Tag Archives: immigration

Luis Gustavo Alvarez: A Ground Zero American Hero

I’ve never considered submitting a weekly music column to No Depression to be hard work. Given the latitude I’m given to cover basically whatever pops into my mind rather than being assigned a particular topic, it’s rarely been too difficult to come up with something that hopefully readers will find of interest. On a few occasions I’ve gone off the beat, straying into areas or events that are topical and in the news, and perhaps at times controversial. I’ve gotten feedback from many folks to “just stick to the music”. Sometimes I try but No I can’t.

I’ve been troubled these past few weeks, or maybe a deep funk would be a better way to describe it. I can pinpoint the first time I felt the knot in my stomach; it was around the Fourth of July. A man had just died of cancer, and his obituary said it was linked to the three months he spent at ground zero of the 9/11 attacks searching for survivors and bodies that he helped pull out of the toxic soil. Luis Gustavo Alvarez was only 53 years old.

After he graduated high school in 1983, Alvarez joined the Marines, and after serving he attended classes at City College in New York. He joined the NYPD in 1990 and was a detective in the narcotics division when we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The New York Times‘ obituary noted that before he retired in 2010 he was recognized five times for his excellent police work. He then took a job with the Department of Homeland Security, until he was diagnosed with cancer and it became too debilitating to continue.

Two and a half weeks before he passed away, Alvarez went to Washington, DC, to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and urge them to continue offering health benefits to first responders who have fallen ill. “I did not want to be anywhere else but ground zero when I was there,” he said at the hearing. “Now the 9/11 illnesses have taken many of us, and we are all worried about our children, our spouses and our families and what happens if we are not here.” (Fox News)

Luis Gustavo Alvarez was born in Cuba. He was an immigrant who came to America, became a citizen, served his country, and was a hero to many for his efforts. And at death’s doorstep he had to plead in front of the politicians in Washington to put forth what should be the simplest, most nonpartisan, no-brainer effort: Give aid to the survivors. The House passed its bill to extend funding for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, but a vote on the Senate measure was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul, who cited cost concerns.

Less than two weeks after Alvarez’s death, our House of Representatives voted to condemn the president of our country for using racist language. Using his favorite communication tool, he had lashed out at four Democratic women of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — tweeting that they should “go back” to their home countries despite the fact that all four of the women are US citizens and three were born in this country.

Back on Labor Day in 1980, when Republicans were conservative but not yet the xenophobic white nationalist party of today, candidate Ronald Reagan stood with the Statue of Liberty in the background and said this about immigrants:

“These families came here to work. They came to build. Others came to America in different ways, from other lands, under different, and often harrowing conditions, but this place symbolizes what they all managed to build, no matter where they came from or how they came or how much they suffered. They helped to build that magnificent city across the river. They spread across the land building other cities and towns and incredibly productive farms. They came to make America work. They didn’t ask what this country could do for them but what they could do to make this refuge the greatest home of freedom in history. They brought with them courage, ambition, and the values of family, neighborhood, work, peace, and freedom. They came from different lands but they shared the same values, the same dream.”

In January 2018, the current Republican president shared his thoughts on immigration:

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

Ask Luis Gustavo Alvarez, an immigrant and true American hero.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com

We Need Pete Seeger Now More Than Ever

Wikimedia Commons

At the opening to this year’s Great Hudson River Revival, a music festival an hour north of Manhattan that was founded by the late Pete and Toshi Seeger 40 years ago and emphasizes environmental activism, I think it might have been either folksinger Josh White Jr. or Tom Chapin who invoked the words “a musical antibody for a political virus” while leading a few thousand people in song. Participatory group singing has always been the calling card of the Seeger clan and their extended family, and that spirit continues.

Pete Seeger had said that “No one can prove a damn thing, but I think that singing together gives people some kind of a holy feeling. And it can happen whether they’re atheists, or whoever. You feel like, ‘Gee, we’re all together.’ I like the sound of average voices more than trained voices, especially kids singing a little off pitch. They have a nice, rascally sound.” (New York Times)

June 18, 2018: McAllen, Texas — Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that’s divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock. Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents’ arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents. (Associated Press)

Throughout Father’s Day weekend as I wandered through the festival grounds, it was hard to tamp down the taste of bile emanating from the actions of a despicable and morally bankrupt administration that has ripped to shreds the values and morals of our great land. And yes, while a folk festival is indeed a clustered group of mostly white progressives, and despite the shortcomings of inclusion, it still felt like a better place to spend a hot summer day. As the sweet sounds came pouring from the stages, there were many musicians raising their voices and sharing their anger and frustration, occasionally tempered with hope. At a small workshop beneath a tent, Rhiannon Giddens spoke a harsh truth: “If you want to know what’s happening today, don’t read newspapers. Read the history books.” This song seemed fitting for the day: “Mal Hombre.”

Willie Nelson has issued a statement on the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The country-music icon and Texas native ripped the Department of Justice’s policy under President Trump. “What’s going on at our Southern border is outrageous. Christians everywhere should be up in arms. What happened to ‘Bring us your tired and weak and we will make them strong?’ This is still the promise land,” Nelson says, citing lyrics from songwriter David Lynn Jones’ “Living in the Promiseland.” (Rolling Stone)

Willie does not stand alone.

