I opened my campaign for City Council here in Morgantown yesterday. During my campaign for a seat in the House of Delegates last year, I made lots of friends, old and young, in the progressive community. Many people told me I would do better in the city than in the larger delegate district.
The Council has had some accomplishments in the last two years. With a decline in funding from the state, the city has raised money through levies for schools, transit and the library. There is now a three dollar weekly tax on people who work in Morgantown, not the best idea, but absent other funding methods, necessary. That tax and the levies have helped maintain our standard of living. Many of our notoriously bad streets have been repaved, the library (where I am on the Board of Directors) has increased hours and given employees a much-needed raise. The Council negotiated a deal with West Virginia University to get some tax money from the University's public-private partnerships.
Within the Council there have been two factions, one of which tried to have the other removed from office. That was a waste of time, and may have caused our last City Manager to leave. The Council voted unanimously for a new city manager, a good sign that the factions are able to work together.
I want to continue the good things in Morgantown. It would be great if we could get more money from WVU, from corporations and the state, and then be able to get rid of the weekly tax on workers. That will be difficult. I have friends in both Council factions, and I would hope to serve as a bridge between them, if the factionalism continues.
Morgantown, as home to an internationally acclaimed university, is not like other towns in West Virginia. We have a large Muslim population, including students and doctors. My dermatologist and allergist both have Arabic names. The University now has an LGBT Center, and has worked to make LGBT students safe and accepted on campus. I served on WVU's LGBT Equity Commission for more than two years.
In the West Virginia Legislature last year, and now with the new administration in Washington, our acceptance of diversity is under threat. I attend meetings of an interfaith group in town, and with my spouse, Rabbi Joe Hample, of Tree of Life Congregation, have attended meetings, along with many others from a variety of religious organizations, to support the resettlement of refugees. I spoke before the Council, with the full support of the Morgantown Library Board of Directors, in favor of a City Council bill to ban firearms in municipal buildings.
Morgantown is the progressive capital of West Virginia. In today's world, we have to compete with other college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan, Charlottesville, Virginia and Athens, Ohio, for the best students and teachers, artists and tech firms from all over the world. I want to make sure we are able to do that.
Contact me at rebnermwv@gmail.com or on Twitter @BarryLeeWendell.
Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Tisha B'Av 5776 The Refugee Problem
I am in Los Angeles as I write this, at the home of my former Israeli dance partner, Reva Sober. Joe and I have been visiting friends in San Francisco and Los Angeles since July 31. Last night began the fast day of Tisha B'Av, a day commemorating the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, and many other tragedies for the Jewish people, like the expulsion from Spain in August 1492, or the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto during The Holocaust. Joe fasts; I don't.
We attended services last night at Beth Chayim Chadashim, a mile down Pico Boulevard from where we are staying, and the place where we met just eleven years ago. We were asked during the service to write about something that made us sad - perhaps a news article we had read, or something personal. A few people read these out loud. My friend Ilene Cohen said she was worried about refugees, people who can't stay where they are, but may not have a place to go. We were supposed to add something personal to that, and Ilene did. I had also written about refugees as something that made me sad. Not just sad, but frightened.
My ancestors left Czarist Russia between 1886 and 1906. My father's parents, second cousins, came from Belchatow, now in Poland. My mother's family lived in present-day Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. There were pogroms at the times they came, where Jews were beaten and robbed, at least, often with the cooperation of the local police. Jews who stayed in Europe, including family members, were murdered by the Germans in the decade before I was born. I don't know of any relatives in Europe.
I lived here in Los Angeles between 1984 and 2010. Refugees from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua came into Los Angeles in droves. People came from The Philipines, Jews from Russia and Iran, Armenians, Chinese and Vietnamese. I knew illegal aliens, but they were middle- class Jewish people from Israel, South Africa and Argentina. There were backlashes against the poorer, darker refugees, and the border was shut, until employers complained that they couldn't find workers. What they meant, of course, was that they couldn't find workers to work for low wages..
I felt like I was seeing New York, where my ancestors arrived a hundred years earlier. People would complain about "short, dark people with eight children" crowding Los Angeles, and I wondered if people in New York a century earlier had talked about my great-grandmother, also short and dark and with eight children. I would see people lined up at Virgil Junior High to take English at night and remember that my mother's father's parents met in an English night school class. I still hear people say "Why don't these people learn English?" and I remember that my mother told me that her grandmother lived here sixty years and never learned English. Bubbie Glekel was married at sixteen, had two boys, and at twenty-four took them (ages three and six) to the boat to America to meet her husband, who came here first. That great-grandmother died when I was five, and I have only dim memories of her.
I've been hearing for the last year about a backlash in America against refugees coming here, particularly from Syria. Congress won't pass a reform of immigration laws, and people can be sent back to dangerous places in Mexico and Central America, separating them from their families.
Imagine living in a country where ISIS, Al-Queda and your own corrupt government are fighting, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are trying to exert control, as well as the United States and Russia. The cruelty of what goes on there is horrifying, and we in the United States have no power but to accept refugees from the war-torn Middle East.
