Ana Lizet Mejia’s brother was killed by gangs in Honduras, and she fled with her son to the United States. Hers was one of a wave of Central American families seeking refuge in the United States in 2014. Now she is in detention, targeted by Obama administration’s new raid-and-deport policy, which started over New Year’s weekend with initial reports of 121 mothers and children seized. Continue reading
Deporting refugees is not the American dream
Filed under immigration
Plans, not resolutions: Walking, reading, writing ahead
I plan to walk more in January, despite icy sidewalks. I plan to read more and have a stack of poetry and novels and nonfiction to tackle. I plan to write more, too — on a variety of topics, personal and political, local and global. That includes recycling contracts in St. Paul, Glendale public housing in Minneapolis, solar greenhouses and winter gardens across Minnesota, and bad bus stops in my neighborhood. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Tamir Rice: When facts don’t matter
Today a grand jury refused to indict the police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Back in October, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “It should be increasingly clear that the police officer who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice will not be tried; and should he be tried, he will not be convicted.” Today, he tweeted: “Yeah. Knew this was coming. For me the saddest in the recent parade. City should be ashamed of itself.”
So should we all. Continue reading
Filed under human rights, race
Holy Innocents and refugee children
Flight Into Egypt, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1923. Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection (accession number 2001.402a)
December 28 is the saints’ day of the Holy Innocents, an appropriate day to think about refugees today. The Gospel of Matthew tells the story: wicked King Herod wants to kill the baby Jesus. Herod tries to trick the wise men into leading him to the baby, but these foreigners escape from his surveillance and return to their own country. An angel comes to Joseph in a dream, warning of the danger to Jesus. Joseph and Mary and the baby flee the country by night, going to Egypt and staying there until Herod dies. In a rage, Herod turns to murder, killing all of the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem and the surrounding area.
Today, Central American refugee children flee gang violence, every bit as deadly as Herod’s rage. Continue reading
Filed under children, immigration, Uncategorized
Stories while we wait
“I am waiting,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote more than half a century ago, “for a rebirth of wonder.” In this in-between week, waiting for the new year, waiting for normal time to return, I am looking for stories that offer a rebirth of wonder and hope, that could light the dark nights and point to the possibility of a better future. I offer not YouTube cats, but Silent Night at the Fourth Precinct, heroism on a Kenyan bus, a connection between teacher and student. And, if you will, click over to read Ferlinghetti’s poem in full. Continue reading
Filed under news, Uncategorized
Why I keep writing about Black Lives Matter
Sometimes it seems like I’m talking – and writing – about Black Lives Matter all the time. Let me explain why.
Back in 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote The Souls of Black Folk. He began the book with these lines:
“HEREIN lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”
Today, despite all of the organizing, all of the marching, all of the blood shed and people martyred in the civil rights movement of the 20th century, the problem of the color line is still the problem of our time, the problem of the 21st century, in the United States and around the world. And today, Black Lives Matter embodies the challenge of the new civil rights movement. Continue reading
Christmas week: Terrorism — fighting fear with facts
©Fotolia File: #78917611 | Author: Mark Carrel
Right after the shootings in San Bernardino, the terrorism talk started. Media and politicians said:
- The two shooters are connected to ISIS.
- They were influenced by foreign terrorist groups.
- Syed Rizwan Farook was “self-radicalized” as an “Islamic terrorist.”
- Tashfeen Malik posted public statements on social media about violent jihad.
The politicians and the headlines, it turns out, were wrong. And that matters. In a season that proclaims hope for peace and good will, we can begin by countering fear-mongering with facts. Continue reading
Christmas week: From inequality to hope
Talking Points Memo published an important four-part series in December, The March to Inequality: How did we get here? It’s one of my Christmas week readings, which I recommend despite its distinctly un-merry description. To balance the darkness, I also recommend bell hooks’ recent New York Times interview. But first, Josh Marshall’s introduction to the terrible inequality of today’s economy:
“Half a century ago, the US political economy was profoundly different. Wealth and income inequality were at historically low levels. The US still had the immense advantage of being the factory for rebuilding the world after the devastation that scarred much of the globe during the Second World War. And unions were a pervasive feature of the industrial economy. So how did we get from there to here?”
Christmas week: Imagine Black Lives Matter at the Mall of America
Photo by Nicholas Upton, December 2014, used under Creative Commons license.
Black Lives Matter announced another December gathering in the Mall of America this year. Many reasons: Justice for Jamar Clark, killed this year by a Minneapolis police officer; one more year of unbearable racial differences in income, education, health, housing; unequal enforcement practices of transit police; racially disparate stops, frisks, arrests by city police …
Last year, MOA called in the Bloomington police, who broke up a peaceful gathering and arrested protesters and leaders. The Mall stood its ground, righteously claiming that its private property rights are superior to any protest. The Mall welcomes all kinds of people to sing and dance on its private property.
MOA allowed 7,000+ people to gather and sing to raise awareness about cancer. They did not allow 3,000 protesters to gather and sing to raise awareness about racism. Instead, MOA called in police in riot gear to close down a large part of the mall, trapping demonstrators and shoppers alike.
Some of those charges are still pending — many have been dismissed by the court as without merit. Hard feelings remain.
This year could be different.
Imagine what could happen if the Mall of America welcomed Black Lives Matter.
Imagine MOA and the city attorney announcing that all of last year’s charges will be dropped, instead of wasting more time and public money on prosecutions of peaceful protesters.
Imagine a mall spokesperson sending out a press release that says, “We agree: Black Lives Matter. You are part of our community. You are welcome here.”
Imagine the rotunda filled with people singing and chanting and listening to speeches. Imagine them spreading out afterwards, shopping and drinking coffee and eating dinner at MOA.
Imagine MOA sending a symbolic donation of coats and scarves and hats to Shiloh Temple or Neighborhoods Organizing for Change for distribution to those in need in North Minneapolis.
Imagine MOA inviting the NAACP and Black Lives Matter and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change to organize an MOA event marking Martin Luther King Day in January.
Imagine a Mall of America that takes positive steps to welcome Black Americans.
Imagine a Mall of America that says “Come in,” instead of “Keep out” to protesters.
December 23 will roll around, and the MOA may once again choose force over imagination, but it doesn’t need to be that way. In the words of John Lennon:
Imagine all the people sharing all the world
You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
Filed under human rights, race
Glendale residents want insulation, not blankets
Photo from Defend Glendale Facebook page
In a single November weekend, more than a hundred Glendale residents signed a petition setting out a vision for their community, and making two dozen specific demands for repairs and improvements. The petition is one more step in the ongoing dispute between Glendale residents (and their Prospect Park neighbors) and the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, which wants to sell off the public housing development to private developers. Continue reading
Filed under housing
Mary Turck
