Good story...
The Vendor Disappears, Leaving a Void
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/nyregion/30bigcity.html?scp=1&sq=bangladeshi&st=cse
Read more!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Newcomers
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Separate Lives, at the threshold of the EU
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.” #
Read more!
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.” #
Read more!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Organizing immigrants and refugees
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Former enemies talk and reconcile
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Monday, November 16, 2009
From Russia with...
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Farmworkers - sidebar
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Farmworkers - part I
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Oregon Latinos and who dislikes them
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Marching with the dead
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
Read more!
Friday, October 16, 2009
from the Cambodian killing fields
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
for the gods of water and corn
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Chinese immigrants, transformed
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
Read more!
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
Read more!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Morning Coffee
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. Read more!
And here is the rest of it. Read more!
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