Fathers and Refugees

On Fatherhood and Refugees

My father’s father was a refugee. His parents bought him a ticket on a ship coming to America, and charged him with the heavy responsibility of finding some way —in a land he did not know and a language he did not speak— of saving his family.

He was born and raised in a Greek city inside what is now Turkey. For centuries, Greeks and Turks had lived side-by-side there, in peace. But his parents could see a tide of angry nationalism rising. They saw their Turkish neighbors fill their hearts with bitterness; with grievances, some real, some imagined; with hate. So much hate.

My grandfather worked hard and landed a steady job in Colombia.  He brought over family members — sisters, brothers, cousins. By this time, the family-members who stayed behind had lost their homes and their possessions. Women were interred in concentration camps, men in prisons. His younger brother managed to escape by swimming, while manacled to another man, to an American Red Cross ship on a mission of mercy.

My grandfather was a a builder. He was the rock on which my family’s survival was predicated.

My father was a refugee’s son. Born in the U.S., he was proud to serve his country. Barely seventeen, he volunteered to fight in WWII. No good deed goes unpunished, as he would say, and a few years later, as a result, he was recalled to fight in Korea. He served in a frontline regiment with blacks and whites, Latinos and Asians, children of immigrants and children of native-born. For him, this mosaic was the strength and promise of America. It was a country where no one went to sleep fearing that their neighbors would turn them into the authorities for being different.

My father’s defining quality was loyalty. He worked for the same company all his life. When that company went bust, my dad indebted himself up to the eyeballs to keep part of it afloat, in an effort to save jobs, lives. He too was a builder. He fought in wars and forged a company that helped make the American dream possible for many, including my family and myself.

I am the grandchild of a refugee. I was not weighted down with the tremendous responsibilities my father and grandfather had to bear at an early age. I was not drafted. There was no draft when I came of age. I started no companies. I did not buy the life and freedom of family members with my first paychecks. I lived in easier, fatter times.

But I have not forgotten the lessons they passed down. I have no patience for intolerance and hatred of others, it does not matter what the reason. I have no respect for leaders who play on racism and resentment. I know that the fear of immigrants and refugees is more than just nonsense. It is evil nonsense. It is the triumph of the haters and destroyers. 

This week I watched my 14 year-old son graduate from middle school. He seemed suddenly so grown, so adult. My heart filled with pride (and my eyes with tears). I hope to charge him only with the following task — to live a joyous, productive life, in whatever manner he chooses. But, I will also make sure he remembers that he is the great-grandson of a refugee, and that those who do not fight to make history, are condemned to repeat it.

Read the full piece here: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2016/06/17/opinion-on-fatherhood-and-refugees/

On the Media Matrix and the Rubio "Glitch"

Media attention is like a spotlight. It illuminates the present with a blinding light and then proceeds to view both past and future in the reflected glow of the current moment. Marco Rubio’s campaign fortunes are a particularly dramatic example of the reinterpretation of electoral reality based on the changing vicissitudes of the right now. Last week, based on a third place finish in the Iowa caucus, Rubio was seen as a world-beater, capable of uniting the anti-Trump, anti-Cruz, majority of the Republican Party. Today, after a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire, Rubio is all but written off as a dead man running. The moment that the commentators have seized on to explain the turn-about is Rubio’s performance in the last GOP debate, specifically the hilariously nicknamed Rubio “glitch” ... Here is my take:

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2016/02/11/opinion-marco-rubio-could-shine-again-everybody-loves-comeback-kid/

Ted Cruz, Reluctant Latino, Makes Latino History. But, Where are the Democrats?

By beating Donald Trump and winning the Iowa caucus, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has made history. He became the first US Hispanic to win a major party caucus or primary that was not their own home state. The great irony is that Cruz's milestone, and Cruz is not the only rising Latino political star within the Republican party, comes at a time when the Latino electorate has increasingly thrown it's support to the Democratic party, which has not produced a Latino political figure of national importance in a generation.

Here is my piece: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2016/02/02/opinion-ted-cruz-reluctant-latino-trailblazer/

Accepting Syrian Refugees Will Make the US Safer

The very idea that U.S. governors would refuse to accept Syrian refugees, out of overblown fear and demagogic politics, fills me with despair at the complete eclipse of both reason and compassion. What has it come to? Do we turn away the victims of violence, because they frighten us so?

I am at a loss for words ... oh, wait...strike that... here are a few...

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2015/11/19/opinion-accepting-syrian-refugees-makes-us-safer-from-terror/

Italian Politics Take a "Game of Thrones" Turn

Italy gained a new government this past weekend, and did so with all the intrigue and drama of "Game of Thrones" (minus the bloodshed and the chain mail armor, but not the sex).

Matteo Renzi has used is position as Mayor of Florence
to showcase a problem-solving, ideology-lite approach.

