Author: hankkalet

Aracely Cantero (right) and a member of Make the Road NJ protest on behalf of Humberto Cantero, who is in ICE detention in Essex County.

I have a piece up today at NJ Spotlight on the patchwork that is New Jersey immigration policy.

There are 21 counties, 565 municipalities, and 20 county jails that have their own policies for dealing with ICE. All are subject to a state attorney general directive from 2007 that sets limits on what local law enforcement can ask of people they arrest, but not on how they should respond to requests from federal immigration officials.

This leaves too much to local discretion, say advocates. They are calling for state action to create a more uniform approach to dealing with ICE. Immigration advocates generally support legislation introduced by state Sen. Nia Gill (D-Essex) that would limit cooperation with ICE by local, county, and state officials to judicially sanctioned detainer requests. ICE currently issues voluntary orders, which are valid but lack the force of a judicial order. Advocates say the bill could go much farther by limiting interaction with ICE.

Six counties work with ICE in some way — Hudson has both an enforcement arrangement and a contract to house ICE detainees, while Monmouth, Salem and Cape May have enforcement arrangements and Essex and Bergen have what are sometimes called “bed contracts.” Two counties have policies in place that limit their interaction with ICE — Union and Middlesex — and about two dozen towns have declared themselves as sanctuary or welcoming cities.

So, while immigration is a federal matter, federal policy has an impact locally, especially when federal policy is to enlist local law enforcement in the effort.

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The Mets are a dreadful seven games under .500 and 12 games back in the wild-card race. Their season is all but over — they need too many teams to collapse and need to do too much work themselves to be a viable pennant hopeful at this point.

The state of affairs is especially disheartening given the expectations and recent success, but a confluence of age and injury have doomed this season.

This places an important question on the table: Should the Mets be sellers as the trade season opens this month? The answer, sadly, appears to be yes — unless they can cut the wild-card deficit in half by the all-star break. Given the schedule —four games with the Dodgers and three with the Nationals —hope is fleeting.

Here are 10 things to consider that could remake the team for 3018, when the pitching should be healthy.

1 & 2. Trade Jay Bruce and/or Lucas Duda. Bruce has had a nice year anchoring the line-up, but he is a corner outfielder and the Mets have two corners in place — Michael Conforto and Yoenes Cespedes. Bruce has rebuilt his trade value, so the Mets should see what they can get for him.

The same goes for Duda, who occupies a position played by the Mets’ no. 2 position prospect, Dominic Smith. Smith is expected to be ready soon, which means a decision on Duda will have to be made. He is expected to want a longer-term deal, which is not something the Mets should consider. They should get something while they can.

Mets fans will read this and say — but wait. They are presences in the middle of the line-up. The reality is that, while both are solid, they are not worth what it might take to keep them. They are, using both the eye test and the array of statistical and analytical tools, above but near average for their positions. Basically, they are replaceable.

3. Bring up Ahmed Rosario. The Mets’ infield play has been among the worst in the league — and the infielders have been about as bad a defensive group as I’ve seen. The left side of the infield has been atrocious — Jose Reyes has nothing left at short, is not a third-baseman and can’t hit. Asdrubel Cabrera has the legs of an 80-year-old man and the range to match. The Mets have no reason to commit to this horror show any longer. Let Wilmer Flores play out the string at third — at least he hits — and bring up Rosario. The kids flashes leather like no one in a Mets uniform since Rey Ordonez, and he’s been raking big time in AAA. Bring him up, hit him lead off and let’s see what he can do.

4. Cut ties with Reyes. See above.

5. Consign Curtis Granderson to the bench. He is looking his age, and there are likely no takers among contenders. He remains a good character guy and could help with the transition for guys like Rosario.

6. Find a way to play T.J. Rivera. The kid can hit, and he had ice water in his veins. Let him super-sub — a little first, some second, a little third, and maybe an occasional at bat in the outfield. The goal should be to get him into the line-up about two thirds of the time.

