This month, my storefront Catholic community, Communitas, celebrated 30 years since
its formation. Shown with me is one of the original members, Sister Alice, an
anti-torture crusader, who came from retirement in her mother-house in
Minnesota to celebrate with us. My visitor from Argentina attended with me.
Am back online,after several big rainstorms and electrical and internet outages
affecting my home office that lasted days and took two electricians
numerous hours to fix on separate occasions (I’m bracing myself for the final bill!).
One even came back again on Sunday, Father’s Day, when he charged double-time.
I surely hope it’s fixed this time. We also experienced a terrible heat wave
along the whole east coast. That’s why this particular blog posting is so long,
an accumulation of events and commentary.
Possibly the electrical problem
was due to hidden water leakage from recent storm or from squirrels that have taken up residence in nooks and crannies and
perhaps chewed through or disrupted electrical wires. The remedy was to block
off several electrical outlets, ones I didn’t even know existed, located behind
heavy bookcases and file cabinets. Otherwise, the walls would have had to be
torn open to find where shorts were occurring. My circuit breaker was no help,
as it popped right out again when pressed, fortunately, since if it had allowed
electricity to flow despite the short, the whole house could have burned down. I
moved my computer temporarily into my bedroom, where I also have the necessary
phone jack, as being off-line was losing me interpretation assignments and also
inconveniencing my visitors taking a course here. One visitor’s room was also
in darkness, though I ran an extension cord from another room into hers. I can
appreciate how inconvenient it is to endure electrical outages, as many local
families have been doing during these recent storms, though when I was in the
Peace Corps in Honduras, it was common go days without electricity, partly
because of flimsy wiring.
When the internet continued to
have problems, I called the Verizon help line, usually answered by an
English-speaker in Bangalore or Manila, but this time, I was surprised that he
was in San Jose, Costa Rica! After the problems continued, I ordered a new
modem.
I’m not much into soccer mania, though 3 of my kids once
played and now my 6-year-old great-grandson wants to learn. My visitor from Argentina has been riveted by
the games.
I don’t particularly mourn the
loss of Va. Rep. Eric Cantor, but
fear that his replacement is even worse, though with less seniority. It should
be an interesting electoral season, with greater polarization than ever. In New York City, octogenarian Charlie Rangel, a long-serving member
of Congress who managed to get many political endorsements, including from the
Clintons, again narrowly beat challenger Adriano
Espaillat, a cousin of my Dominican friends of the same surname. Rangel
says this will be his last term, but he said that last time. He showed that he
still has a lot of fight left.
As for the border crisis, I remember as a Peace Corps volunteer hearing radio
spots, funded by USAID, urging parents not to go north and leave their
children behind. Also, in my Spanish interpretation work, I've
encountered several youngsters who have come across the border alone
looking for their families in this vast country and, after not finding
them, then being deported. I've traveled back to Honduras 10 times since I
left the PC and often see an airport transport discharging deported people,
including kids. My hostess in Tegucigalpa last Feb. is a public school
kindergarten teacher of 40 kids, 5 of them born in the USA, presumably of
deported parents. It's a discouraging situation. However, this border crisis
and VP Biden’s remarks that the “vast majority” will be deported are not
helpful to the overall immigration reform effort fought for all these years.
While most Americans have expressed support of legalization for long-time
de-facto residents, they oppose this sudden flood of children and others now trying
to cross the border. VP Biden’s remarks about the “vast majority” being
deported leave that sliver of hope that some will actually win the lottery and
be among the lucky few allowed to stay. This border crisis seems to have doomed immigration reform for now and
may also hurt Democrats’ chances in the mid-term elections, though Hispanic
voters will be ever more firmly rooted in the Democratic camp.
This week, I had a patient who came
to DC 30 years ago, all alone from El Salvador at age 14 and then became a
citizen, thanks to Ronald Reagan's
immigration amnesty. He does know English, but for a serious medical
procedure, felt more comfortable with a Spanish interpreter. He said he lived
completely on his own back then, worked to support himself, avoided going to
school, and now has his own family and is employed laying tiles and
polishing floors. He’s rooting for the unaccompanied minors now amassing at the
border and hopes they will be allowed to stay. I doubt that will happen for
most of them--unless they have families already here. Of course, my Cuban foster son Alex, who died of AIDS
in 1995, was an "unaccompanied minor," which is how he ended up
living with me and my kids.
