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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #8 (February 19, 2008), page 7.

I have a sister, a good one. She’s a mother, my sister is. And also a grandma. She’s one of those ethnic enclave aunties everyone relies on, has always relied on. As a matter of fact, Oregon’s Asian and Islander, our Arab and Indian, our African and African American, our Slavic and Spanish-speaking, communities cannot go a day without women like her. They fix broken parts and broken hearts. In short (about five feet), our sister’s a lot of things to a lot of people.

The other day this sister got herself busted by the State of Oregon. Imagine that — though I know you don’t want to. Though no one I know wants to spend a single wayward second thinking about the power of grinding government. Us newcomers dread government — Soviet government, Khmer Rouge government, Ceausescu government, Mengistu government. Demonios all.

My peon heart gets stuck in my throat, my mind goes mush when I think about it. About bad government. I cannot sleep even after my baby talks nice to me, even if I finish that liter of Mekhong Whiskey hidden high in our kitchen cupboard for intruding memories like these. Even if.

There are two purposes to telling you about this sister. And that bust. The first is talking story to those immigrant enclaves mentioned earlier. Our second reason is reaching our government’s officers.

What happened to my sister happens a lot. It happens frequently enough so that this unhappy intersection with state officials is told and retold; ethno-culturally rooted embellishments are added and added; at the end of another workweek, awful moments like our sister’s are woven into our communities’ social reality. They make up our minds.

Here’s what happened: right after her day job, between responsibilities to family and community, my big sister dashed to the little shop she runs with her husband. Very ambitious. Very American, those folks are.

A young woman set a beer and a couple of bucks on her counter. Our sister’s no dope, she knows all about checking a customer’s age on state-issued ID. She keeps a calculator on her counter to do the math. She does NOT with cops, with their prosecutors, with our judges. With grinding government.

My sister also knows, like we all know, that government here and government back home are both like an American kitchen sink. Once your hand goes down that dark drain, into that churning disposal, you don’t get it out.

Even though government calls that grind "due process," in truth the process IS the punishment. Even if you win — you lose. Piles of precious Yankee Doodle dollars on lawyers, months of sleepless nights, down the drain. Ask anyone.

Back to our familiar story.

Our sister peered into that young customer’s face. White folks age different from us oily ricepickers. She examined her ID; she punched today’s date into her calculator; she subtracted her customer’s birth date, and came up with something over 21. She took her customer’s money and handed over a receipt.

The customer left. Cops from OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) stepped up to the counter and busted our sister.

My sister did her job right (she works real hard).

She did the math well (she excelled in school).

But she failed to spot a pretty good fake ID (competent detection of counterfeited official documentation is nowhere on her résumé). No one running little corner grocery stores knows a lot about that. We leave that to cops.

Oregon is very cautious about alcohol. Historically, folks here have been a lot more bugged about beer, wine, and whiskey than families back home. Our kids grow up with table wine. Any Bangkok, Saigon, or Vientiane corner shop’ll sell anyone a liter of Mekhong Whiskey. Tokyo strollers buy saké from sidewalk vending machines. Many traditional cultures do not link liquor with public or private morality.

In Oregon, our legislature has assigned the policing of alcohol sales to an arm of government called the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. OLCC has an enforcement apparatus working every day and most nights. They license, train, and spank businesses selling Bud, Gallo, and Johnnie Walker.

Oregonians are critically concerned about kids drinking. Many awful injuries and sudden deaths are attributed to young people overdoing it. Check out the morning Oregonian.

My sister stays very busy. Like all our working parents, she does her doggone best to dress well her pretty babies, to pay timely her family’s mortgage and utilities. She drives 22 in 25 mph zones. She files immaculate tax returns. Early. Like all those edgy immigrants mentioned earlier, she wants no trouble with government.

This is a mom and grandma who does not want to make a buck selling Coors to a teen.

This lady is precisely the kind of respected community elder that government needs to recruit to help enforce public welfare policies and practices. She’s all that.

And coincidently, OLCC is an enforcement agency in need of help with its reputation in a lot of Oregon newcomer communities. It’s that bad.

We need to work together.

I don’t know a lot of parents supporting teen stupidity. There’s not a single grandma out there helping kids with drunkenness and destructiveness and death.

Better than punishing is asking esteemed community folks and their mutual assistance associations to help with law enforcement. Better than humiliating is educating us, then us educating our communities. That’s how we’ve worked with Fish and Wildlife officers, it’s what we’ve done when kids tell authorities on their disciplinarian parents; it’s why we have a happy relationships with Portland cops. Community policing.

Best, is using our solid leaders’ great reputations to spread goodwill about what government wants and why. Best is making Oregon government different from the totalitarian ones that sent us here.

Ceausescu: very bad guy. Communist Rumania’s President from 1967 to 1989.

governments past: those mentioned above are not an exhaustive list of all ugly regimes that exiled Oregon’s refugee families. We intend no disrespect to survivors and no irreverence to perished loved ones by not naming them all in our short column.

governments present: at present we are subject to school district, city, county, tri-county, state, and federal, layers of government. Some jurisdictions are good at explaining themselves to us. Some are staffed by or engage newcomers in rulemaking. Our sincere gratitude goes to you all. Still, immigrants are bewildered by overlapping tier upon tier of official approval necessary to get by in our lives. Running a restaurant, for example, requires doing right by at least seven governmental units. Whew.

New Americans get this: you can engage yourself into that layer of government bugging you most. The political process is open. This place can be ours. Those cops can be enforcing our values.

Khmer Rouge (Khmer and French): Red Cambodians, a brutally murderous political party, ruling from 1975 to 1979, though many party notables are still active.

Mengistu (Ethiopian): Head of ruling military junta, then national President (1977-1991) deemed responsible for Ethiopia’s human tragedies and natural disasters during the 1980s and 90s.

peon (Indo patois, Tagalog, Spanish): a farmer working land he cannot own.

Public morality and alcohol: no disrespect intended toward Hindu and Muslim societies in this generalization. Our devout families do link alcohol and morality.

sister (Old World and ethnic minority American): folks often refer to each other with kinship terms. A sister, auntie, or grandma expects an interdependent relationship. A "sister" does not require the consanguinity (blood-relatedness) defined by our Anglo American legal system.