The new Prime Minister is Matteo Renzi, the ambitious 37 year-old mayor of Florence, who has made a career by running against the leadership of his own center-left political party, the PD. In this, Renzi has been absolutely brilliant. He recognized, much like Berlusconi before him, that the old guard that ruled the PD were not only out of touch with Italian voters, but also unrepentant, even proud, of that fact. He pushed for internal party primaries to determine it's leadership and, though he lost, did well enough to go from relative nobody to political star. And when the old guard's candidate ran a disastrous campaign, squandering a once-in-a-lifetime sized lead to cross the wire essentially tied with a discredited Berlusconi and comedian-turned-political-gadfly Beppe Grillo, Renzi was the only figure left standing in the wreck of the left.

Well, not the only one. One of the princes of the PD, Enrico Letta, was able to put together a deal with Berlusconi to form a coalition government, one that joined center-left and center-right, representing two-thirds of the electorate. In theory, this would give Letta a broad mandate to govern; in practice, all the government's energy was spent, it seemed, holding itself together. It's biggest achievement was to survive an attempt by Berlusconi to tumble the house of cards and call for an early vote. Stability was Letta's byword. Not change. Not reform. Stability.

This might have worked, if Italy were not going through the biggest economic crisis in its history. And, if Matteo Renzi were less ambitious. While Letta fiddled, Renzi took control of the shattered PD. He handily beat the candidate of the old left, to become party president and, soon after, started turning up the pressure on Letta to do something.  But, of course, as all could plainly see, Letta had no space to maneuver. Like a junkyard car, his awkward coalition of enemies could only hold together at rest, in the absence of sudden moves.

Renzi had always vowed that he would not become Prime Minister without winning a national election. (This is why enemies within in his own party have blocked an electoral law from passing, so there can be no new elections to win.) He also promised to "help" his "friend" Letta but, as Letta slowly sank in public opinion, with European elections looming, Renzi, perhaps sensing that he was caught in a trap, engineered a palace coup, replacing Letta's unelected government with his own posse.

Mired in a deep legitimacy crisis, Italy's
political class fear that the bells toll for them.

Renzi'a new cabinet is young, most of the ministers are under 40. A full half of the ministers are women. Both are revolutionary developments in a country heretofore dominated by old men. The media, both left and right, responded with horror and sexism and disdain. Talking heads commented and criticized the clothes the new women ministers wore to be sworn in...too bright, too tight, too too...  None of the ministers was a heavyweight, pundits sniffed.  And Renzi's inaugural speech to congress, left pundits and pols aghast. It was actually directed at the Italian people and not at the parliamentarians and journalists, the horror, the horror.

The Italian political elite's rejection of Renzi, and this includes the big left and right newspapers, has much to do with their mistrust of popularity and elections.  For the Left, elections are what they lose because the Italian voters are befuddled by too much TV and too much soccer.  Each of the major figures of the PD, each a grey party apparatchik with no aptitude or respect for modern electoral politics, has been defeated by Berlusconi in an election. Each of them, instead of retiring to the Italian equivalent of Kansas (Emila Romagna?), has hung-on to their political retainers and chunk of political turf. And they spin webs and scheme their return while ostensibly selecting the next center-left champion to serve as Berlusconi fodder. That is, until all this primary nonsense spoiled the party.

One the right, there is the fear that there are no conservative voters in Italy, only Berlusconi voters. The former premier looms over everything, consuming all the oxygen in the room. Because he is a convicted felon, guilty of tax fraud, and also of paying for sex with a minor, and perhaps soon of bribing a Senator, Berlusconi cannot run for office. But he seem determined to not let anyone else run in his stead. The center-right is his soccer ball, as it were, and no one else is allowed to score.

So, Renzi makes everyone nervous. He is too ambitious, moves too fast, is too young and too popular. He represents a threat to the usual game of thrones. Or he did, at least, before he assumed power. Now that he is Prime Minister, he has to do what Letta could not: Act.

Much like bayonets, one can do anything with power except sit on it.

Europe Will Be Asked to Pay for Italian Politician's Sins

The legitimacy crisis of Italy's political class is so deep and so broad that it takes your breath away. I used to think that the image of Nero playing the violin while Rome burned was poetic exaggeration. Now I see it was politics as usual.

Over the past week, the country has been wracked by intermittent, and intermittently violent, protest. The protestors are collectively known as the "Pitchfork" movement, but they are not an organized or coherent group. They are a motley collection, united only by anger. Farmers blocked roads and bridges with tractors to protest food imports bearing misleading "Made in Italy" labels; Truckers slowed their rigs down to a crawl, tangling traffic on highways; artisans and small biz owners spoke against taxes and the government in town squares; Students protested cuts in education; Xenophobes and neo-Fascist groups marched against immigration and Europe.  In Turin, the country's hard-hit manufacturing capital, the riot police removed their helmets in show of solidarity and sympathy.

Living under a bridge: As more Italians fall into poverty,
the welfare system has proven woefully inadequate. 

