thenation--2020-12-21--The CIA Is Running Death Squads in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan , now in its 19th year , is the longest and most intractable of America ’ s forever wars .
There are now American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan who were born after the terrorist attacks of September 11 , 2001 , the ostensible casus belli .
The American public has long ago grown tired of the war .
A YouGov poll conducted in July of 2020 showed that 46 percent of Americans strongly supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan , with another 30 percent saying they “ somewhat ” approved of troop withdrawal .
But this 76 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact that America has a volunteer army and American casualties in Afghanistan remain sporadic , this is not an issue that the public is passionate about .
An inchoate dissatisfaction is compatible either with disengagement or just a lack of interest .
Conversely , those in the national security establishment who do passionately support the war are able to thwart political leaders who want a drawdown .
Under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump , presidential efforts to disengage from Afghanistan and the larger Middle East were met with resistance from a foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a humiliating defeat .
Trump tried to resolve the contradiction between his desire to remove troops and the foreign policy elite ’ s commitment to the Afghan war by loosening the rules of war .
The thinking of the Trump administration was that by unleashing the military and intelligence agencies , it could subdue the Taliban—thus preparing the way for a drawdown of troops .
Special priority was given to CIA-run covert operations using Afghan paramilitaries , with the belief that this would lead to a more sustainable war that didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A report in The Intercept , written by reporter Andrew Quilty , documents the horrifying consequences of this policy : Afghan paramilitary units , known as 01 and 02 , have acted as death squads , launching raids against civilians that have turned into massacres .
Many of these raids have attacked religious schools , the famous madrassas , leading to the death of children as young as 8 years old .
Joe Biden Needs to Revive the Spirit of Tammany Hall According to Quilty , “ Residents from four districts in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daymirdad—spoke of a string of massacres , executions , mutilation , forced disappearances , attacks on medical facilities , and airstrikes targeting structures known to house civilians .
The victims , according to these residents , were rarely Taliban .
Yet the Afghan unit and its American masters have never been publicly held accountable by either the Afghan or U.S. governments.
” These raids all involve Afghan paramilitaries who are outside the control of the Afghan government and working in conjunction with American handlers who provide high-tech aid and direction , Quilty reports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war crimes , The Intercept ’ s report has been met with near-silence from the American media .
Jake Tapper of CNN retweeted the article , but otherwise there is little indication that the American media cares .
As Intercept reporter Ryan Grim notes , “ It ’ s been two days since this story was published , and the mainstream media has been largely silent on it .
Imagine if the media treated the My Lai massacre this way.
” ( In fact , the mainstream press sat on whistleblower Ron Ridenhour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year before Seymour Hersh and the scruffy Dispatch News Service finally broke the silence . )
Grim also suggested that the Biden administration might want to bring justice to the perpetrators of these alleged war crimes .
“ One of the most outspoken proponents of bringing a fine legal eye to war has been Avril Haines , who will be Joe Biden ’ s Director of National Intelligence , ” Grim observes .
“ She ’ ll have the authority and the ability to discover who in the CIA was involved in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice.
” This is a forlorn hope given the Obama administration ’ s failure to go after war crimes committed by the CIA under George W. Bush .
Further , Biden himself is ambiguous on Afghanistan in a way that calls to mind Trump himself .
As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich noted in The Nation earlier this month , Biden “ wants to have it both ways ” on the Afghan war .
Biden will occasionally say , “ These ‘ forever wars ’ have to end , ” but he will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a contingent of forces in Afghanistan .
As Bacevich observes , “ Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in US history has ended , while simultaneously underwriting its perpetuation.
” Biden ’ s support for a light military footprint could very easily lead him to the same position as Trump : using covert CIA operations to maintain American power in Afghanistan with minimal use of uniformed troops .
This is a recipe for more massacres .
Will Biden Finally End the War in Afghanistan ?
Writing in The Washington Post last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made a compelling case that the United States is facing a “ stark choice ” between “ complete withdrawal by May or keeping 2,500 troops in place indefinitely to conduct counterterrorism operations and to try to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government .
There ’ s no doubt that withdrawal will spell the end of the Afghan government that the United States has supported for 19 years.
” Malkasian makes clear that the counterterrorism operations would merely be an exercise of staving off defeat , with no prospect of an end to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ costs of this counterterrorism , unflinchingly described by The Intercept , the argument for complete withdrawal becomes stronger .
It ’ s likely that Biden will continue the policy of previous presidents of kicking the can down the road by using covert CIA operators to fend off defeat .