Of course, we are not the only country that needs to be more compassionate. I am always loathe to criticize Israel, but there are African refugees locked up there, and foreigners, if they lose their jobs, can be deported. And I read this week about asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia, who are locked away in camps in Pacific Island nations.
This is our seventh day in Los Angeles on this trip. We are in a neighborhood where many Orthodox Jews live, American-born but also from Israel and Iran. We have eaten twice at my favorite venue in Los Angeles, The Farmers' Marrket in the Fairfax District. One hears Spanish and French, Chinese and Vietnamese, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian and Farsi there.
I know that Los Angeles is not necessarily an ideal society. In my years working in public schools here, there were often clashes between ethnic groups, and income inequality is possibly worse here than anywhere in the United States. Still, I believe this town is less racist, more accepting of differences, than other places I have lived in or visited.
We have a spacious country. We can help people who are desperate, and still work to bring about more just and stable societies, including our own.
My prayer for Tisha B'Av is that refugees throughout the world will find a place where they can live peacefully and prosper, as my ancestors were able to do in the United States. May it come to pass, speedily and in our time.
For my grandparents, Issachar Wenglinsky and Feigie Sadowsky (Sam and Anna Wendell) and Y'hoshua Poliakoff and Chaika Glekel (Samuel Joseph and Irma Polk). 10 Av 5776- 14 August 2016
We attended services last night at Beth Chayim Chadashim, a mile down Pico Boulevard from where we are staying, and the place where we met just eleven years ago. We were asked during the service to write about something that made us sad - perhaps a news article we had read, or something personal. A few people read these out loud. My friend Ilene Cohen said she was worried about refugees, people who can't stay where they are, but may not have a place to go. We were supposed to add something personal to that, and Ilene did. I had also written about refugees as something that made me sad. Not just sad, but frightened.
My ancestors left Czarist Russia between 1886 and 1906. My father's parents, second cousins, came from Belchatow, now in Poland. My mother's family lived in present-day Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. There were pogroms at the times they came, where Jews were beaten and robbed, at least, often with the cooperation of the local police. Jews who stayed in Europe, including family members, were murdered by the Germans in the decade before I was born. I don't know of any relatives in Europe.
I lived here in Los Angeles between 1984 and 2010. Refugees from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua came into Los Angeles in droves. People came from The Philipines, Jews from Russia and Iran, Armenians, Chinese and Vietnamese. I knew illegal aliens, but they were middle- class Jewish people from Israel, South Africa and Argentina. There were backlashes against the poorer, darker refugees, and the border was shut, until employers complained that they couldn't find workers. What they meant, of course, was that they couldn't find workers to work for low wages..
I felt like I was seeing New York, where my ancestors arrived a hundred years earlier. People would complain about "short, dark people with eight children" crowding Los Angeles, and I wondered if people in New York a century earlier had talked about my great-grandmother, also short and dark and with eight children. I would see people lined up at Virgil Junior High to take English at night and remember that my mother's father's parents met in an English night school class. I still hear people say "Why don't these people learn English?" and I remember that my mother told me that her grandmother lived here sixty years and never learned English. Bubbie Glekel was married at sixteen, had two boys, and at twenty-four took them (ages three and six) to the boat to America to meet her husband, who came here first. That great-grandmother died when I was five, and I have only dim memories of her.
I've been hearing for the last year about a backlash in America against refugees coming here, particularly from Syria. Congress won't pass a reform of immigration laws, and people can be sent back to dangerous places in Mexico and Central America, separating them from their families.
Imagine living in a country where ISIS, Al-Queda and your own corrupt government are fighting, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are trying to exert control, as well as the United States and Russia. The cruelty of what goes on there is horrifying, and we in the United States have no power but to accept refugees from the war-torn Middle East.
Of course, we are not the only country that needs to be more compassionate. I am always loathe to criticize Israel, but there are African refugees locked up there, and foreigners, if they lose their jobs, can be deported. And I read this week about asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia, who are locked away in camps in Pacific Island nations.
This is our seventh day in Los Angeles on this trip. We are in a neighborhood where many Orthodox Jews live, American-born but also from Israel and Iran. We have eaten twice at my favorite venue in Los Angeles, The Farmers' Marrket in the Fairfax District. One hears Spanish and French, Chinese and Vietnamese, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian and Farsi there.
I know that Los Angeles is not necessarily an ideal society. In my years working in public schools here, there were often clashes between ethnic groups, and income inequality is possibly worse here than anywhere in the United States. Still, I believe this town is less racist, more accepting of differences, than other places I have lived in or visited.
We have a spacious country. We can help people who are desperate, and still work to bring about more just and stable societies, including our own.
My prayer for Tisha B'Av is that refugees throughout the world will find a place where they can live peacefully and prosper, as my ancestors were able to do in the United States. May it come to pass, speedily and in our time.
For my grandparents, Issachar Wenglinsky and Feigie Sadowsky (Sam and Anna Wendell) and Y'hoshua Poliakoff and Chaika Glekel (Samuel Joseph and Irma Polk). 10 Av 5776- 14 August 2016
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