FAMILY REUNIFICATIONS HERE AND ABROAD

                                                                                                                         June 26, 2018

“Don’t separate us. Don’t let us in, but don’t rip us apart.”  So said Arnovis Guidos Portillo who was deported to El Salvador without his 6 year old daughter, Meybellin, who he has not seen in 26 days.

In light of the need to urgently reunite these families, should we consider something akin to the milk carton missing kids campaign?  You may remember that ingenious way in which law enforcement attempted to find missing kids by putting their pictures on milk cartons?

Might it be a good idea to video each child and have their faces on a continuing loop on a dedicated TV channel so that their parents could watch, see and identify their children?

WINDRUSH UPDATE

In a previous post, I said the following:

In the last few years, since about 2013, the British government has been carrying out an immigration policy which is at odds with its colonial past.  British officials have been quietly deporting or denying benefits to long term residents referred to as the Windrush generation –Caribbean migrants who came to Britain in the mid 20^th century to help rebuild post war Britain, to study or to find employment.  They were called the Windrush generation because many arrived on the SS Empire Windrush in 1948.The citizenship of these British residents until these last few years had never been questioned. They worked.  They bought homes. They raised families. They paid their taxes. They received their benefits and most importantly, they contributed much to British society. Then without warning, a new immigration policy required them to produce citizenship papers. 

Though this policy has been publicly disavowed, many of these cases are still to be resolved. At the same time, the British government announced last week that they would fund annual celebrations for a national Windrush Day “to recognise and honour the enormous contribution of those who arrived between 1948-71.”  Friday, June 23 was, in fact, the anniversary.

Celebrations and commemorations are important--especially in the Caribbean where Professor Hilary Robertson Hickling of the University of West Indies and the National Library of Jamaica have mounted an exhibit on the Windrush migrants.

Thanks too to The Guardian newspaper and writers like Emma Caroline Lewis of Global Voices and Petchary's Blog for highlighting their contributions and keeping this story in the news.

Now in this new royal era, we await the resolution of all the Windrush cases--the restoration of all their rights as British citizens and the reunification of their families.

Arnovis Guidos Portillo holds up a photo of his daughter, Meybelin, who was separated from him in late May after he asked for asylum.

(Fred Ramos / For The Washington Post)

Anne C. Bailey

Author of The Weeping Time: Memory of the Largest Slave Auction in American History(Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Keeping Families Together: Who we are vs. Who we were

                                                                                                                                     June 16, 2018

On May 29, Dora * was pulled over by the police in a routine traffic stop in Albany, New York. Never did she imagine that in spite of the fact that she has a valid work permit, no criminal record and is a law abiding taxpayer that she would that evening be sent to jail.  Furthermore, she would be separated from her two children who had traveling with her in the car.

Her immigration status was “pending” and she regularly reported to an immigration office in Buffalo. Maybe it was her accent or the fact that she recently missed one appointment, the policeman called ICE (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and they sent her to the county jail first, then to a detention center.

For 48 hours, she could not make contact with anyone –not her mother, not a lawyer, no one.  Her mother, Mary*, who is advocating for her says: “They can ship you anywhere they want because it is federal (jurisdiction);  You have no access to your relatives.”

And in fact, her daughter, Dora, was not allowed phone calls for the first three days of her detention.  Fortunately, she had been able to call an aunt who came and picked up her kids, but they too had no contact with their mother for several days since the beginning of this incident.  Their grandmother is now doing everything she can to unify this family.  I said it before in a previous post," #Where are the children", and I will say it again.

This is not who we are.

I am a US citizen and have been for many years. I am also an immigrant.  I came to New York City from Jamaica when I was 12 with my mother and my sixteen year old brother.   We came here at a time when things were very difficult in Jamaica. Many people were leaving, not necessarily because they wanted to, but because things were very difficult politically and economically too. We came legally and stayed here legally though our status was for many years “in progress” as my mother’s place of employment was our sponsor.

I remember our first days here.  I was wide-eyed at this place called New York City. The big buildings, the bright lights, the hustle and bustle on the streets- a far cry from my native Jamaica yet fascinating in a different way. I remember I hadn’t wanted to leave Jamaica. I had just completed my first year of secondary school and was looking forward to the next.  That next year, however, would be spent first with extended family, then second with our sponsor in these unfamiliar surroundings.

The one thing that kept me going was my family.  My mother and brother were “home,” and so I could reason that I hadn’t really left home. I brought home with me.  It is in this context that I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have been separated from the only two people who made a big city less daunting. 