But Americans should have no illusions : That means perpetuation of horrific war crimes in a conflict that can not be won .

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The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, is the longest and most intractable of America’s forever wars. There are now American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan who were born after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ostensible casus belli. The American public has long ago grown tired of the war. A YouGov poll conducted in July of 2020 showed that 46 percent of Americans strongly supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, with another 30 percent saying they “somewhat” approved of troop withdrawal.
But this 76 percent majority is deceptive. Given the fact that America has a volunteer army and American casualties in Afghanistan remain sporadic, this is not an issue that the public is passionate about. An inchoate dissatisfaction is compatible either with disengagement or just a lack of interest. Conversely, those in the national security establishment who do passionately support the war are able to thwart political leaders who want a drawdown. Under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, presidential efforts to disengage from Afghanistan and the larger Middle East were met with resistance from a foreign policy elite that sees any withdrawal as a humiliating defeat.
Trump tried to resolve the contradiction between his desire to remove troops and the foreign policy elite’s commitment to the Afghan war by loosening the rules of war. The thinking of the Trump administration was that by unleashing the military and intelligence agencies, it could subdue the Taliban—thus preparing the way for a drawdown of troops. Special priority was given to CIA-run covert operations using Afghan paramilitaries, with the belief that this would lead to a more sustainable war that didn’t require American soldiers to participate in fighting.
A report in The Intercept, written by reporter Andrew Quilty, documents the horrifying consequences of this policy: Afghan paramilitary units, known as 01 and 02, have acted as death squads, launching raids against civilians that have turned into massacres. Many of these raids have attacked religious schools, the famous madrassas, leading to the death of children as young as 8 years old. More From Jeet Heer The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution August 14, 2023 Why Does This Racist Keep Getting Silicon Valley Money? August 11, 2023 When Phallocrats Go Limp August 4, 2023
According to Quilty, “Residents from four districts in Wardak—Nerkh, Chak, Sayedabad, and Daymirdad—spoke of a string of massacres, executions, mutilation, forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting structures known to house civilians. The victims, according to these residents, were rarely Taliban. Yet the Afghan unit and its American masters have never been publicly held accountable by either the Afghan or U.S. governments.”
These raids all involve Afghan paramilitaries who are outside the control of the Afghan government and working in conjunction with American handlers who provide high-tech aid and direction, Quilty reports. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
The units’ American CIA advisers go by pseudonyms or call signs rather than names.They not only train Afghan unit members, but also choose their targets, which the Americans call “jackpots”; issue detailed pre-mission briefings; and accompany Afghan paramilitaries on the ground during raids. The Afghans and Americans are ferried to remote villages at night by American helicopters, and American assault aircraft hover overhead while they conduct their raids, providing lethal firepower that is sometimes directed at health clinics, madrassa dormitories, or civilian homes. Current Issue View our current issue
Despite providing detailed accounts of American-led war crimes, The Intercept’s report has been met with near-silence from the American media. Jake Tapper of CNN retweeted the article, but otherwise there is little indication that the American media cares.
As Intercept reporter Ryan Grim notes, “It’s been two days since this story was published, and the mainstream media has been largely silent on it. Imagine if the media treated the My Lai massacre this way.” (In fact, the mainstream press sat on whistleblower Ron Ridenhour’s warnings about My Lai for a year before Seymour Hersh and the scruffy Dispatch News Service finally broke the silence.)
Grim also suggested that the Biden administration might want to bring justice to the perpetrators of these alleged war crimes. “One of the most outspoken proponents of bringing a fine legal eye to war has been Avril Haines, who will be Joe Biden’s Director of National Intelligence,” Grim observes. “She’ll have the authority and the ability to discover who in the CIA was involved in these operations, and bring them to justice.”
This is a forlorn hope given the Obama administration’s failure to go after war crimes committed by the CIA under George W. Bush. Further, Biden himself is ambiguous on Afghanistan in a way that calls to mind Trump himself.
As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich noted in The Nation earlier this month, Biden “wants to have it both ways” on the Afghan war. Biden will occasionally say, “These ‘forever wars’ have to end,” but he will also say that America needs to keep a contingent of forces in Afghanistan. As Bacevich observes, “Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in US history has ended, while simultaneously underwriting its perpetuation.” Biden’s support for a light military footprint could very easily lead him to the same position as Trump: using covert CIA operations to maintain American power in Afghanistan with minimal use of uniformed troops. This is a recipe for more massacres. Related Article Will Biden Finally End the War in Afghanistan? Andrew J. Bacevich
Writing in The Washington Post last month, veteran Afghanistan analyst Carter Malkasian made a compelling case that the United States is facing a “stark choice” between “complete withdrawal by May or keeping 2,500 troops in place indefinitely to conduct counterterrorism operations and to try to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government. There’s no doubt that withdrawal will spell the end of the Afghan government that the United States has supported for 19 years.”