Jeffrey DeLaurentis has been named to head of the US Interests Section (embassy
equivalent) in Havana, someone who has worked at that mission in the past and is
apparently respected by democracy activists. He must know the score on Cuba,
which he certainly should in that position.
Recent D-Day commemorations have evoked stories told by
my late father, Leonard Currie, who died in 1996 and who participated in the
Normandy offensive. He surely would have wanted to attend the remembrances if
he were alive today. Born in Alberta, Canada, in 1913, he later became a US
citizen and a Lt. Col. in the US Army Corps of Engineers during WW II.
Although there have been no mass
shootings in the last few days, there was a whole spate of them recently and nothing has been done
since to prevent them. Maybe people have given up in this political climate and
have surrendered to fate. However, pepper spray may have gained new-found
fame in Washington State as a way to subdue a violent gunman. I don’t know that
it would always work for that purpose, but pepper spray’s stock must have gone
up a notch. It offers a defensive weapon occupying a middle ground between a
gun and nothing at all. It doesn’t seem likely that a suicide or accidental
death or even a homicide would result from the use of pepper spray. With
another fatal random shooting now in a public place, most recently in Las
Vegas, I would think that the public’s tolerance for gun violence, for “the
right to bear arms,” “open carry,” and “stand your ground” would be growing a
little thin. No wonder restaurant diners, out for a relaxing time, don’t feel
protected, but, rather, under siege when heavily armed men come in the door.
How does anyone know their intentions? It’s not just a question of “mental Illness,” something
itself hard to define and identify, especially before a horrific act takes
place, nor is mental health “treatment” foolproof, far from it. Nor is being
armed necessarily protective, as the man killed at Walmart confronted the Vegas
pair with his own gun.
Several recent mass shootings no
doubt have an element of copy-cat
behavior. Others seem to stem not so
much from individual mental illness and personal grievances, but from a group
culture of exaggerated anti-government,
anti-authority, pro-individualistic
violence—a philosophy of anarchy against any form of authority. I don’t
believe the founding fathers intended for armed militias to be able to take up
arms against an elected government.
Gun-rights advocates and NRA members should distance themselves from
these militants who are really the few attacking the will of the majority in a
democracy.
It’s getting risky now to be out
in public. But do we just have to be sitting
ducks, shrug our shoulders, and take the chance of getting killed because of
some abstract “right” for an ever-smaller minority, who, however, own an ever-larger
arsenal of personal weapons? What are their motivations for having such vast collections?
I can understand collecting antique firearms, but assault weapons? Many
collections go beyond the need for simple self-protection. The owners’ angry
rhetoric and aggressive slogans on their t-shirts give little comfort about
their intentions. Police officers and soldiers who wield firearms are screened
and trained, but these folks, railing against the very government that the
majority of us have elected and displaying behavior that seems vengeful and impulsive
are not acting protectively, as they allege (and as Trayvon Martin found out
and George Zimmerman showed in his reckless behavior after acquittal). These militants want no registration,
background checks, or restrictions on where and how they might display or use their
weapons, as if the outside world were a war zone and they are in an arms’ race.
They’re the ones making it so. Gun murders have been triggered by too-loud
music, a dog that poops on a neighbor’s lawn, or simply someone trying to enter
the wrong house after a night of partying. I think the right to life or to
avoid being injured trump the right to bear arms.
The majority of “gun nuts” are men and some of their aggression is probably
fueled by testosterone. Late-night comics have made fun of their obsession,
with Jon Stewart showing a weapon
hung with a set of large fake testicles. Most of us would have no objection to
the sport of target shooting, which some nations allow with guns available only
at the shooting range. I’m not a particular advocate of hunting, both because
it doesn’t seem a humane way to kill animals if they must be killed and because
of hunting accidents (i.e. Dick Cheney
hitting his friend in the face), but hunting is probably acceptable to most
people. Certainly the military and police need firearms and firearms training,
including about when it’s permissible and necessary to use their weapons.