Thankfully, I did not have to imagine such things because up until a few weeks ago, the policy regarding immigrants was always to keep families together.  Immigration was a civil matter, not a criminal one.  Previously, families who crossed the border seeking asylum, for example, were allowed to stay together in shelters until final decisions were made regarding their status.

That does not mean that the system is not broken. That does not mean that urgent change is not needed. Certainly, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been talking about this for a long time, but sadly, it has been mostly talk.  Immigration reform has not happened.

In that void has arisen these knee jerk reactions which have led us to family separations – whether it is DACA kids who were brought here by their parents as children, those fleeing violence and seeking asylum at the border or even those immigrants who have legal rights to be here but are wading through the process like Dora.

As a citizen, I am proud of the fact that in the face of an often confusing and burdensome situation, prior administrations, both Democrat and Republican, did their best NOT to separate children from their parents.  They worked towards the most humane solutions, albeit stop -gap solutions.

As a result, children and families were not traumatized.  Those who developed previous policies remembered that as a country we have championed human rights abroad and thus have drawn lines in the sand regarding certain actions.

Because that is NOT who we are.

It may have been who we were as I shared in my book, The Weeping Time, which documented the harsh and devastating reality of antebellum slave auctions, but it is not who we are now and that is what matters.  I truly believe that one day America could be remembered not so much for its computers or its robots or its driverless cars, but for its commitment to human rights. It is our choice.

Dora and her two children deserve to stay together.  Whatever is decided about their future, it is a future which they must be allowed to face together.   That is the only humane thing to do from any standpoint, but particularly from the standpoint of a nation that has longed prided itself as a champion of human rights.

*Actual names are not used but if anyone is in a position to help this family, please send me an email at freedomlives4@yahoo.com

Anne C. Bailey

Author of The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Photo by Fabian Fauth on Unsplash

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Room with a Beautiful VIEW

In a divided country and in a divided world, I encountered an oasis this week. I had the pleasure of being in the studio audience of the daytime television program, The View.  The View, created by journalist Barbara Walters in 1997, is a TV program which brings together female co-hosts of different ages and backgrounds to discuss issues of the day.

Fresh off her moving and insightful commencement speech at her alma mater, Binghamton University, co-host, Sunny Hostin, invited me to watch a taping of the show.  In her speech a couple weeks ago, she said many memorable things, but one thing stood out the most.   Through her experience with The View, she shared that she has a fresh new perspective on listening to various points of view.  She has also learned to treasure the relationships that she has with these women even when they fundamentally disagree. It was a challenge for her, and as I listened, a challenge for me too.

Sitting in that audience this week, I could see exactly what she meant, and in fact, saw more than that.  What these women are doing every day is exactly what this country needs right now.  Led by the indomitable Whoopi Goldberg, these women—Sunny Hostin, Megan McCain, Joy Behar and Sara Haines---debated everything from whether it was appropriate for a teacher to have called a student a class clown to whether President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky in the White House set an awful precedent.  All of the women had strong views on each topic. Furthermore, no one seemed fearful to express themselves. At the same time, they did not have to agree.  The only thing they needed to agree on was HOW they would speak to each other, which was, in a word, respectfully.

I came away impressed with the fact that they have created a space in which people can speak openly yet with civility at a time when there seems to be very few public spaces like this.  If anything, there is pressure to think one way or another and precious little attempt at listening to others.

At the same time, it is clear that these women have dearly held beliefs.  This is not an exercise in cultural or moral relativism; not at all.  The View, however,  does model for us a public space in which views can be shared and heard without recrimination, name calling and the like.  I particularly like the fact that when these women occasionally err and do not follow their own dictum,(as would anyone) they are brave enough to apologize publicly.  We don't see much of that these days.

Finally, it is apparent that they all have various pet projects or areas in which they serve the public, but in my mind, what they do every day is a public service.  Modeling how we can be a diverse community and create community at the same time is a public service.     

We need this right now.  We need these voices right now. We need this room with a view.

with Whoopi Goldberg

Co-host Sunny Hostin, friends and fellow audience members,  Michele Meyer-Shipp and mom Pat.
photos courtesy of Michele Meyer-Shipp

Puerto Rico update

Since I last wrote about Puerto Rico and the devastation after Hurricane Maria, many have been concerned about the inattention to what the American citizens in Puerto Rico are facing on the ground.  A Harvard University study estimates that thousands have died because of the hurricane.  As such, there has been much more devastation than has been previously reported.

“4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought. Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents and spurred the government to order an independent review that has yet to be completed.”

Many of these deaths occurred due to lack of emergency services or medical attention for those in regions most affected by Hurricane Maria. Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans are resilient, but this situation still needs urgent attention.

