Immigration Atrocities

Immigration Atrocities Must Stop

Separating Children from their Parents is Inhumane

The Trump Republican Party’s assault on basic human dignity and respect for the family continues unabated. Every time I think they cannot sink any lower on the depravity scale, they take it further down by miles.

Ours is a country made great and strong by immigrants who came to our shores seeking freedom from religious or political persecution and a better life for their families. My first immigrant ancestors came from Germany in the 1700s and settled in upper New York State. They farmed and became prosperous. They joined the Revolutionary Army and fought with Washington to repel British rulers and undo unfair taxes. My wife’s Brewster ancestors came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on the Mayflower and stood up for religious freedom that came to be enshrined in our founding documents.

Wave after wave of immigrants came to America and helped build our cities, railroads, canals, and many other mechanisms of economic growth. Many who came spoke no English and had no education. They took the jobs no one else who had already gained a measure of security would take. Those immigrants brought their families to a better home than they left.

One of the dark sides of the immigration epic found its way into our history when those who came before and gained some success looked down on some of those who came later as less worthy or less deserving. The newcomers had to knock down these barriers and show their worth before becoming accepted by those several generations off the boat. Sometimes they had to organize into unions to make sure the doors stayed open to continued upward mobility.

Another dark side of our immigration history is found in the treatment of people of color by the Anglo-European majority. The involuntary immigration of those stolen from Africa aside, immigrants from Asia and South and Central America, with skin tones yellow to brown, faced additional hurdles. They tended to settle in Chinatowns and Little Havanas in major cities, seeking the protection of racial isolation.

All of the injustices visited on these later immigrants, pale in comparison to the newest atrocities being imposed upon immigrant families who seek safety and a better life by the Trump administration. It is made worse by the acquiescence of those Republicans in Congress who have the power to stop them.

Following the historical lead from dictators past, immigration authorities are now forcibly separating young children from their parents when the family units cross the border without proper permission. Those now effectively orphaned are sent far from their parents with no way of staying connected and housed in hastily converted empty big box stores set up with wire cages usually found in animal shelters. Their parents are not told where their children are being held and have no way to communicate with them. The damage inflicted upon these young humans by this treatment will stay with them for the rest of their lives. They and we can take little solace in the heartless solution offered by Attorney General Sessions, “if you don’t want to lose your children, don’t come here illegally.”

Not content with just tearing families apart, Sessions recently slammed the immigration door shut to many from south of our borders by announcing that fleeing from domestic or gang violence will no longer be accepted as a legitimate reason to seek asylum in the United States. The realities of domestic and gang violence in parts of Central and South America are well documented. Those who resist or fail to assist have legitimate fear of violent reprisals and have every reason to flee. 

These immigrants, along with many who come from Mexico without proper visas, are willing to roll up their sleeves and work in our restaurant kitchens, dairy farms, vegetable growing operations, and other occupations requiring long workdays and back breaking labor. They take jobs that most already here never apply to take. Why we shun people willing to work hard and become productive future citizens baffles me.

We have a representative in Congress who plays a central role in overseeing these and other immigration policies and has the power to bring a much more humane cast to how we treat those who come to our shores. Senator Ron Johnson chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He is in a unique position to stop the family destroying atrocities and establish legislative policy on who may seek asylum. Contact Sen. Johnson at 414-276-7282 and tell him to stand up to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

We are engaged in behavior equal to the horrors of the slave trade we fought a civil war to abolish. It must stop.

It's not Sex

Abuse of Power is the Problem

Meritocracy and Equality is the Answer

Sexual harassment and assault often take place when men in positions of power and authority come to believe that their lofty position entitles them to special treatment and physical pleasure from subordinate women. This behavior is just plain wrong, no matter what other positive attributes the powerful possess or the good works they have performed.

In recent weeks, many men in powerful positions have been brought to task by women who found the strength to come forward with descriptions of their abuse and the impacts it has had on their lives and careers. We see it in media celebrities like Matt Lauer of NBC and Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame at Minnesota Public Radio. We see it in the halls of Congress from the likes of Rep. John Conyers (D. Mich) and Sen. Al Franken (D. Minn). We even see it in the White House from the most powerful men in our government in Pres. Bill Clinton and Pres. Donald Trump. We see it in political races from those like Judge Roy Moore (R. Ala) and others too numerous to mention.

Some of the men have come clean, admitting their transgressions and seeking redemption through admission and going into self-reflective treatment. Some have been fired by their superiors who raced to adopt zero tolerance policies to avoid further corporate embarrassment and the litigation that often follows disclosure of inappropriate and unacceptable behavior. Others have maintained their innocence, even in the face of numerous accusers with clear evidence of abuse, and kept their positions, at least temporarily.

The media and many activists focus on the sexual nature of the conduct, seeking to draw attention from the salacious. What these critics miss, distracted by the sexual taboos, is the whole point of the behavior. The point is not sexual stimulation and pleasure. The point of the bad behavior is the misguided entitlement the abusers believe is theirs by divine right and their power to make or break the careers of those below them in stature.