Malkasian makes clear that the counterterrorism operations would merely be an exercise of staving off defeat, with no prospect of an end to the war. Given the enormous moral costs of this counterterrorism, unflinchingly described by The Intercept, the argument for complete withdrawal becomes stronger.
It’s likely that Biden will continue the policy of previous presidents of kicking the can down the road by using covert CIA operators to fend off defeat. But Americans should have no illusions: That means perpetuation of horrific war crimes in a conflict that cannot be won.


thenation--2020-12-22--Good Riddance to Robert E. Lee

Good Riddance to Robert E. Lee

At 4 am on Monday , in the crypt of the United States Capitol , a team of workers removed the statue of Robert E. Lee that since 1909 has represented the Commonwealth of Virginia in the National Statuary Hall Collection .
Three years after neo-Confederates , neo-Nazis , and their white nationalist allies rioted in Charlottesville , Va. , over proposals to remove a statue in that city that honored the general who commanded the Civil War forces that defended slavery , one of the most recognizable monuments to the Confederacy and its treasonous generals was removed from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ D.C. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine , Virginia Representative Jennifer Wexton , an aide to Virginia Representative Donald McEachin , and a representative of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ’ s office stood by as the monumental image was removed .
It was a “ historic and long-overdue moment for our Commonwealth , ” said Wexton and McEachin , both Democrats , who on Monday announced , “ The Robert E. Lee statue honors a legacy of division , oppression , and racism—a dark period in the history of our Commonwealth and our country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be one of the two representing Virginia in the U.S. Capitol.
” Kaine posted a video of the transfer of the effigy from its place in the crypt , where statues commemorate the 13 states that were original colonies of the United States .
The removal of the Lee statue took place quietly and in the dead of night .
Yet , it represented a huge victory in the struggle over historical memory .
Georgia Senators Loeffler and Perdue Are Campaigning Against Democracy Bernie Sanders : ‘ Democracy Has Gotten a Reprieve With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s All It Is.
’ The Right Answer Is to Throw Money at the Problem Since the end of the Civil War , a cruel lie has been perpetuated by Southern partisans who suggested that the Confederacy was a noble “ lost cause ” and that Lee was an honorable man drawn into a complex struggle .
That was never the case .
More than 90 years ago , W.E.B .
Du Bois warned against “ renewed effort to canonize Robert E. Lee , ” writing in The Crisis : Du Bois ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But it was resisted in his time , and for decades afterward .
To this day , President Trump perpetuates the mendacious suggestion that reasonable people can disagree about Lee ’ s service as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 until its surrender in 1865 .
Even after Heather Heyer , a 32-year-old advocate for racial justice , was killed in 2017 by a white supremacist who had come to Charlottesville to defend the Lee statue , President Trump was peddling nonsense about “ very fine people on both sides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Confederate general .
Trump has in recent years made himself the most prominent defender of the lie .
After Joe Biden said that Trump ’ s response to Charlottesville made him decide to bid for the presidency in 2020 , Trump responded by talking up Lee as a “ great general.
” This year , the president has defended the Confederate flag as a source of pride for Southerners , and gone so far as to propose to veto the National Defense Authorization Act to block plans to remove the names of Confederate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s argument is losing , as are the dead-ender defenses of the C0nfederacy by other Republicans .
Confederate symbols are being discarded , flags are being redesigned ( most recently in Mississippi ) , and statues are being removed .
This is happening because movements have made demands , and members of city councils , legislatures , and Congress have responded .
In 2017 , Representative Barbara Lee of California announced , “ In the wake of Charlottesville , it ’ s abundantly clear that much work remains to root out racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Confederate statues and monuments pay tribute to white supremacy and slavery in public spaces .
These hateful symbols should have no place in our society and they certainly should not be enshrined in the U.S. Capitol.
” In 2020 , she introduced the Confederate Monument Removal Act , legislation to remove all statues of individuals who voluntarily served the Confederate States of America from display in the United States Capitol , with Senator Cory Booker , who said , “ There is nothing to gain from sanitizing our history—the stain of slavery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our country ’ s checkered past .
