New England Public Radio

What Democracy Looks and Sounds Like: One Mother’s Story

All her life, commentator Naomi Shulman has been cautioned by foreign-born relatives: “Don’t forget. Democracy is fragile.” It’s advice that’s somehow been easy for her to dismiss. Until now, she says.

The other morning, I heard Marty Walsh speaking in his unmistakable Boston accent. ‘You are safe,’ he said. He was speaking directly to the city’s immigrant population, which in recent days has had reason to feel nervous. The president has ordered a new border wall, refused refugees from war-torn areas, banned immigration from certain Muslim countries and — notably for cities like Boston and Northampton, where I live — denied federal funds for sanctuary cities, cities that refuse to go after illegal immigrants without due cause.

The morning after the election, my daughter Stella asked if the president elect was going to start deporting people.

‘You are safe,’ I said, as Walsh did recently. ‘We’re citizens,’ I added, ‘and here in Northampton, others don’t need to worry either.’

But I felt a creeping fear; a fear embedded in my DNA. My father’s mother arrived in the United States in the 1930s with her sister Stella, for whom my daughter is named. Her brothers stayed in Europe. The sisters lived; the brothers did not. My mother, born in Munich in 1934, arrived in New York City as a refugee in 1946.

My family history follows me wherever I go. History follows all of us, really. ‘You are safe’ are words I cannot say as a mother without trying to make sure they’re true.

So, along with so many other, I’ve begun taking action — calling legislators, giving to organizations I care about, taking to the streets, shouting, ‘This is what democracy looks like.’

But then the new administration went into high gear. Executive orders were signed with dizzying speed. The wall. The ban. The freeze. After the noisiness of the march, the enforced silence of one governmental agency after the next.

Walsh’s voice cut through that silence. ‘We will not be intimidated…We have each other’s backs,’ he said. ‘We have the Constitution of the United States of America on our side.’

Our new administration has taken foreboding, unprecedented steps. But we have also been reminded what democracy looks and sounds like. It sounds like Mayor Walsh’s thick Boston accent. And it looks like my daughter marching down the street, her hair glinting in the sun.

‘You are safe’ are words we can back up with action. History need not be destiny.”

Commentator Naomi Shulman is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts.

On Chinese New Year, A Mother Honors Recently Embraced Traditions With Her Child

This Saturday marks the Lunar New Year, formerly known as the Chinese New Year. For commentator Grace Lin, it’s a holiday that comes with baggage.

As a child, I resented Chinese New Year. My Taiwanese parents celebrated with great enthusiasm. Other holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, were treated as obligatory duties as well as with much puzzlement.

Why did it have to be turkey? And why did one have to go out in the cold just to hang up lights? Chinese New Year, however, made perfect sense! You ate pork dumplings to welcome in the new year and to wish for good fortune. You left your hair unwashed — you didn’t want to wash your luck away. You handed out red envelopes containing money — much more practical than a frivolous gift.

These traditions had been passed on for thousands of years, and I was embarrassed by them.

In fact, I was embarrassed by all Asian things. Growing up in a not-at-all-diverse suburb, I was always ‘the Chinese girl’ — easy to pick out in a crowd, but just as easily dismissed as nothing else but that. To be constantly on display, yet always invisible, filled me with deep insecurity. I wished I could erase the Asian part of my identity. But my physical appearance will never let me separate the Asian from the American.

And, strangely, I am now grateful for that. Because, in the end, I was forced to accept my appearance. And in doing so, I not only also accepted my heritage, but developed a great pride and a hunger to learn more about it.

Which is why now, having a daughter of mixed race, who does not look obviously Asian, is — for me — bittersweet. She might have a choice I didn’t have; if she wishes, she could shed the Asian part of being Asian-American. But I want her to choose to keep it.

How do I, one who is still learning about my heritage, share it with my child? And how do I share it so she sees it is worth keeping? These are questions I struggle to answer every day. I try to make her feel that the Asian part of her is special. I bought her a pink silk qipao and read Asian books to her. I go into her classroom to talk about Chinese holidays.

I have no idea if my efforts are working. But I keep trying. This year — the year of the rooster — my family is preparing for the New Year by wrapping a pork-leek mixture with dumpling skins, and crossing our fingers that they’ll be well made enough to fry as tradition dictates. But even if we have to boil them in a soup, we’ll eat them for dinner to make sure we get our good fortune and to treasure that which is deeply a part of us.”

