You know, sometimes when I don’t write something right away, although is something on my mind. Such as the case with my writing this post a few days after receiving a thoroughly ugly comment.
This was in response to another post I had written. Specifically about the two West Whiteland 7th precinct Republican committeemen and their shall we say performance last week. It was those two gentlemen and one who did not identify himself other than being from Ship Road who referred to little brown men.
I am still at a loss for words for this performance at a public meeting. And I’m not saying people don’t have their right to address their government. They do and our Constitution allows it. Our forefathers fought blood and died for it, but it’s what they said. It’s how can so much hate be fomented into three minutes or less? How can they spew hatred like this?
So I discovered these two Republican committeemen seem to have education in their backgrounds as in being teachers. I’m not sure if one is still a teacher or not but the other one most assuredly is and parents are very, very concerned.
I will note we haven’t heard anything out of the Republican Party of West Whiteland about this incident have we?
Anyway, on Saturday, I received a very vile comment as mentioned:
In case you can’t read the screenshot of what the lovely Olivia said here it is:
The immigration is harming my quality of life. Legal immigration.
Why should I have to experience degraded quality of life for your vision of how the world should be?
Your position HARMS me and HARMS my family. If I object, you then label me with pejorative labels and personal attack, emotional blackmail, character assassination- I am ignorant, racist, a xenophobe.
Do you have any idea what it is like having people harm you, and act morally-superior, and attack you if you complain that you are being harmed? “Sit down, shut up, you are just racist, you will be harmed and you will LIKE it or say NOTHING. We are superior to you, we know best.”
I have no idea if this is a real or made up name. It doesn’t really matter it just kind of blows my mind. Like many of these comments, it was left late at night. I didn’t see it until Valentine’s Day morning. Immigration is personally harming her life? HOW? What kind of a nut bag is she? Never mind don’t answer it. I know what kind of a nut bag they are. My opinion harms nothing, their opinion destroys lives.
And then there are the people who leave these insane comments about how former administrations treated immigration enforcement in this way. They did?
Also also interesting to know I think immigrants should be legal. But what is different today than what has previously existed is the way things are enforced, correct? In my opinion it’s literally like watching 1930s Germany come to life on social media. And then we see these people that are just kind of being profiled and then surrounded and pounced on in the midst of our communities, leaving the rest of us at risk and terrified, and then what happens to them? Is there actual due process? Where are the warrants for these people?
What we see is terrifying chaos. It’s not orderly. Honestly, this is no law-enforcement we’ve ever known. And we’re a country founded by immigrants.
What have we become?
And the thing is this some of these people that are being targeted? They are people who are immigrants have been following the guidelines and working a green card program, etc.
Ask anyone that lived from World War II or had relatives who lived through World War II and they will tell you this is indeed like 1930s Germany with social media.
So it was like a gift when I discovered something this morning about a small town in Pennsylvania.
So well, some people like to say I am this elitist, horrible human being ruining their life like that woman who left a comment this weekend, I am just one of millions of literally immigrant stories of this country. And that’s how we all started no matter how many years ago some of our families came here more than two centuries ago.
The town’s name is Roseto. It is the very embodiment of the immigrant American dream. it was even featured on PBS’s The American Experience.
I never knew this town existed. And part of my DNA is very much Italian American. It’s really cool people from a similarly named area of Italy. So they immigrated here to escape poverty and re-created their village in Pennsylvania.
Here is the borough website:
With the founding of this borough, they became the first 100% Italian American borough in the United States. It was incorporated in 1912 and those who immigrated here did so to work in slate quarries. Apparently there were also mills and I guess sewing factories. The first immigrants arrived around 1882 according to what I’ve read. They were from Roseto Valfortore in the Apulia region of Italy.
It was described as this area became a self-sufficient And close knit enclave. The area was also studied in the 1960s because of its low rate of heart disease known as “the Roseto effect.”
Roseto incidentally means “rose garden.”
The most recent article I could find was from 2016 and it was about a resident who had passed away at 100.
https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/slate-belt/2016/01/roseto_effect_carmen_ruggiero.html
There was something in Huffington Post in 2008:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mystery-of-the-roseta_b_73260
So imagine if immigrants like that had not come to this country? And Italians were totally discriminated against. My grandfather and his brothers had a factory in Philadelphia. They had to change the name during World War II because they didn’t want anti-Italian American sentiment to kill their business.
As a kid and I wasn’t particularly ethnic looking, I was occasionally called any number of derogatory names like Dago or Wop when we first moved to the Main Line. That was one of my early introductions to the Lower Merion School District. It was funny they never said much about my Irish ancestry or German. Just the Italian.
But I do remember the stories my maternal grandfather who was Irish American told me. He told me about the little signs in the shop windows of Philadelphia that said “Irish need not apply.” and his mother, an American citizen, was in service to the Cassatt family in Haverford. She was the summer housekeeper at the location we now know as Merion Cricket Club.
I think it’s almost bizarre at times how this country is founded on immigrants can be so horrible to subsequent generations of immigrants.
I read this amazing, albeit brief, essay this weekend.
https://immigrantlypod.com/blog/the-immigrant-experience-why-we-need-to-tell-it-all
The “Immigrant Experience:” Why We Need to Tell it All.
We live in an extremely complex world that attempts to make sense of itself by generalizing issues, experiences, and people. It happens everywhere. We hear these generalizations from our world leaders to the people in our communities. What happens, instead, is we inhibit our ability to properly understand each other. …..This is why we need to tell each and every story. When you elevate the individual narratives of immigrants, you’re not only made aware of the rich complexities and differences, but the ways in which we all share common ground.
It’s not a very long essay, but I felt it was a powerful one. I only left an excerpt here. I suggest you read the whole thing.
These people that want to say immigrants are the reason for misfortune. I have to ask them are they really? I mean we’re all responsible for our own lives aren’t we?
And how can people, even some I am related to who are literally descended from immigrants be so horrible about immigrants? I just don’t understand it.
I am not advocating for immigrants who are here illegally per se. But often their story is very different than we imagine or very different than just being not here legally.
We all are descended from immigrants. So why are we so ugly about them?
America is literally a melting pot.
But I suppose someone will think it’s a bad position that I’m asking these questions or thinking these thoughts. But hey, it’s also afforded to me under the United States Constitution is it not? These people think that theirs should be the only voice. To them I pose a simple question. How would you feel if you no longer had the ability to have that voice?
If we don’t change the trajectory of this country, that could be something we face for real.
I still say it’s pretty goddamn sad that people that included at least one teacher spouted this hatred at a public meeting, don’t you agree?
That’s all. Happy Presidents’ Day.