However , it ’ s a disservice to all Americans to venerate in the sacred space of the U.S. Capitol those who took up arms in order to tear this country apart .
Confederate statues belong in a museum , not in the U.S. Capitol.
” The fight to remove statues of Lee and other Confederate generals has faced hurdles .
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this year , “ I ’ m a descendant of a Confederate veteran myself .
What I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far is this nonsense that we need to airbrush the Capitol , and scrub out anybody from years ago who had any connection to slavery.
” But Lee and Booker have kept reintroducing their bill , and it could get traction with the seating of a new Congress and a new administration .
An original cosponsor of the bill , California Senator Kamala Harris , is now the vice president–elect of the United States .
In November , Virginia voted for Harris and Biden—after a 2020 campaign in which Biden declared , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Confederate soldiers and generals , etc.
, who strongly supported secession and the maintenance of slavery and going to war to do it , I think those statues belong in museums .
They don ’ t belong in public places.
” Even before Biden and Harris take office , Virginia has acted to set the record straight .
The state ’ s Commission for Historical Statues in the United States Capitol voted unanimously in July to recommend the removal of the Lee statue , which will now be stored at the Virginia Museum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The commission has recommended that Virginia ’ s new statue in the Capitol honor civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns , who as a 16-year-old in 1951 led a student walkout to protest segregation and overcrowding at an all-Black high school in Farmville , Va. As state Senator Louise Lucas , the chair of the commission , explained , Johns was identified as “ a historical figure who represents the values of today ’ s Virginians.
” The battle for history rages on .
But the arc is bending toward justice .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announced Monday , “ As of this morning , Virginia will no longer honor the Confederacy in the halls of the United States Capitol .
”

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At 4 am on Monday, in the crypt of the United States Capitol, a team of workers removed the statue of Robert E. Lee that since 1909 has represented the Commonwealth of Virginia in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
Three years after neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and their white nationalist allies rioted in Charlottesville, Va., over proposals to remove a statue in that city that honored the general who commanded the Civil War forces that defended slavery, one of the most recognizable monuments to the Confederacy and its treasonous generals was removed from the citadel of American governance in Washington, D.C.
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Virginia Representative Jennifer Wexton, an aide to Virginia Representative Donald McEachin, and a representative of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s office stood by as the monumental image was removed. It was a “historic and long-overdue moment for our Commonwealth,” said Wexton and McEachin, both Democrats, who on Monday announced, “The Robert E. Lee statue honors a legacy of division, oppression, and racism—a dark period in the history of our Commonwealth and our country. There is no reason his statue should be one of the two representing Virginia in the U.S. Capitol.” Kaine posted a video of the transfer of the effigy from its place in the crypt, where statues commemorate the 13 states that were original colonies of the United States.
The removal of the Lee statue took place quietly and in the dead of night. Yet, it represented a huge victory in the struggle over historical memory. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
Since the end of the Civil War, a cruel lie has been perpetuated by Southern partisans who suggested that the Confederacy was a noble “lost cause” and that Lee was an honorable man drawn into a complex struggle. That was never the case. More than 90 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois warned against “renewed effort to canonize Robert E. Lee,” writing in The Crisis:
Du Bois’s assessment was the true one. But it was resisted in his time, and for decades afterward. To this day, President Trump perpetuates the mendacious suggestion that reasonable people can disagree about Lee’s service as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 until its surrender in 1865. Even after Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old advocate for racial justice, was killed in 2017 by a white supremacist who had come to Charlottesville to defend the Lee statue, President Trump was peddling nonsense about “very fine people on both sides” of the debate about honoring the Confederate general.
Trump has in recent years made himself the most prominent defender of the lie. After Joe Biden said that Trump’s response to Charlottesville made him decide to bid for the presidency in 2020, Trump responded by talking up Lee as a “great general.” This year, the president has defended the Confederate flag as a source of pride for Southerners, and gone so far as to propose to veto the National Defense Authorization Act to block plans to remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases.
But Trump’s argument is losing, as are the dead-ender defenses of the C0nfederacy by other Republicans. Confederate symbols are being discarded, flags are being redesigned (most recently in Mississippi), and statues are being removed. This is happening because movements have made demands, and members of city councils, legislatures, and Congress have responded. In 2017, Representative Barbara Lee of California announced, “In the wake of Charlottesville, it’s abundantly clear that much work remains to root out racism from our society. Across the country, Confederate statues and monuments pay tribute to white supremacy and slavery in public spaces. These hateful symbols should have no place in our society and they certainly should not be enshrined in the U.S. Capitol.” In 2020, she introduced the Confederate Monument Removal Act, legislation to remove all statues of individuals who voluntarily served the Confederate States of America from display in the United States Capitol, with Senator Cory Booker, who said, “There is nothing to gain from sanitizing our history—the stain of slavery and segregation will always be a part of our country’s checkered past. However, it’s a disservice to all Americans to venerate in the sacred space of the U.S. Capitol those who took up arms in order to tear this country apart. Confederate statues belong in a museum, not in the U.S. Capitol.”