8. Either sign Neil Walker or trade him. Walker has pop and is an adequate glove, but the cost and length of the deal will be the deciding factors. Walker will be 32 before the season ends, has had back surgery and, for the second year in a row, has spent time on the DL. Those are not good signs.

Are there alternatives? Walker will be out for a bit — torn hamstring — so the Mets have an opportunity to audition his replacement — whether it be Rivera (see above) or Gavin Cecchini, a former first-round pick as a shortstop who until this year had shown serious promise. Let’s see what they can do.

9. Find a real centerfielder. It may be worth playing Juan Lagares and Brandon Nimmo in a platoon for a while to see what they have — Lagares with the bat, Nimmo with the glove.  My sense is that neither will take the position by the reins and run with it, which would then allow the Mets to approach the position with a fresh eye and make it a priority — either this year or in the off-season.

10. Let the Mets’ starting pitching work its way out of its inconsistency and slumps. Allow them to pitch through trouble and push their pitch counts up. Most of them are in their late 20s and it’s time to treat them like the aces they claim to and should be.

The Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale at a press conference in Washington DC. (courtesy of his gubernatorial campaign)

Five months into the Trump administration and it is clear that the limited reprieve given to undocumented immigrants is over. It is not just the public stance of the administration, which has continued to press for a ban on travel to and from a half dozen Muslim-majority nations and announcements from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Attorney General that the gloves were coming off. The evidence can be found in towns across the county, as immigration officials armed with a new set of priorities have been detaining immigrants who in recent years might have been allowed to live undisturbed and below the radar.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reported that immigration arrests were up 37.6 percent during the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, compared with the same time period in 2016.

Between Jan. 22 and April 29, 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers administratively arrested 41,318 individuals on civil immigration charges. Between Jan. 24 and April 30, 2016, ERO arrested 30,028.

“These statistics reflect President Trump’s commitment to enforce our immigration laws fairly and across the board. ICE agents and officers have been given clear direction to focus on threats to public safety and national security, which has resulted in a substantial increase in the arrest of convicted criminal aliens. However, when we encounter others who are in the country unlawfully, we will execute our sworn duty and enforce the law. As the data demonstrates, ICE continues to execute our mission professionally and in accordance with the law, and our communities will be much safer for it,” said ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan.

This change is about more than numbers, however. It is about human lives. I spoke recently with the Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale of the Highland Park Reformed Church, who has been working on behalf of undocumented immigrants who fled Indonesia to escape the brutality of the Sukharto regime in the late 1990s. Hundreds of asylum seekers took up residence in New Jersey, most not cognizant of a change in federal law that required them to file their asylum application within a year of entry. Most failed to do so, and most were then denied asylum on appeal. Many have been deported, including six in recent months.

Kaper-Dale, who is running for governor as an independent, said that many Indonesian immigrants had final orders of deportation, though they had been protected by a stay of removal issued by ICE. They were required to report to ICE on a regular basis — similar to what a parolee does. Kaper-Dale says they abided by the rules, but the changes in Washington have made it harder to do so. The stay was overridden by the Jan. 25 executive order on immigration, and those with final orders were now added to the priorities list. The New Jersey Indonesians who were deported recently were picked up by ICE because they followed the rules set by ICE and reported, he said.

Now, I’m in a spot where people don’t know if should report or not if report.

Kaper-Dale told me that

U.S. citizen kids lost their dad. A newlywed was separated from his wife, another guy supporting his disabled wife was deported. That’s what is going on. There are 43 others in the same boat living locally in Central Jersey, and we’re terrified for them and we don’t understand how an administration that touts family values can destroy life like this.