Women seeking a seat at the table of authority in workplaces dominated by these men do not get to compete with their male colleagues based on talent, intellect or ability. All too often, they are convinced that the only path to advancement and success winds through the bedroom. They all too often find that path never leads to the table or the Board Room, just to the boudoir.

These abuses of power and authority are rarely addressed as the abuses of those attributes, but merely as inappropriate sexual behavior. Until the roots of male power over women are exposed, examined and redefined, these abuses will continue unabated. We will continue to hear from those few important women who dare to come forward and challenge the power structure, but nothing will change.

What these latest revelations are calling for is the creation of a true meritocracy in the workplace and at home.

We need a world where children are taught that they will find success, not based upon which genital set up they have under their clothes, but on what is between their ears and how they are able to put it to productive use. Our sons and daughters must be taught to respect one another and that no one, under any circumstances, is intrinsically superior to anyone else. The motto must be that we all bring value to the discussion and have the right to express our feelings freely.

Workplace cultures need redefinition along the same lines. It is no longer acceptable for men to become leaders just because they are men. Male generated ideas are no more valuable or important than female ideas. “Mansplaining” that puts women down with patronizing commentary needs to go. Expectations that women in the office are automatically the ones who make the coffee or clean the bathrooms or just take care of the menial tasks have no place in the workplace. It is long past time when women get paid less for the same work done by a male colleague.

The days of Ozzie and Harriet at home are over as well. Life at home has changed, especially since few households can survive on just one income. The workload there needs to be redefined and redistributed so that no one feels like they are carrying the whole load with the kids, the cooking, the cleaning and the dog. No man is ever entitled to sex, just because of his gender or the size of his paycheck.

If we truly want to see an end to sexual harassment and assault by men in power, we need to rebalance the distribution of power so that men and women are equal partners in all the efforts we take together.

Waring Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.

Eclipse in Small Town America

The Solar Eclipse

Best in Small Town America

Our family went to Virginia, Nebraska to watch the solar eclipse this past Monday. We watched the sun dance behind the moon above constantly shifting bands of clouds before a muted darkness descended during the brief totality. While not as dramatic as seeing the corona of the sun surrounding a black moon, our experience was quite satisfying and I got a t-shirt memorializing the event to complete the bargain.

Our experience was shared by about 100 people who decided that a small, almost ghost, town surrounded by corn and soybean fields in southern Nebraska was the place to be. Virginia, Nebraska has a population of about 20 on a good day. Downtown is three blocks long with the major hub being the grain elevator. Large trucks pulled in and out the whole time we were there dumping their loads and going out for more. No time to stop to watch the once in a lifetime event happening in the clouds.

There were three small places open on the main drag to welcome the population surge. Terry’s steakhouse is evidently the only restaurant in the area for miles around and called in every worker to prepare and serve a special eclipse styled breakfast, lunch and dinner to all who came. There was a steady trickle of customers in and out of Terry’s all day with folks retiring to lawn chairs set up in the empty lots on either side of the building, food and drinks in hand, to gaze upward. Across the street, the five people who work at Citizen’s State Bank closed up from 11 to 2 and brought their lobby and desk chairs into the street to watch the show.

The American Legion Post, a vacant lot down the street from Terry’s, put on the best welcome for traveling strangers. They opened the doors so visiting sun gazers could use the bathrooms. Legion members prepared pulled pork in roaster ovens and set out sides of coleslaw to sell to the hungry that did not bring picnic supplies. They put out a clearly homemade sheet cake decorated with a large sun at the total eclipse phase to share with the anticipated revelers, asking only that visitors fill out a large poster board with their name and hometown along with how many miles they had traveled to get to small town Virginia for the eclipse.

The rest of Virginia’s main street is made up of long empty small buildings. The faded sign for Staples Store hovered over windows boarded up and most of the rest had broken windows or none at all speaking to the town’s decline as a local center of commerce.

We set up our chairs in the town park across the street from the grain elevator and a small deserted shop that locals opened to set up their picnic table. The park had oak shade trees, a swing set, a half basketball court and a push me, pull you merry go round that I went round on with my grand daughters and some other kids who stopped by the red painted antique. The two picnic tables used hand welded farm wagon wheel rims to support the seats and tabletop. We got there around 10 am and by 11:30 there were 6 other families looking up through the clouds at the sun with our special glasses or welding goggles brought from work. Two local young teen boys walked around with a cardboard sign proclaiming tongue in cheek, “The End is Near,” before playing some hoops and then pulling out their glasses for the event.

We chatted amiably with others who came to look up into the sky. There was a three generation local family, a couple from Minnesota with a fancy filtered camera, a family from Texas and two guys with very fancy drones that hovered 400 feet up while filming the event at opposite ends of the street. I could not understand what they gained from a higher aerial view that was still under the cloud cover, but to each his own. When the totality arrived, all the watchers cheered and whistled.

It was refreshing to be at that small town event, bigger than all it held, and share it with family and quietly nice people who just wanted to see something they had never seen before. It was a thoroughly positive and genuinely American event.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.