The fight to remove statues of Lee and other Confederate generals has faced hurdles. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this year, “I’m a descendant of a Confederate veteran myself. What I do think is clearly a bridge too far is this nonsense that we need to airbrush the Capitol, and scrub out anybody from years ago who had any connection to slavery.” But Lee and Booker have kept reintroducing their bill, and it could get traction with the seating of a new Congress and a new administration. An original cosponsor of the bill, California Senator Kamala Harris, is now the vice president–elect of the United States. In November, Virginia voted for Harris and Biden—after a 2020 campaign in which Biden declared, “I think all those Confederate monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals, etc., who strongly supported secession and the maintenance of slavery and going to war to do it, I think those statues belong in museums. They don’t belong in public places.”
Even before Biden and Harris take office, Virginia has acted to set the record straight. The state’s Commission for Historical Statues in the United States Capitol voted unanimously in July to recommend the removal of the Lee statue, which will now be stored at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond. The commission has recommended that Virginia’s new statue in the Capitol honor civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns, who as a 16-year-old in 1951 led a student walkout to protest segregation and overcrowding at an all-Black high school in Farmville, Va. As state Senator Louise Lucas, the chair of the commission, explained, Johns was identified as “a historical figure who represents the values of today’s Virginians.”
The battle for history rages on. But the arc is bending toward justice. As Virginia House of Delegates member Jeion Ward announced Monday, “As of this morning, Virginia will no longer honor the Confederacy in the halls of the United States Capitol.”


thenation--2020-12-22--How Should We Remember Ellis Island?

How Should We Remember Ellis Island?

At the beginning of the 20th century , one of the easiest ways to get marked for deportation at Ellis Island was flunking an eye exam .
From 1903 to 1930 , trachoma—an eye disease caused by Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria , which eventually leads to blindness—was classified by the United States Health Service as among the most serious of diseases “ brought in ” by immigrants .
As Grover A. Kemp , a doctor who worked on Ellis Island from 1912 to 1916 , recalled , everyone who stepped foot on the island had to undergo an inspection for it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ever entertained the possibility that exposure to this nonmedical tool increased trachoma cases—which , if true , inadvertently led to a decrease in immigrants entering the country .
Caught in between that question—did immigrants bring trachoma , or did medical ignorance bring trachoma to immigrants ?
—one is led to conclude that it might ’ ve been a bit of both .
However , the possibility of arriving immigrants ’ being harmed through this heedlessness shows how appallingly primitive physical examinations on Ellis Island were while underlining the United States ’ tenuous relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Malgorzata Szejnert ’ s Ellis Island : A People ’ s History—a new history of the island that covers the years 1774 ( when Samuel Ellis , a merchant in colonial New York and the island ’ s namesake , bought it ) to 2003 ( when current members of the Leni Lenape tribe , who were pressured into “ selling ” the island to the Dutch West India Company in 1630 , were allowed to exhume the remains of their ancestors ) —works this way .
She provides a plethora of raw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many people arrived on ships , the date when commissioners left their post—but her primary mode of storytelling is encouraging her audience to read between the lines , and her book does much in the service of contextualizing immigration to the US as fraught with discriminatory snap judgments on the merits of arriving individuals ’ human value , rather than a triumphant articulation of American values , with a welcome mat in New York harbor .
Szejnert is arguably the most eminent living journalist in Poland—the cofounder of Gazeta Wyborcza , a prominent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-communist publications in the country , which she ran for 15 years .
She proceeded to write several books on subjects such as labor strikes and workers ’ quarters in her own country , as well as a collection of articles about Polish Americans .
Ellis Island is her first book in English .
It appears in a serviceable translation by Sean Gasper .
In the book ’ s afterword , Szejnert says she became interested in Ellis Island after a visit to the National Museum of Immigration , located on the island @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the island—the keepers of the gate ?
” she asks .
“ What was their interaction like with those pressing in on those gates ?