Anne C. Bailey

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#Where are the Children: The Weeping Time Then and Now

Photo by Andrea Ricketts on unsplash.com

My book, The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave auction in American History, (Cambridge University Press, 2017) opens with the story of an engaged couple separated from each other on the auction block.  On March 2 and 3, 1859,  Pierce Mease Butler of the Butler Plantation estates in the Georgia Sea Islands sold 436 men, women, and children, including 30 babies, to buyers and speculators from New York to Louisiana.

Slave auctions were long a part of the fabric of American life, but on the eve of the Civil War, this unprecedented sale was noteworthy not only for its size, but because of the fact that the Gullah Geechee slaves of Butler Island, Georgia, had generally not been sold on the open market. They were a tight-knit community with norms, values and customs that were greatly influenced by their West and Central African heritage.

This past year, when I have given presentations on my book, I often begin by reading the words of the 23-year-old cotton hand, Jeffrey, to his new owner begging him to purchase his love, Dorcas, chattel number 278:

I loves Dorcas, young Mas’r; I loves her well an’ true; she says she loves me, and I know she does; de good Lord knows I love her better than I loves any one in de wide world – never can love another woman half as well.  Please buy Dorcas, Mas’r.  We’re be good sarvants to you long as we live. We’re be married right soon, young Mas’r, and de chillum will be healthy and strong, Mas’r and dey’ll be good sarvants, too. Please buy Dorcas, youn Mas’r. We loves each other a heap—do really true, Mas’r…

Every single time, it is heart wrenching to read those words.  Every single time, I have to take a minute before I get back to presenting on the book. It is never lost on me the human cost of slavery. It is never lost on me the trauma that families endured. 

I always begin that way not to be sensational but to objectively capture what slavery really entailed because the raw emotion of such routine separations was that horrible and was that dreadful; of that there can be no doubt. There is no getting around it.  What else would one feel when separated from a loved one?

Thankfully, in this auction that I have spent 10 years studying, though there were no cases of young children separated from their parents, it was it no less heart wrenching. Furthermore, we know that this did indeed happen quite routinely in the period of slavery.

Listen to some of those voices here.

From Kate Drumgoold, enslaved child whose mother was sold on the eve of the Civil War:

My mother was sold at Richmond, Virginia and a gentleman bought her who lived in Georgia and we did not know she was sold until she was gone; and the saddest thought to me was to know which way she was gone, and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that would direct me, and I saw a clear place in the sky, and it seemed to me the way she had gone, and I watched it three and a half years, not knowing what that meant, and it was there the whole time mother was gone.

And from the ex -slave and renown statesman, Frederick Douglass:

My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant.  It is a common custom in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age.  

I have always felt that the legacy of slavery had a great impact on the present, but I have often argued that we may see certain patterns or themes reminiscent of the past but no straight line.  I never expected to draw a straight line between anything that America did then and what it does now, yet the voices of immigrant mothers tell another story.

Here below is an affidavit of an immigrant mother seeking asylum at the border being separated from her child:

My son was crying as I put him in the seat.  I did not even have a chance to try to comfort my son, because the officers slammed the door shut as soon as he was in his seat.  I was crying too. I cry even now when I think about that moment when the border officers took my son away.

This is a scene in the modern day of a child being ripped from the arms of their parent. It does not belong here in a country which has long since progressed to a new understanding of civil rights and human rights; a country that has, in fact, led the world in the development of such rights.

For those of us who love this place, who call this place home, (no matter where we were born,) I pray we will stand up and advocate for these families.  I pray we will stand up for the best that this country represents, not the worst.

For as I show in my work, alongside the devastation of the auction block, there was also the Underground Railroad. Alongside the slave master or the overseer, there was the abolitionist.  It is not today that these opposing forces have been in conflict; it is not a new thing, but on Emancipation Day, January 1, 1865 to be exact—a new day literally dawned. 

America started out on a new journey – the journey to reconcile the high ideals set out in The Declaration of Independence and in The Constitution with its reality on the ground. It set out on a journey that led to the passing of the 13^th Amendment which officially ended slavery and gave citizenship to African Americans who had been enslaved. This new journey was to have many fits and starts, but the 1950’s and 60’s Civil rights movement gave it new life and extended that life and these rights to many others who had also been excluded: Jews, Asians, Latinos, women, immigrants from non-European countries and the like.

That journey brings us to today. We can’t go back. 

Some of us, perhaps soon more of us, will agree again with that incomparable document, The Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

And those rights include the right to not be forcibly separated from their children.

Anne C. Bailey

Mother and child separation in slavery

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