INSIDE:
NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online
Paper (PDF)
NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections
Upcoming
The Asian Reporter Eleventh
Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet -
April 2009
May, 2009
Asian Reporter Info
AR
Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues
ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones
Copyright © 2000 - 2008
AR Home
|
Talking Story |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #31 (July 31, 2007), page 7.
About that big immigrant bust: Say nothing but know this
The other morning, several hundred python-armed cops — federal officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — unloaded quietly at Portland’s sleepy airport. For the big bust.
The Icemen came. They came to take away as many working men and women as they could catch from a local fruit packer. Mexican workers. Guys doing what good dads and sons do everywhere, ladies doing what dutiful moms and daughters have always done.
Work hard.
Work hard so that this stubborn son’s proud mother can own the first tiled kitchen floor in their dirt road Michoacán village. Work hard so that this modest mother’s pretty children can dress nice, show proper respect to teachers entrusted to make her babies good people, better Americans than she ever can be.
Nothing hard to understand about any of that. Especially easy for us. Us Asians and islanders, us Arabs and Africans and African Americans. For us folks who, from the moment we leave our warm homes, know discouragement and disappointment and despair — but not defeat. Never defeat. Not us.
What they did
And then they did it. Those fed cops. They circled that fruit packer. They grabbed up those startled brown folks. They cuffed them and packed them into vans and took them to jails, no one knew exactly where.
And then: Everybody was upset. Portland’s mayor was mad; this is the town and those are the families he swore to serve. School principals were furious; their frightened boys and confused girls sat on front steps waiting for moms and pops not coming. Those parents’ employer went nuts, that fruit plant went still.
Who wouldn’t get any of that?
A month passed.
A month has passed since that careless government raid and roundup, since our mayor stood up for his families, since those big teachers sorrowed with their little students. Enough time for local churches, for Latino community activist aunties and elder uncles, to sort out who will tuck who into bed at night. Who will send breakfast smells out to rouse everyone next morning, then pick up anxious kids in the afternoon. Who’ll pick up rent and electricity bills. And who hasn’t had to do that — suck it up, step right in, take care of broken parts, broken hearts.
Also passed: a month of shrill arguments.
Strong feelings around.
"Republicans are politicizing the immigrant debate," and "Democrats don’t have a clue."
"America is abusing vulnerable laborers," and "Mexicans must stand in line (just like we did)."
Who doesn’t have a smart thing to say? What can be said, has been said.
Except one thing.
This one thing. Say nothing about it, but know this: In our silence, in the still of men like me, sitting around dark tables in the comfort of us, with the medicine of distilled Mekong rice, of Jamaican sugar cane, of Mexican corn, anesthetizing our humiliation, softening our anger — we have always known this one thing.
What we know
We know we will take beatings. Bad ones.
We know the government of the smartest people on the planet will figure out who we are, where we work, then send the world’s biggest bluest cops for us.
I know most of my own folk will not stand up for me; many will even say ugly things after they take me away, even while my babies weep in their sleep.
We know, we know, we know some of our women will leave us, our shame, our rage. Will leave all this bitterness lining my veins, clogging this heart. For brighter days, for better lives, for their pretty offspring. Our ladies adjust. Women’re practical.
But we also know. And we know this, mind you, every precious minute of every God-given day, from when raucous starlings wake me until whistling bats send me to bed. We know that only us, only this slim generation will so suffer. For dreaming America. Our children’s America.
We know, we know like pain knows joy and night knows day, that our brave daughters and our bright sons will be okay. They will thrive. They’ll be taller than me with straighter teeth than me. Their minds’ll be sharper, their hearts clearer, than mine.
And for this, for them, those beatings, these betrayals, mean nothing. Precisely for poundings we are made as stubborn as we are. I look around our little table, at my broad-shouldered brothers, at us flat-footed boxers. And oh ampun’allah, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
So I do both.
So tomorrow we go to work.
* * *
Notas:
Michoacán: Mexican home state for lots of Oregon families.
Distilled agave and corn is Mexican tequila; distilled rice is Mekong whiskey; distilled sugar cane and molasses is Jamaican rum.
Oh ampun’allah (Indo patois): oh Lord have mercy.
* * *