How did they reconcile the virtues they learned in their homes and democratic institutions with the cruelty their service often demanded.
” She continues : “ I found it just as easy to obtain testimony of the United States ’ generosity as of its selfishness.
” It ’ s this judgment that Szejnert is interested in : “ those who accepted [ immigrants ] ( or rejected them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tactical phrase “ a people ’ s history ” to her historical text implies a challenge to America ’ s conventional immigration narrative .
In this sense , the book recalls Howard Zinn ’ s A People ’ s History of the United States , which retells the story of America from 1492 through the George W. Bush years from the perspective of the persecuted and the marginal .
While it damns the actions of the ruling class , Zinn ’ s book never intended to discredit “ America ” per se @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history was to situate the agitation for rights in the face of institutional oppression as integral to the country ’ s identity—even as its history has shown that progress was always stymied by the select few who exercised power over the disenfranchised and the dispossessed .
Conversely , Szejnert ’ s People ’ s History is quieter and less didactic , despite sharing a similar interest in polyphony and tracing a familiar historical arc with a darker pencil .
Originally an execution site for pirates , what was then known as Little Oyster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1774 .
The island was eventually used for military exercises and held artillery batteries , British prisoners of war , and more pirates due for execution ; in its second stint as a capital punishment site , bodies were donated to Manhattan ’ s College of Surgeons for use as cadavers .
Although the property was willed to Ellis ’ s children , inheritance battles and considerations for the national interest led to its being sold to the federal government in 1808 .
From 1855 to 1890 , people immigrating to the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fort located in Battery Park .
Ironically , it was benevolence , rather than xenophobia , that led to the collective decision to turn over the process from New York municipal control to the federal government .
Bedloe ’ s Island , which houses the Statue of Liberty , was the first choice , but the adjacent Ellis Island was ultimately chosen , as the result of an uproar from both the statue ’ s creator , Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi , and Joseph Pulitzer ’ s newspaper the New York World , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens on the same site as the statue as “ blasphemous , ” and turning Lady Liberty “ into the Tower of Babel , ” respectively .
Munitions were removed from Ellis , canals were dredged to better accommodate ferry traffic , and President Benjamin Harrison installed the island ’ s inaugural commissioner , John Baptiste Weber , at the Port of New York .
Szejnert chronicles Harrison ’ s decision to send Weber to Russia in the 1890s while the island ’ s station was being completed to discern why it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eastern Europe wanted to immigrate to the United States .
The episode illustrates what has remained endemic about the US vision of immigration as a kind of condescending benevolence : “ It is inhumane of us to push these people back into the pit from which they have crawled , ” Weber writes in his report to Harrison .
“ When we do this we should extinguish the torch [ in ] the outstretched hand of the Goddess of Liberty in New York ’ s beautiful bay.
” Paradoxically , this new wave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was considered less desirable than the previous wave , which consisted primarily of English , Irish , and German people .
After Weber returned from his trip in 1892 , when a steamer christened the Nevada arrived at Ellis Island , Weber met the ship at the harbor .
Its passengers were the first immigrants to arrive there—a majority of whom were Russian Jews .
However , concerned about the optics of who constituted a good immigrant , officials hand-selected Annie Moore of Cork , Ireland , as “ the first guest at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 10 Liberty coin .
Much of the tension in Szejnert ’ s book resides in the contradiction between America ’ s immigration lore and the casual biases and political considerations required to construct it .
There is a small cast of recurring characters ( Fiorello La Guardia , a second-generation immigrant who served as the 99th mayor of New York City and who began his career working as an interpreter on Ellis Island between 1907 and 1910 , features prominently as a symbol of upward mobility and assimilation ) , but most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quietly as they arrive .
The book is neatly organized into parts with segmented sections , most of which take on a nautical theme channeling the ebbs and flows of human passage ( “ Rising Tide , ” “ Flood , ” “ Still Waters ” ) , but for the most part it is in the narrative structure that Szejnert most departs from Zinn .
Her case studies rely on a steady accumulation of evidence with little or no commentary as to their impact or implications for the people involved .
Considered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of contemporary America , this may strike some as a cop-out on first read .
But going through the motivations of individuals ’ moral failures is not the same as catering to both sides , and Szejnert ’ s stories , with their documentation of bureaucratic labyrinths and cruelties both overt and absent-minded , ultimately speak to everyday injustices left unsaid unless someone like Szejnert gives voice to them .
A horrifying parallel between early 20th and early 21st century immigration policy is the emphasis on merit , and whether prospective immigrants would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government assistance .
