When ICE Comes

Published June 6, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     There is a beautiful, tall row of corn growing in the back yard of the house next door to mine where once there was a dense hedge of pyracantha, commonly known as the Firethorn bush.  Although the cedar waxwings undoubtedly miss the red berries in winter on both sides of their north-south migration, my neighbors will be eating from their little piece of land this year, something I admire.

           

     Changes in vegetation are only one of the differences in my neighborhood since I first moved here.  Once there were workers and managers at Lindsay Olive, an ag chemist, the owner of the Chevron station, and a farm labor contractor whose crews served the nearby Sunkist packinghouse.  Now I don’t know where anyone works or where they’re from, a reflection of my reclusive nature and their commute schedules.  Our language differences add a small complication to the non-local nature of our lives.

           

     I imagine that’s not too different from many neighborhoods in our small towns now.  I don’t know the citizenship status of my neighbors, and I certainly wouldn’t ask, out of politeness.  They’re my neighbors, and I keep looking for ways to act accordingly despite my ignorance of their lives.  But since the March 13^th  meeting of the Lindsay City Council, when the Council was approached by activated citizens seeking official support for DACA students (which the Council gave,) I have been wondering what I would do if ICE showed up at my neighbors’ doors.

           

     In Germany during WWII, when their government’s agents known as Brown Shirts came to take away Jewish neighbors, the non-Jewish neighbors had two responses.  One was to hide behind the curtains and watch, assuming the government knew what it was doing or remaining silent, simply too afraid to make a peep.  The other, much riskier, was to take their Jewish neighbors into their homes and hide them.  With 20/20 hindsight, we have become judgmental about the curtain-watchers, but are blind to the fact that here in good old America there are no stories about families taking in their Japanese neighbors when they were being rounded up by our government officials and taken away to internment camps.

           

     Mark Smith, pastor of both the Exeter and Lindsay Methodist Churches, was at the March 13^th Lindsay City Council meeting, where we met organizers from CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights (Los Angeles.)  CHIRLA has a new office in Porterville, and the organizers were eager to find ways of serving the community. 

           

     Wanting to know what we can do to help, we met with them and decided to sponsor one of their workshops on immigrants’ rights.  This workshop will be held at Lindsay United Methodist Church’s Maxwell Hall on Sunday, June 10^th at 5:30 p.m.  It will be conducted primarily in Spanish to serve those residents, documented and undocumented, who could benefit from knowing what to do if and when ICE comes to their door.  We hope to begin the process of learning what the rest of us might do as well.  Please join us if you can, and watch this column for further developments.

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Trudy Wischemann is co-editor of the forthcoming volume A Little Piece of Land:  Writings on Agriculture and the Common Good in California.  You can send her your thoughts on ICE incursions c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

           

We Need to Talk

Published May 9, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The phrase “We need to talk” can sound menacing when it comes from a boss or a mate, implying the need for some change the hearer may not want. And it might sound menacing to you when I say it regarding immigration issues.  These issues are so longstanding here in the Valley that we think our lives depend on them.  They’re part of the status quo, and that’s what I think we need to talk about.

           

     Monday morning’s Fresno Bee carried yet another front-page story about the trials of people facing deportation who were brought here as children through no fault of their own.  I’m going to call them “importees” from now on, for the sense of involuntariness is what moves us to care, and it should.

           

     This man, Vanna In, considered Cambodian but born in Viet Nam in the mid-1970’s when our war on that country was just ending, leaving rice paddies, roads, villages and towns in ruins, has become a minister to gang members, having been one himself.  He’s not just a productive member of society, he’s a healer of one of this society’s wounds.  But his early childhood education, so to speak, leaves him extremely vulnerable in this tragic political moment, when Congress is too hamstrung to act.  He faces deportation to Cambodia, where he has never lived.

           

     The article, written by Carmen George, who has been bringing us compelling pieces of beauty from our region for several years now, tells how we might help this singular man.  Rev. Vanna In has petitioned Gov. Jerry Brown for a pardon, which could lead to citizenship if granted.  A petition in support of that request is available at www.change.org, and has gathered over 7,000 signatures already.

           

     We need to do more, however, than help people one at a time.  President Trump’s machete-like action cutting off the DACA program, which provided a measure of stability to some of these importees, was a rash challenge to Congress, a wielding of the power of the pen to provoke legislative action toward resolving our unresolved immigration issues.  But Congress cannot resolve them while we, the people, are so unresolved ourselves.