Grace Lin is the multi-cultural author and illustrator of more than a dozen children’s books, including the National Book Award finalist, “When the Sea Turned to Silver.” She lives in Florence, Massachusetts.

What Photographs Can Teach Us About Our Leaders

The day before President Trump was inaugurated, commentator and art historian Paul Staiti was passing though an airport in Los Angeles when he noticed Barack Obama’s photograph greeting every arriving passenger.  Staiti found himself contemplating the image, and its imminent disappearance.

At LAX alone, 18 million international travelers were met by Obama last year. His picture has also graced every other major American airport, every port of entry and every federal office in America and abroad. Multiply by eight years in office to get a sense of how many eyes have encountered him. But all that changed on Friday, when a massive project began to remove all of Obama’s portraits and replace them with Donald Trump’s, the new face of the United States.

Our impressions of the new president will be mediated by photography. Some of it will be official—that is, sanctioned by The White House. Some of it will be photojournalism. Most of it will be amateur snapshots. Be prepared: a visual tidal wave is approaching.

An avalanche of words will also descend, but photography allows us to be witnesses in a different way. Cameras at the inauguration set on 30-foot scaffolding—directly in front of the stage—captured every nuance, every squint, every smile and every sour stare. Video told the tale as it unfolded over time. Still photography was better at isolating telltale moments: Michelle Obama looking grim; Paul Ryan smiling gleefully.

I was particularly struck by one visual detail. Traditionally at presidential inaugurations, the Chief Justice has stood close to the new president, eye to eye. (Jimmy Carter, Warren Burger and Rosalynn Carter were downright cozy during the oath). But recently, the Chief Justice has stood much farther away. The gap started to grow during George W. Bush’s inauguration and has been widening ever since. At the end of Friday’s swearing in, Chief Justice Roberts, standing a good 10 feet away, had to take a walk to shake hands with Trump. Should we deduce anything from that? Maybe the distance has only to do with choreographing wide-screen television. But I worry it speaks to a growing estrangement between the branches of government.

When it comes to our understanding the Trump presidency—or any presidency past or future—reading images has been and will be indispensable. Parsing words spoken and written by our leaders, of course, matters. But there are unique truths to be extracted from the visual record. We need to take the time to look hard at the images coming our way.”

Commentator Paul Staiti teaches art history at Mt. Holyoke College. His most recent book, “Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters’ Eyes,” was published this past fall. 

INTERVIEW: Mt. Holyoke Professor On ‘Bad Boy’ Painter Gilbert Stuart And The Real George Washington

Sports Parents Loving Their Kids Too Loudly

For many parents, weekends mean spending time watching their children play sports. Commentator John Galvin faithfully attends his kids’ games. And he loves watching the kids play. But watching –and listening –to certain people on the sidelines is another story altogether.

If there’s one thing that makes me lament this coming weekend, it will be having to listen to loud-mouthed, micro-managing sports parents. Dads and moms.

If you have children or grandchildren of a certain age, you know what I’m talking about. These full-throated powerful few are at every game. And they wreck it for the rest of us.

At my 10-year-old’s soccer games, these parents huddle, draw power from one another and go collectively insane, shouting orders to their own children, and all the other children too .

‘Cross it! Jayden!’

‘Pressure the ball, Johnny!’

‘C’mon guys, you need to want it!’

During games (and I’ve got three a weekend to attend), I stand as far away as possible from this crowd. But I still hear every yell.

And the kids do, too. Recently, I undertook an unscientific sampling. It was of my 12-year-old son’s soccer-practice carpool. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe kids actually like it when their moms are completely flipping out in the stands.

‘Hey, just curious, how do you guys feel about parents yelling on the sideline?’

At first, there was silence. But soon they opened up.

Kids hate it when parents are out of control at games. They don’t want us to scream out their name in exasperation, call out other players, question the ref or even worse — the coach. They like to be cheered on. That’s about it.

And don’t think for a moment they don’t snicker at the out-of-shape parents, who yell at the kids to ‘hustle’.