Singer Sara Bareilles wrote: “I am so sad and feel so helpless about the families being separated. This is beyond inhumane … I am just appalled. I am grateful for those sharing how to engage and help, thank God for you. The idea that there is anyone who believes this is justice is simply heartbreaking.” When House Speaker Paul Ryan sent out a “Happy Father’s Day” message, singer John Legend replied: “Seriously, f**k you. Reunite the families at the border and we can talk about father’s day.” (Channel 3000)

I imagine that many of you would rather read about the Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore set at the festival — it was better than I could possibly have imagined, and the new album has been No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart since its release. And there were a few dozen other singers and bands I had been looking forward to hearing that didn’t disappoint. And maybe I could have shared a little about the concert I saw earlier in the week with Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Dwight Yoakam. It could have been a great week for music, but much of it was buried under sadness for the families torn apart.

June 19, 2018: A group of more than 600 United Methodist clergy and church members are bringing church law charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration crackdown. The group accuses Sessions, a fellow United Methodist, of violating Paragraph 270.3 of the denomination’s Book of Discipline. He is charged under church law with child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and “dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church.” (NBC News)

“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, ‘How did it happen so fast?’ ”

— Pete Seeger

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Anais Mitchell Writes, Billy Bragg Sings, Trump Strikes Fear

We were sitting at a table in our local diner owned by a Greek family, eating lunch and discussing the latest headlines from the Sunday morning news shows about Donald Trump. His position on immigration had just been posted on his website and I was already stuck on the first of his three core principals: “A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.” Not to be contrary or sarcastic, but has anybody thought about Canada lately? If the issue is safety and security, it would seem that we’d want to protect ourselves on all fronts. But that’s not what a wall is really about.

As the conversation took its course, I began to wonder out loud if putting up a barrier to keep people out might also have the unanticipated effect of keeping people contained. Thoughts of the authorities, in the middle of the night, rounding up families who’ve lived here for decades, whose children were born within these borders and are protected under the Constitution, made me think of the politics and tactics of Germany and the Soviet Union. Their wall was called the Iron Curtain, and the government suspended liberties; jailed dissenters; banned books, music, and art; crawled into isolationism; and created a society with a teensy-weensy segment of the population who lived in luxury and privilege, while the majority toiled in poverty.

About to go off on a long tangential rant, my friend stopped me and asked, “Do you know that song about walls on Anais Mitchell’s album Hadestown? It’s a duet with Greg Brown. Check it out, because I think there might be a thread there for you to pull at.”

And so I did. And so there was.

Why do we build the wall?
My children, my children
Why do we build the wall?

Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

Both of my parent’s parents came to America from Eastern Europe sometime around the turn of the last century. When my father died, we heard a story from an older relative who would seemingly know such things that my paternal grandfather escaped from extreme poverty and political oppression in Russia by using falsified documents for his entry through Ellis Island. I imagine it was probably his parents who you could blame for this act of illegal immigration, as he was only four or five at the time. When he turned 18 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and went off into battle during the first world war — the one they called “The War to End All Wars.”

How does the wall keep us free?
My children, my children
How does the wall keep us free?

How does the wall keep us free?
The wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

After my grandfather was discharged from the service, he hung wallpaper for a living and married a woman who worked in a clothing factory for long hours, short breaks, no benefits, and low wages. She later became a union organizer. My father was born, a sister followed, and when the Great Depression arrived, they lived in a small, two-bedroom house in South Philadelphia. Having a roof over their heads made them pretty lucky, and their good fortune was shared by other relatives. A total of three families that included grandparents, husbands, wives, and lots of children lived together in that little house. Over the years, the family assimilated and thrived, and to my knowledge, none of them were sent to prison or ended up on welfare, and there was not a rapist or murderer in the bunch.

Who do we call the enemy?
My children, my children
Who do we call the enemy?

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

My folks were married just as this country entered the second world war and my dad enlisted in the Air Force. After he completed his service, he used his veteran’s benefits to go to night school and earn a degree in engineering. They saved for years to buy a house in the suburbs using a government-backed mortgage, and with my mom also in the work force, they always took care of our needs, paid their bills on time, felt it a duty and honor to be able to vote or be called to serve on a jury. They were good citizens. Beyond just patriotism, they were grateful to have been born and raised in this country. Their generation, these children of immigrants, called it the American Dream.

Because we have and they have not!
My children, my children
Because they want what we have got!

Because we have and they have not!
Because they want what we have got!
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

José Palazón captured that image I used at the top of this column. Those are African migrants sitting on top of a border fence between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla. I believe it to be a strong visual image as to why and to what lengths economic inequalities force people to move geographically, just as my parent’s parents did.

As I stare at that photo and listen to the words of men like Donald Trump who urge us to build walls and deport our own brown-skinned immigrant neighbors, I detest this rhetoric of fear and the media manipulation that fans the fires of hatred. We’re in another political season, and those with large egos and loud voices eclipse our values, sense of reason, and fairness. If you want to make America great, don’t make America hate. Our country and our people deserve better.

“Why We Build This Wall” was written by Anais Mitchell, and performed this past June by Billy Bragg. If anyone is looking for a musical antidote for these times, this might be it.

Anais Mitchell posted these words on her website about Hadestown and “Why We Build This Wall”:

“To me the essence of ‘Why We Build the Wall’ is, it’s meant to provoke the question. Take global warming to its terrifying logical conclusion and imagine part of the world becomes uninhabitable and there are masses of hungry poor people looking for higher ground. then imagine you are lucky enough to live in relative wealth and security, though maybe you’ve sacrificed some freedoms to live that way. When the hordes are at the door, who among us would not be behind a big fence? These conditions exist already, but most of us don’t have to acknowledge them in a real way. I really and truly had no specific place in mind when I wrote ‘Why We Build the Wall.’ People often say, ‘Oh, that’s just like Israel/Palestine, or that’s just like the US/Mexico border,’ and maybe it is, but the song was written more archetypally.”

This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.