           

     There are people in this country, powerful people, who benefit economically from the availability of undocumented (“illegal”) immigrants.  Their political influence will make it difficult to find a national legislative solution.  Meanwhile, the economic costs are borne by the immigrants themselves and by the communities in which they live.  Rev. Vanna In’s story, luckily, shows us the benefits we also receive at the community level.

           

     Perhaps this story and others will help us start the conversations we need to be having at the local level about immigration:  about who qualifies as “American” and how we gain that status, the pathways to citizenship.  About what we do, as neighbors and friends, when ICE comes to the door of the house down the street, supposedly to “fix” the problem of illegal immigration, but ripping apart families, churches, neighborhoods, and communities instead.

           

     We need to talk, and we need to talk now, before ICE comes.  Let’s find a way to do it.

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Trudy Wischemann is the granddaughter of immigrants before there were laws to prevent them from entering.  You can send her your immigrant origins c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

 

When One Cries

Published March 8, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


      One night last week while washing dishes, out of the corner of my ear I heard a man on public TV say “When one cries, we all cry.”  He was part Cherokee and he was discussing a problem of tribal membership blocked for those who also were part Negro.  Although some members of the tribe disagreed, to this man one drop of Cherokee blood was not negated by one drop of Black blood.  For him, one drop of Cherokee blood is enough to qualify anyone for membership in the tribe of Us.

           

     “When one cries, we all cry.”  When I heard those words, I wanted to cry myself.  I admired, even envied the understanding of community that says to its individuals “You are not alone, no matter what.”  Then later that week, in the PBS program on African history, I learned that Africa is the cradle not just of civilization but of humanity itself.  The first human beings evolved in Africa and then migrated to other parts of the globe, sometimes in response to drastic climate change and war.  What anthropologists, the scientists of humanity, now believe is that all of us have a drop of Black blood in us.  So, when one of us cries.…

           

     Community was called on this week in Lindsay.  At Tuesday night’s city council meeting, the minister from New Life Church, Pastor Roger Wright, asked the council to consider hosting some kind of seminar that would clarify the city’s role in managing the immigration questions before the country right now.  “In my small congregation of about 80 people I have four families who are undocumented.  These are really good people,” he said, then repeated “really good people.”  He let the meaning and the truth of that evaluation sink in.

           

     His appeal was not political, but a call to compassion because “There’s a lot of fear out there.”  Noting that some of the fear has been triggered by misinformation, he felt that fear could be relieved by something that would educate the people about their real standing in the community.  It’s relief that only our city’s government can provide.

           

     Pastor Wright’s plea was seconded by an organizer for Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights, who noted that people all over our region are frightened.  He said that those who have no criminal record need to know that they can call the police if they are victims of crime without being deported themselves.  He was followed by a Lindsay resident who summed it up this way:   “They (the undocumented) need to know that Lindsay will protect its own.”  What all three men were saying is that these people need to know they are ours, that when one of them cries…

           

     Then, at the Wednesday evening Cultural Arts Forum, the audience heard about homeless people in Tulare County and within the Lindsay Unified School District.  Jason Britt and Angel Galvez from Tulare County Health and Human Services were joined by Linda Ledesma from Lindsay’s Healthy Start Family Resource Center.  Together they painted a portrait of our homeless population in terms of numbers, causes, and possible solutions, giving the problem a set of human faces I could recognize in my mind.  However, when one of the speakers mentioned that there are no shelters in Lindsay for homeless people, a voice rose from the audience asking “why?”

           

     Mr. Britt explained that most shelters are developed and maintained by non-profit organizations, including church groups, and that the county does not provide this service.  But when the woman repeated her question “Why are there no shelters in Lindsay?” he simply said “I don’t know.”  Then she said “I’m homeless,” and stood up to address the audience herself.

           

     She spoke about where she sleeps each night, how she maintains herself, where her money comes from.  She told us why most shelters are not an option for her because she has two small dogs who form her entire family, and most shelters don’t admit people with pets.  She turned what had been an incredibly informing presentation into an incredibly moving experience, her personal story reinforcing what we’d heard from the experts.

           

     The truth is, this brave woman made it easier to see that the people who bear the nametag “homeless” are also ours.  The potential solutions to homelessness, as well as those of undocumented immigrants, are many and will take multiple initiatives.  But perhaps where we start is with this basic principle of community:  when one cries, we all cry.

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Trudy Wischemann is a native of the Pacific Northwest who migrated south to Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts on rights to a roof and land c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.