Here’s another downside. Show me an overly engaged sports parent and I’ll show you an offspring who plays too rough, complains about the ref and is a sore loser.

That kids want their parents to relax should hardly be news. Forget my survey, there’s bona fide academic research that has found the same thing. So why can’t these parents help themselves?

I get it. These kids are extensions of us. We love them. We want them to try hard, to do us proud. But if you’re out of control, you’re ruining it. For everybody. So please, I beg you, for the kids (Forget the kids! For me.) — give it a rest.”

John Galvin is a communications consultant and some-time journalist. His kids play organized sports in Northampton, where he and his family live.

Homelessness is Not a Crime

NEW ENGLAND NEWS COLLABORATIVE

 

One cold night late in November, Hartford police officers Joe Walsh and K9 officer Alfredo Pizarro called in a 10-27, a community service call, from Bushnell Park.

Their K9 dog, Hundo, had sniffed out an 8-year old boy who was spending his second night sleeping outside with his mother, Haley Robbins, and her husband, Jonathan Nunez.

Robbins, who asked that her son’s name not be used, was a security deposit shy of a city apartment. While she raised more money, she said she couldn’t find berth in a homeless shelter, and so she’d bedded her family in a corner of the park’s band shell, beneath what her son called the Princess Castle, the state’s ornate capitol that crowns a hill overlooking the park.

When the officers approached the family, the boy began crying. He feared being separated from his mother. Though it is not the policy of the state’s Department of Children and Families to remove a child from a family because of poverty, the boy feared he’d enter the state’s foster care system, and lose contact with his mother.

It’s not such a far-fetched idea. New England has always had laws that penalize extreme poverty, from complex colonial “warning out” rules that allowed town leaders to expel from villages people who were poor – supposedly so those people could return to their home towns for relief. There was no centralized welfare system. Relief was provided by local taxes. No town wanted to take on the undue burden of a neighboring town’s poor.

Laws have changed, but attitudes haven’t. In the last few years, towns around New England have passed (and enforced) laws meant to keep people who are homeless moving away from certain neighborhoods and businesses. Business owners worry that the presence of loiterers will scare off customers. Pedestrians and shoppers don’t want to be asked to donate change. As with warning out, laws keep poor people moving…but to where?

On the surface, laws against panhandling and loitering help reduce blight, but ordinances do precisely nothing to counter homelessness, and a new Yale study says they can send people who are homeless even deeper into abject poverty. Fines and imprisonment can mean loss of a space at a shelter, and loss of employment.

In November, students at Yale Law School’s Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic released a report, “Forced Into Breaking the Law,” that examined ordinances in 38 cities around Connecticut. Of the towns they studied, 24 prohibit loitering. Twelve prohibit panhandling.

“One of our main findings is that these laws are counterproductive,” said Scout Katovich, a co-author in the study, and a Yale law student from Oakland, Calif. “They don’t address the underlying issues that force people to be on the street. Usually, the conduct is involuntary. The people don’t have anywhere else to go, so they hang around on a sidewalk.”

A man panhandles in West Hartford. (Ryan Caron King for NENC)

Arresting people who are homeless is a costly enterprise that can put a person on a devastating spiral into deeper poverty. If someone is charged a fine for loitering, they must appear in court, but if they don’t have a fixed address, they may not receive the notice to let them know they need to appear. They’re then charged with failure to appear, which means that they next time they come into contact with the police, there is a warrant out for their arrest.

Meanwhile, if they’re arrested and spend time in jail, they lose their spot in a shelter, and perhaps lose whatever work they have, said Allison Frankel, of Marblehead, Mass., another of the study’s co-authors.

The issues goes beyond New England’s borders. Recently, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty released a report, “Housing Not Handcuffs” that looked at 187 cities around the country, and found that criminalization of homelessness is rampant. The report said even with a lack of affordable housing and shelter for people who are homeless, half of the cities surveyed prohibit camping in certain public places.

Nearly half (47 percent) prohibit sitting or lying down in public, 61 percent prohibit panhandling in public places, and 39 percent prohibit living in vehicles.