It takes the community of Olean , N.Y. , for example , to prevent 9-year-old Paula Pitum from being deported in 1914 .
Two years earlier , her father , Chaim , emigrated from Russia and sent for his wife and two children .
When his daughter , Paula , arrives , she is deemed “ retarded ” in her Ellis Island examination , and therefore risks being declared a public charge .
Stunningly , her entire family save for Chaim is ordered deported ; appeals to the secretary of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone but Paula .
Testimonies from her elementary school teacher that Paula ’ s “ house is kept clean and cozy , and the children are well-dressed and look happy ” grant her a one-year reprieve , which is inevitably extended because of World War I .
But in 1919 the immigration authorities target her again .
“ She has no one to go to in Russia , ” her father testifies .
“ She might better be thrown into the ocean.
” Chaim ’ s own citizenship ( and his purchases of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convince a judge to let Paula stay—at least until 1921 , when she is forced to undergo a mental competency examination yet again .
Ultimately , it will take the Supreme Court ’ s ordering a judicial review of her case , a $ 3,000 fee , and reports on Paula ’ s progress at six-month intervals for her to remain in a country she has called her home for 11 years .
Paula ’ s story overlaps with the United States ’ imposing its first immigration quotas , in 1921 .
Each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , amounting to 3 percent of the total members of that nationality living in the country as of 1910 .
“ As we know , the number of ‘ worse ’ immigrants…has been growing year after year , ” Szejnert notes , “ so setting a point of reference 11 years in the past demonstrates clearly whom the law ’ s authors support and whom they do not.
” That is to say , they are prioritizing immigrants from Germany , Scandinavia , and the UK .
Sounds an awful lot like not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shithole countries.
” One of the more prescient arguments Szejnert makes draws a link between the eugenic aspect of America ’ s approach to immigration historically and white nationalist politics more broadly .
In 1924 , Congress passed a second quota act , limiting nationalities to 2 percent of the US population , based on 1890 figures .
The change effectively downgraded the island from a center that processes immigrants to a detention center to house the suspicious—or those who were being deported .
As a congressman , La Guardia voted against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discrimination against Italians and Jews mainly , ” but it passed anyway .
A few weeks afterward , the Klu Klux Klan staged a march through New Jersey “ display [ ing ] threatening paraphernalia—white robes , hoods , burning torches and crosses…not so much against African-Americans as against Jews , Slavs , Italians , Asians , Latin Americans , and all immigrants alien to the former Protestant , white America.
” Focusing on white ethnic hierarchies enables Szejnert to articulate both the hypocrisy of US policy-makers and the way the overwhelming prioritization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system ’ s becoming , in all its ludicrousness , essentially a narcissism of petty differences .
For the former , Szejnert points to a cartoon by the illustrator Hendrik Willem Van Loon of two pilgrims who have recently exited the Mayflower only to be stopped by a Native American on the shores of Plymouth Rock : “ You can ’ t come in .
The quota for 1620 is full.
” But as Paula Pitum ’ s troubles illustrate , the citizenship of anyone who isn ’ t the “ good ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fashion or current events .
Sumi Utsushigawa , a second-generation immigrant born in Los Angeles , had her family ’ s citizenship status forcefully upended by World War II , the attack on Pearl Harbor , and President Franklin D. Roosevelt ’ s directive to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to prepare a list of “ enemy aliens.
” Utsushigawa ’ s father , a photographer for the LA Times and the LA Examiner , was arrested by the FBI in 1942 .
In order to survive , her family began selling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at cut-rate prices .
Eventually , her family , and thousands of other Japanese Americans , were interned at Ellis Island , which had been converted into a Coast Guard base .
This ostensible act of national security had the opposite effect of turning its own citizens against it ; Utsushigawa recalls “ the first generation weep [ ing ] when they realize [ d ] it was really true that Japan lost ” after the country ’ s unconditional surrender following the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .
“ All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there to point a way and they all teach the same thing , ” Utsushigawa says : And in this context , Fiorello La Guardia pops up yet again .
As mayor of New York ( and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense ) , he closes Japanese clubs and gathering places in the city and orders Japanese New Yorkers to stay in their homes .
“ Fiorello is absolutely convinced the good of America demands vigilance , ” Szejnert writes , which encapsulates everything that is right and wrong with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the political convention season , many commentators were left baffled by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley ’ s asserting that her Indian American family faced descrimination when she was growing up but nonetheless concluding that it “ is a lie ” to call the United States a racist nation , but , as Szejnert ’ s conscientious and methodical book suggests , immigrant experience is trained precisely toward this contradiction .
