Taking Back the Narrative in Everyday Ramblings

I took this Saturday walking with Mrs. Sherlock but did the same walk yesterday morning without her under less foreboding skies. We have been spared the worst of the “atmospheric river” rain dump and flooding they are dealing with north of us. I feel for those folks. They had the fires and now this with the mudslides on top of everything else.

What I love about this picture is the grasses and the autumn trees and the bench because this area that I do not get to very often, though it is maybe 3/4th a mile away is such a pleasant public space to meet people at and hang out in near the river.

Of course, there is security and scooters are not allowed. They have a gorgeous planting of iris bulbs here that are such a bright spot in the spring. Yesterday it was early enough most of the shops weren’t open and the promenade was populated by exclusively White retired folks, some quite advanced in age, with Dragon Boat paddles coming off their morning practice. It was lovely to see them greeting each other and doing the things people in groups do when they socialize.

The encampments for houseless folks are only blocks away, but worlds away in affect.

After class last night I watched a webinar on refugee resettlement that also touched a bit on immigration. We have scheduled with the resources available to take about 650 Afghan refugees here in Oregon between now and February. The refugees that got out in August are mostly still on military bases and they are wrapping up their processing and need to get these folks out into the community.

There was a representative from the Governor’s office, as well an older man who is pivotal to this organization called IRCO (Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization) who was a refugee from Laos at the end of the Vietnam War. He said that he was so moved by the scenes at the Kabul airport because he remembers. He is part of the Mung community here that are big participants in our community garden program.

There was this lovely and nervous young Somali woman who came as a refugee from that big camp in Kenya with her 10-member family about 13 years ago. She just graduated from our state university with a degree in math and bioscience. She is doing volunteer tutoring at a program at IRCO.

Then there was a very personable White man from our local Catholic Charities. They are particularly interested, or at least he is, in resources for houseless women and housing in general so the two things I have been learning about in terms of our Metro area services are linked.

The problem they all laid out is that with the profound dismantling that went on in our broken immigration and refugee resettlement programs as a country over the last 10 years or so, the timeline for funding these programs has been telescoped into 8 months.

They also said that they were and had been keeping a low profile over the last 5 years with the implication that there is a lot of hostility out in the community by conservative and alt-right folks who stoke the fear that becoming a more diverse community somehow diminishes them and the powers that be. We had that terrible stabbing here on out light rail that was xenophobic in nature.

It got me thinking, as I often do, of the lives of the Jewish and Irish immigrants who came to live where I live almost 175 years ago. And the two community centers that did the same work these committed folks are doing in their own way.

I feel good about these folks doing such important work. We so often hear only the bad stuff. But, oh my word, are there challenges, there are challenges.

Last night on the PBS Newshour (I listen to the podcast) hearing a Republican New York Congresswoman who voted for the Infrastructure Bill (and is receiving all kinds of threats because she did) trying to justify why she didn’t vote for censure for Representative Gosar for his not quite or even close to being grown up video representation of violence against Democrats, by spouting off these delusional schoolyard talking points about how they are worse than us.

Hearing her made me a bit sick to my stomach. It is not just our immigration system that is broken.

As the panelists said last night in the webinar, most of us are good, compassionate caring people and I believe that. How we take back the narrative is another story.

Last updated November 19, 2021