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> Rosa Santana, of First Friends of NJ and NY, an immigration advocacy group, told me the increased enforcement is evident on the streets. There are multiple reports of ICE and border agents rounding up immigrants and raiding workplaces. She said immigration agents are “everywhere,” because ICE knows that “local police are refusing to help,.” The result, she said, is an increase in detention and deportation, which sends a chill through the community. 
Supporters of the new crackdown say that the undocumented have broken the law, making no distinction between civil and criminal law. Some offer sympathies, but nearly all view these more aggressive priorities as necessary to a) protect national security, b) save American jobs, or c) preserve American culture. (This last, of course, is just code for preserving the United States as a mostly white nation, but that is an argument for another day.)

Illegal immigration does create problems, including in the national security and jobs areas. The current immigration system leaves immigrants vulnerable to unscrupulous employers who use workers’ immigration statuses to intimidate workers into silence. This allows employers to pay less than minimum wage, not pay overtime, short paychecks or illegally withhold pay, force workers to endure unhealthy or dangerous work conditions and so on, because workers are afraid of being deported if they speak up.

So, yes, reform is needed. But a crackdown — and some of the other punitive efforts, such as the proposed border wall, the Muslim ban, etc. — is both unwise and counterproductive, more likely to send immigrants further into the shadows while empowering employers even more.

This is not just conjecture. This is what workers and advocates are saying. It is an act of self-preservation — but it also makes it easier for the Trump administration to ramp up its efforts. Angy Rivera, in a piece in The Progressive in 2014, described the fear that gripped her family, a fear that pushed her to come out publicly as undocumented.

Doing so, however, was dangerous. Rivera said that her mother

blankly stared at me, and then she accused me of wanting to put myself and our family at risk. I was going against all the warnings she had given me.

Ultimately, she said, “Coming out was like breaking invisible chains that tied me down.”

We have a responsibility, if we believe that the crackdown is immoral, to shed light on its effects, to help give voice to those who fear repercussions should they speak out.

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Yearbook photo courtesy of Planet Princeton

I’ll let this report from my friend Krystal Knapp’s hyperlocal Planet Princeton set the scene:

Jamaica Ponder, the high school senior who has chronicled racist incidents in Princeton over the last year on her blog, has been suspended because of a photo she submitted to the yearbook that was then published.

Ponder was suspended for using “explicitly racial language,” in her senior collage photo. The photo in question included two pieces of artwork in the background from her father’s art exhibit “The Rise and Fail of The N-Word.”

Apparently, at least one other student was suspended for a similar offense — the manipulating of photos of North Korea and Nazi Germany (students’ heads were placed on the bodies of marchers). Students, in comments posted to Planet Princeton, have made the case that the photos are symbolic speech, that the images are meant to critique a culture of racism and elitism at Princeton High School — a contention I don’t want to debate. I don’t have any direct knowledge, nothing more than what I’ve read on Planet Princeton and elsewhere. I will leave discussion of the school’s culture to the students and administrators there, to the local press, and to parents.

What I will say, however, is that the paintings that have caused the uproar are artistic critiques of American racism. Rhinold Ponder, Jamaica’s father, told Planet Princeton

The purpose of the imagery is to promote racial literacy and dialogue, he said. “It’s difficult in our society to talk about race, and everyone is so stifled by a word,” he said, noting that teens who visit the Ponder home often ask about the art, which leads to thought-provoking discussions about race.
 
One painting called “Strange Fruit: High Tech Lynching” shows Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and Clarence Thomas hanging from trees with televisions around their heads across from an image of a lynching victim. A second painting is the words “NIGGER RICH,” in dark acrylic paint and chopped up dollar bills.

The two paintings are obscured in the yearbook photo (see above), but even if they weren’t they are symbolic speech deserving of more respect and consideration than a school zero-tolerance policy on racial language can apparently allow.

Some want to make this an equity issue — a white kid likely would have been suspended for a similar offense, they say, and that may be the case. But the use of this kind of imagery and language by a white student or white painter is likely to create a very different set of meanings.