A man panhandling outside of a shopping complex in Hartford, Connecticut. (Ryan Caron King for NENC)

Generally, police get involved when someone calls attention to someone sleeping outside, or someone asking for money. After neighbors complained, officials in New Haven announced recently they would raze a small tent city by I-91. While outreach workers struggled to find homes for the dozen or so people who’d taken up in the makeshift settlement, a few holdouts refused to come indoors and get supportive services. In August, police in Portland, Maine, did the same thing at a similar encampment.

This summer, when Lebanon, New Hampshire officials suggested a camping and overnight parking ban on city-owned land, 100 people showed up to protest. The town of nearly 14,000 appointed a task force that subsequently suggested a similar ordinance, with more leeway given to police and a greater emphasis on connecting people with services. The ordinance was passed at a city council meeting on Dec. 7, against the wishes of more protesters who held signs that said things like, “Homelessness is not a crime.”

Trained police officers know that already, and they are often the first line of defense for people who are homeless. When Robbins’ 8-year old son began crying, the officers were quick to reassure him that he would stay with his mother. “You’ve fine It’s OK. You’re safe. Don’t worry about it,” the mother said the officers told her son.

And then the officers began calling – a motel, a nearby fire station, anywhere they could find a place for the family, Robbins said. When there was no space available, the officers promised they would check on the family through the night. They also brought them food.

Early that next morning, Dave Duverger, who runs the Hartford homeless outreach team at the South Park Inn shelter, came by on his weekly rounds, and told the 35-year old mother there was a space for her family.

Robbins cried the night she sat in the shelter hallway and told her story.

“A lot of police officers,” she said, “they care. They kept coming back to check on us, to make sure we were safe for the night. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.”

Staying out of the judicial system can make all the difference for a family on the financial edge. Just before Christmas, Robbins and her husband got enough money together, and when she went to the landlord, he said, “Merry Christmas,” and forgave her a month’s rent in her new North End two-bedroom apartment with a big country kitchen. Robbins and her family spent Christmas at home.

Now, stably housed, she takes her son to school and they pass the Princess Castle. Robbins has tried to explain to her son that no princesses live there, that that’s where the governor works, but the boy is adamant. Princesses live there, he insists. And they – along with some of Hartford’s finest – watched over his family.

Susan Campbell is a journalist and author. She teaches at the University of New Haven.

This commentary comes from the New England News Collaborative, eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

One ‘Dreamer’ Worries What Trump Will Do

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the promise, among others, to get rid of President Obama’s program that offered a temporary reprieve to so-called dreamers — immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children. But in a recent interview with Time magazine, Trump said he wants to “work something out” to help dreamers.

Commentator Angelica Merino Monge is one of many people anxiously waiting to see what’s next. At 22 years old, Monge has lived in the United States over half her life.

In El Salvador, my mother worked as a seamstress, raising three little children on her own. She felt she needed to remove us from the gang violence happening everywhere around us. So many people were trying to flee the country that visas were essentially impossible to get. Mom’s only option was to hire a ‘coyote’ to lead us to the Mexico-U.S. border. To get there, my mother, my brother and I walked and rode with strangers for about two weeks. I was 10.

Without Social Security numbers, the only jobs available to my mother were under the table and paid under minimum wage. Getting a driver’s license without papers was impossible. Also health insurance. We were constantly frightened of being deported. It was hard.

But then, once I’d graduated high school, I was also going to have to come up with the money to pay for college. Without documentation, I was considered an international student, which meant I had to pay out-of-state tuition. To make enough to afford two classes, I needed to work close to 40 hours a week. And each time I came to school, it took two hours by bus.

When I was 18, my mother found a better job in Maryland and moved there. Suddenly I needed also to pay for my rent and food. I thought I’d probably have to quit school altogether.

But then Obama signed the executive order known as DACA , designed to protect and grant some rights to immigrant youth who’d come to the United States as children. Finally, I was safe. Finally, I was able to get a work permit and a driver’s license and an in-state tuition bill.

Now I attend school full time. I’ve received an award for outstanding work in political science. I also volunteer weekly, teaching literacy to migrant farm workers.

My story, in essence, is the story of millions of immigrants over hundreds of years who’ve come to the United States hoping for a better life. Once here, they’ve lived honorably.

We work hard. We give back. Our lives are here. We want to stay.”

Commentator Angelica Merino Monge  attends Holyoke Community College and hopes to go on to earn her B.A. at one of the Five Colleges next fall.