of Portland-based restaurant La Isla Bonita. Toro said he's trying to keep afloat by offering more coupons for discount meals in his restaurant.

"It has definitely affected us," said Isabell "Chavela" Mendoza, owner of Su Casa Imports, two large Latino supermarkets in Hillsboro and Southeast Portland. "We are at a point where we have to think about what people need rather than what they want."

The supermarkets, whose clientele is about 95 percent Latino, now focus on core items, Mendoza said, such as masa for tortillas, eggs, milk and beans. Mendoza has had to lay off a few people, but mostly reduced the hours of all employees.

Mendoza said more people have asked for free food in recent months. She feeds them, then sends them to area food banks. But, she said, she doesn't see the same families for long.

"You have the sense that community members help each other," she said. "We know what it feels like, we were all once newcomers here. We remember where we came from."

-- Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

In the past year, many Latinos who have lost their jobs have turned to the day labor site in Cornelius to find work. But on many days, no employers drive by. Some of the men have not worked for weeks, while payments lapse -- rent, bills and remittances sent to families in Latin America. The men have a sixth sense about any car pulling down North 11th Avenue just off Adair Street. As the car slows, they rush to be the one picked. (Photo by Benjamin Brink, The Oregonian)

The new (multicultural, multiracial) first family

2009-01-21T22:03:00.001-08:00

This is very cool, I say.

The New York Times
January 21, 2009
A PORTRAIT OF CHANGE
In First Family, a Nation’s Many Faces

By JODI KANTOR
WASHINGTON — The president’s elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.

When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.

As they convened to take their family’s final step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obama’s memoir — no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new president’s promise of change.

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

To continue, click: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/politics/21family.html?em

Obama! the 44th and the first

2009-01-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

watch the oath and the speech:

To read the text of Obama's speech, go to the White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/

And here is the very elegant benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery:

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.

Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand, true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.

We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.

He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.

Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.

And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption -- and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.

We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.

With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back . . . when brown can stick around . . . when yellow will be mellow . . . when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen. Say amen. And amen.

Source: CQ Transcriptions

"I have a dream"

2009-01-19T12:45:00.000-08:00

On the eve of Obama's historic inauguration, listen to the famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr., delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

For the video, audio and transcript of the speech, go to:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

And here is the rest of it.