As I wrote back in March about a Whitney exhibit that included a painting by a white artist of a famous photo of a dead Emmett Till in his casket, the context in which a work of art is created or language is spoken can be as important as the work itself. Questions of appropriation get raised — who has the right to tell the story, to benefit from the story, can a particular ethnic group own its history or is it broader than that — and the meaning of the language and the images is affected by the context.

Consider the Emmett Till painting. Dana Schutz painted it and, after the uproar surrounding its exhibition, offered this statement:

“I don’t know what it is like to be black in America but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. Their pain is your pain. My engagement with this image was through empathy with his mother.” She added: “Art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection. I don’t believe that people can ever really know what it is like to be someone else (I will never know the fear that black parents may have) but neither are we all completely unknowable.”

For the white viewer, this explanation might resonate. But it is reductive. It deracinates the image — Schutz attempts to universalize something that is far from universal, something that is connected to hundreds of years of history, hundreds of years of persecution of Africans and African Americans who continue to be judged, even killed, because of the color of their skin. Till in his coffin will always be a powerful image, but its power derives from its history and the history of a people.

I don’t want to rehash the Till debate — I am somewhat ambivalent about this, because I’m opposed in general to limitations being placed on artists while at the same time understanding the various ways in which privilege influences our understanding of art and our relationship to the tellers of history’s stories.

This is the context in which paintings like these should be judged. “Strange Fruit,” for instance, takes its title from a song made famous by Billie Holiday, but written by a Jewish songwriter, and symbolizes how powerful African Americans are treated by the American news media. It is artistic and symbolic speech that uses imagery and language that, in other contexts, would be offensive.

Context, however, when zero-tolerance is the policy in place. Don’t get me wrong, schools need to crack down on racism within their walls and on their playing fields. But zero-tolerance leaves no room for consideration of context or mitigating factors. In many ways, zero-tolerance policies are designed to protect administrators as much as students.

I also question whether the school administration is even interested in questions of context. Principal Gary Snyder sent out a message to parents that described the images as “insensitive, offensive, and provocative words and symbols of racial bias, bigotry, and anti-Semitism.” There is a difference between using images to critique a school’s culture or to underscore the impact of white privilege and white supremacy, and students using Holocaust imagery — playing Nazi-beer pong — to spice up a drinking game. I suspect the administration knows that that.

It is possible to believe all of the following simultaneously:

1. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate and ran a misguided campaign. Believing this does not automatically make one anti-women or anti-feminist.

2. Despite the campaign missteps, Clinton likely would have won had James Comey not intervened. His announcement in the campaign’s waning moments likely altered the race just enough to swing it to Trump, given that Clinton lost three states by less than 100,000 votes total. Had she won those — all won by Barack Obama — she would be president.

3. Third-party helped elect Trump. Those voters had a right to back Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, but were foolish to do so — in first-past-the-post elections, every vote not cast for a major party candidate can be viewed as a vote against that candidate.

4. That said, the right to vote third party — or not vote at all — is just as sacrosanct as the right to vote for the lesser of two bad options.

5. As a leftist — a self-described socialist who is probably to the left of Bernie Sanders — Clinton was a lesser a evil. She was the candidate of the establishment and the corporate order in charge of our economy, but was still our best option for the White House.

6. It’s time to move on from discussing Hillary Clinton and focus on the actual tasks at hand.

7. An independent inquiry into Russian interference in the election is warranted.

8. There will be no impeachment of Donald J. Trump, regardless of what the investigations reveal. Republicans control both houses of Congress and they are not going there.

9. Impeachment may not be politically wise for the left, because it would lead to a Mike Pence presidency, which would strengthen the radical Christian right and allow for a more functional conservative deconstruction of government. The only thing stopping that now is Trump’s abject incompetence.

10. The left should let the investigation run its course and focus on mobilizing a real movement. As I said, the investigation is important, but people power is needed to prevent further damage to the environment, social safety net, labor, women’s, minority and immigrant rights, and so on.

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