SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Interdependence

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

In recent weeks there have been large demonstrations across Long Island and the nation protesting the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from families seeking asylum in the United States—and on the Fourth of July that was the scene in my little village of Sag Harbor.

Heralded as a “Walk for Interdependence: Keep Our Families Together,” it drew a remarkably high number of people—I’d estimate 400. It was sponsored by the Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island (OLA), area churches and synagogues and others. It started with speeches and songs at the windmill on Long Wharf and continued with protesters walking up and then down the sidewalks along Main Street.

Many carried signs such as: “Children Should Never Be Caged! This is America!,” “Compassion for Families Seeking Asylum,” “Hate Has No Home Here,” “No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is The Mouth of a Shark,” “ No Human Is Illegal,” “Families Belong Together,” “End Family Detention,” “Make America Humane Again,” “Only Monsters Put Children in Cages,” “Descendants of Immigrants—We Stand With Our Latino Brothers and Sisters,” “Trump and the White House Don’t Belong Together. Families DO,” “Mary and Joseph Fled Violence and Were Turned Away. LOVE” and “We got a call from France. They want their statue back.”

A member of the only group not immigrants to the U.S.—Native American—Nichol Dennis Banks, a former trustee of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, dressed in colorful native clothing, held a sign reading: “30,000 Native American Children Placed in ‘Boarding Schools’ Between 1880-1902. Keep Families Together. Stop the Trauma.”

“We call this interdependence because we all depend on each other,” said Minerva Perez, executive director of OLA, at the windmill. She sang a song with the lines: “You do not walk alone. I will walk with you—and sing your spirit home.” She continued singing the song at the side of the protesters as they walked along Main Street.

A young Latina girl, Isobel, at the microphone at the windmill, said: “The children need to stay with their families because they need the love to get through this hard time.”

To understand what those fleeing to the U.S. at our southern border are running from with their families, it is helpful to visit countries from which they are escaping. Years ago, I wrote a book on conflict in Central America and went to Honduras. Years before, as a student at Antioch College, I participated in its program in Guanajuato, Mexico. In Honduras, my first interview was with Ramon Custodio, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras. He was a doctor, having gone to medical school in England and receiving training in pathology in the U.S., and was founder and former president of the medical college in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. 

Dr. Custodio used a word I had never heard decades before from my Universidad de Guanajuato professors—desaparecidos. In English it means “disappeared persons.”

In Honduras, there’s been an increase in desaparecidos,” related Dr. Custodio. “It is a disturbing pattern.” Some bodies are found in “clandestine cemeteries.” The judicial system refuses to investigate the disappearances.  Honduran police, he said, will often keep people in custody without a trial for weeks and there have been numerous cases of torture by police.

I asked Dr. Custodio why he put himself at risk leading the 100-member human rights group. “It’s my duty to defend human rights where very few speak out,” he answered. “I know how to say it, write it, maybe I have the guts for it. I have the moral duty. I’d hate to be living in this country and be silent and be in the position of the many German people when Hitler came to power.”

Not all of Central America is in such a situation. Costa Rica and Belize are not.

But trying to survive in Honduras and El Salvador is really dangerous. And in the resulting flight-or-fight calculus, many seek to flee—and the dream is to go to the U.S., long known as a refuge for those escaping tyranny. Indeed, one speaker at the windmill last week said that with the Trump administration “zero-tolerance” program directed at these newest refugees, “The Statue of Liberty has tears in her eyes.”

The use of the word “interdependence” for the walk was meaningful. Like other immigrant groups that have sought refuge in the U.S., Latinos are vital in doing what others here usually won’t do—landscaping, hard restaurant work, etc. We are interdependent.

Perry Gershon, Democratic candidate for Congress in the lst C.D., was at the demonstration last week and told me: “What Trump is doing is not America. Our Congress has a duty to speak up loudly not only to end family separation but to accelerate family reunification.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.