That’s about as far as I’d be willing to go on firearms. I haven’t heard
convincing arguments on the other side, just angry rhetoric about “constitutional
rights,” thanks to the Supreme Court.
I’m not unique in having some
close calls in my own family. My younger
son Jonathan was about 11 when he and a group of boys found a loaded
handgun at the bedside of the father of one of them. Another boy playing with
the gun dropped it and it went off, wounding my son in the foot, not a fatal
injury, thank goodness, but requiring emergency medical care. More recently, my great-niece was on lockdown for
hours during a mass shooting at the nearby Columbia Mall. And in Honduras and other parts of Latin
America, the weapons used in the carnage there are American imports. Granted
that some Hondurans have homemade guns that must be reloaded after each shot.
These really are perhaps defensive weapons, ready to wound an intruder with a
single bullet, but the country’s sky-high homicide rate is attributed to the
use of imported firearms.
We never hear much, except
locally, about the many private gun deaths: suicides, family murders, and
accidents, including of and by children, occurring daily beyond the more
high-profile public mass shootings. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a Ford appointee, has argued that the Second
Amendment was originally a collective right pertaining to local militias and
was never meant to be an individual right. Of course, he is no longer on the
Supreme Court, so his opinion has little practical weight. With now so many
guns in circulation and the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers have gained so
much financial political clout, it’s hard to see how things will turn around.
However, turning points have been reached on other polarizing and contentious
issues such as ethnic, gay, and women’s rights, so maybe the rights of the
majority who favor greater gun curbs will eventually prevail.
A dialectic rhythm to public
opinion is evident on many social and political issues. One side presses so
hard that it reaches an extreme, as gun rights advocates seem to be doing right
now, provoking a backlash. I believe “abortion rights” has reached a tipping
point, with most Americans opposing
late-term abortions, especially since the “viability” of preterm infants
begins at an ever earlier point, thanks to neonatal intensive care, even though
stalwart “pro-choice” people would argue for abortion rights at any stage, as
long as the fetus is still inside the womb. Opposition to the legalization of
undocumented immigrants, while still strong, is found in a shrinking minority. Likewise,
it would seem that opposition to “Obamacare”
and especially to Medicaid expansion, while still fierce among some politicians
and their Tea Party supporters, is fading among the general public. I had hoped
my book about life in Cuba and the true legacy
of Fidel Castro might be part of a reassessment there, but it hasn’t
happened yet.
While I and others disagree with
“guns-rights” advocates and with folks on the other side of numerous other
issues, I don’t know if it would help diffuse this polarization to acknowledge and understand the other side’s
motivations, for example, gun people’s genuine fears and their desire to feel strong, independent, and protected. I
don’t know where that leaves us, as the hope would be that the other side would
reciprocate by recognizing our own fears of being killed. Unfortunately,
sincere and empathetic conversations are rarely held among rivals; instead,
there is name-calling, sarcasm, and stone-walling—and reinforcement of a
point-of-view by only speaking to those who agree with us.
President
Obama has tried to bridge the impasse with Congress, inviting the other
side to come to the table, but they have largely refused. Some divides seem
unbridgeable.
On 3 June, Amnesty International
made public an open letter to Dominican President
Danilo Medina to share our analysis of the citizenship law that he
presented to the legislature, designed to help remedy the situation created by
the decision of the DR high court that rendered many Dominican-born individuals
of Haitian ancestry stateless. His measure, approved by the legislature, is a
step in the right direction, but does not go far enough in our opinion at
Amnesty. The documents mentioned below express our current concerns regarding
the law’s implementation, and the situation of statelessness of some
individuals, particularly those never registered.
The IS Caribbean team sent to all diplomatic
representatives in Santo Domingo a copy of this letter and urged foreign
government to remain vigilant with regard to the law’s implementation. We in
the US have also endeavored to get in touch with Vice President Biden to raise
the issue during his trip to Santo Domingo as part of a Latin American tour.
Finally, while I have some
empathy for parents facing the “empty
nest” when a child goes off to college, as a bereaved parent, I feel like
telling them not to complain so much, since at least their child is alive and
breathing. They should be immensely grateful for that every single day of their
child’s life.
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