Meanwhile, the response of Italy's political elite has been either to freak out or to freakily try to play the anger to their own ends. The Interior Minister [from the Center-Right] ordered the cops to keep their helmets on and come down hard on "Troublemakers." The Left started talking about how the protests have been infiltrated and hijacked by Fascist groups, a line made easier to believe by a number of video clips showing a small group of protestors giving the Roman salute and showing off tattoos of Mussolini.  Berlusconi, who believes himself to be a bit of a pitch-fork wielding, barn-burner himself [even if the pitchfork is by Versace and is actually wielded by a hired hand] scheduled a meeting with pitch-forkers, only to cancel out when he realized that some of the anger might be directed at him. [Some in the angry mob, it seems, are under the impression that his having been in power 20 of the last 24 years, might have something to do with the dismal state of things.] Beppe Grillo, the leader of the 5 Star protest movement has been cheering the Pitchforks on with his usual subtle message which can be summarized as: Burn, Baby, Burn.

The most freaked-out was Giorgio Napolitano, the 87 year-old President of Italy, who warned Parliament that, if they did not take action to reform the country, a social explosion wasn't out of the question.

Cheering the Pitch-forks: Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi have looked
to turning the anger to their own political ends. 

Napolitano is a good example of how the Italian political elite rules without having to submit to elections or popular consent. This year he was elected to a second 7 year term as President of the country by the Parliament [and a few other political actors] despite his age  -he will turn 94 before leaving office- and against his stated wishes. The parties in parliament simply could not agree on anyone else and begged him to stay. He has never been voted for directly by the people he represents.

Napolitano was critical in brining the current coalition government into being after no party got enough votes to govern alone. The Left had run on the promise that they would never, never pact with Berlusconi. But, under Napolitano's prodding, they did. Berlusconi agreed to the coalition government and then changed his mind. But when he tried to pull his party out of the government, half of his deputies refused to go. So, in a sense, on both Left and Right, this is a government that no one voted for, no one wanted.

Added to the profound electoral disconnect is a profound immobilism and an unseemly refusal to cut back on the perks of power. For the past year, this circular reasoning has governed: No laws can be passed because on party has a majority; to call a new election and get a new majority, you first need to reform the electoral law; but no reform can be made for want of a majority.  The same logic applies to bills the parliamentarians don't like but which are hugely popular with voters, like cutting politician's salaries and pensions.

The there is also corruption. Despite multiple promises that the parties would run so-called clean slates that excluded anyone under indictment for a crime, this has not fully happened. Dozens of deputies have been elected -in Italy you vote for a parliamentary list rather than for a single candidate- with the impunity from prosecution that comes with it.

The notion that the political 'caste,' as Italians call it, is impervious to public opinion and corrupt to the core is part of the reason abstentionism has risen to higher than US levels. It has also fueled a whole gaggle of angry movements, from Grillo's 5 Stars to the Pitchfork crowd.

There is a sense that the political structure of this country resembles a termite infested house. It is impossible to know how much of the strength of the structure has been hollowed out and whether it could give at any moment. This fear might be fueling Napolitano's urgency; that and the fact he's too old to outrun the pitchforks.

So, what happens if the unthinkable happens? What if the political structure of Italy collapses under its own weight? The good news is that there is an insurance policy in place: Europe. The European Union would pick up the pieces. But, there is also bad news. After years of European enforced economic austerity, Europe has never been this unpopular. It has gone from being the parent who insists that you eat your vegetables, to being accused of, by the xenophobic and racist Lega Nord party of perpetrating a "crime against humanity," that would be accepting Italy into the Euro zone, and requiring that Italy adhere to European regulations on thing like recycling its trash and solving prison overcrowding. Oh yes...and pay its debts. The gall! The gall!

And these demagogues are just getting warmed up. Stay tuned.

Birdstorm Season in Rome (and in Italian Politics)

Fall brings thousands of small migratory birds to Tiber alluvial plain. They flock in dense clouds that cross the sky in eerie beautiful formations. They fill the branches of the trees along the river, and dust the streets along the river with …  well, you know.  The Italian word for it translates as: birdstorm. Tourists and squeegee men love them (unless caught underneath); car owners and terrazzo lovers, not so much.  (There is a video at the bottom of this post.)

 Another birdstorm of sorts is playing out with the Italian government. The governing coalition has just presented a budget –which caused a flurry of condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum. Both center right and center left -ie the governing parties, though they don’t act like it- denounced the budget for what it does not do, namely increase spending or cut taxes. Even the namby-pamby center, which usually thinks that any government that avoid being kicked out of Europe is doing fine, had a few unkind words. The unions called for street demonstrations and a general strike. The business association, for the umpteenth time, declared that it despairs for the future of Italian industry…

Sadly, they are all right, of course. The budget will neither generate new jobs nor put the country on a more solid financial footing. It is neither fish nor fowl, neither stimulus nor austerity. Even more sadly, Italians are going to have to get used to such budgets. The country’s debt amounts to over 130% of its gdp and interest rates are at all time lows. I can’t see the country getting out from under this mountain of debt in the next 10 years. Most sadly of all, politicians are not being clear with the Italian public about what realistically can be expected.

If they did... that would really generate a ****storm no little birds could match.