The brass ring for minorities is assimilation ; to coalesce around a shunning of the “ other ” amounts to adopting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems just as plausible a reason for why Donald Trump increased his 2020 vote totals with Black , Latino , and Asian voters by 4 percent , 3 percent , and 5 percent , respectively—despite wholesale assaults on immigration—as the right ’ s boilerplate pillorying of the Democrat ’ s “ radical agenda.
” While there is a distinct lack of Black and brown voices in the stories recounted in Ellis Island , that absence is made even more jarring in the sense that it affirms how removed those voices were—and are—from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notable exception is Thomas W. Matthew , the founder of the National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization ( NEGRO ) , who squatted at Ellis Island in 1954 along with 63 other men , women , and children for 13 days .
Ellis Island had closed its doors permanently that year , the result of dwindling immigration numbers—103,000 during the postwar decade , compared with over 1 million in 1907—and vastly different means of travel .
In addition to airplanes overtaking ocean liners as the dominant method of intercontinental travel , La Guardia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jobs for workers who might otherwise have been staffed at Ellis , which was prohibitively expensive to keep open based on its population .
The island remained dormant for 11 years , until Lyndon B. Johnson designated it a National Park in 1965 .
Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson were pegged at different times to design the park , and both projects languished because of a lack of congressional funding .
The Vietnam War was raging in 1969 when NEGRO showed up asking for a resocialization center , a series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ island ’ s Great Hall as an immigration monument and meeting place for different ethnic groups .
What they got was the right to use Ellis Island for five years , restricted to its south end , with the acknowledgment that the park would be keeping tabs on them .
A planned fundraiser to purchase the island failed , and as winter approached , Matthew ’ s ranks dwindled down to four before they abandoned the project entirely , leaving Ellis poised between a begrudged acknowledgement of the island ’ s contributions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing so much more—and should be .

At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the easiest ways to get marked for deportation at Ellis Island was flunking an eye exam. From 1903 to 1930, trachoma—an eye disease caused by Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria, which eventually leads to blindness—was classified by the United States Health Service as among the most serious of diseases “brought in” by immigrants. As Grover A. Kemp, a doctor who worked on Ellis Island from 1912 to 1916, recalled, everyone who stepped foot on the island had to undergo an inspection for it:
To turn the eyelid I used the good old buttoner—the button shoes were common in those days, and there was a little loop [used] to button shoes[;] [we] used [it] to turn the eyelid—it was the most efficient way of turning the eyes ever devised.
No one involved in the inspections ever entertained the possibility that exposure to this nonmedical tool increased trachoma cases—which, if true, inadvertently led to a decrease in immigrants entering the country. Caught in between that question—did immigrants bring trachoma, or did medical ignorance bring trachoma to immigrants?—one is led to conclude that it might’ve been a bit of both. However, the possibility of arriving immigrants’ being harmed through this heedlessness shows how appallingly primitive physical examinations on Ellis Island were while underlining the United States’ tenuous relationship with newly arrived persons.
Much of Malgorzata Szejnert’s Ellis Island: A People’s History—a new history of the island that covers the years 1774 (when Samuel Ellis, a merchant in colonial New York and the island’s namesake, bought it) to 2003 (when current members of the Leni Lenape tribe, who were pressured into “selling” the island to the Dutch West India Company in 1630, were allowed to exhume the remains of their ancestors)—works this way. She provides a plethora of raw data, including nationality quotas, how many people arrived on ships, the date when commissioners left their post—but her primary mode of storytelling is encouraging her audience to read between the lines, and her book does much in the service of contextualizing immigration to the US as fraught with discriminatory snap judgments on the merits of arriving individuals’ human value, rather than a triumphant articulation of American values, with a welcome mat in New York harbor. Books in Review Ellis Island: A People's History By Malgorzata Szejnert Buy this book
Szejnert is arguably the most eminent living journalist in Poland—the cofounder of Gazeta Wyborcza, a prominent daily newspaper and one of the first post-communist publications in the country, which she ran for 15 years. She proceeded to write several books on subjects such as labor strikes and workers’ quarters in her own country, as well as a collection of articles about Polish Americans. Ellis Island is her first book in English. It appears in a serviceable translation by Sean Gasper Bye.
In the book’s afterword, Szejnert says she became interested in Ellis Island after a visit to the National Museum of Immigration, located on the island. “Who were the people of the island—the keepers of the gate?” she asks. “What was their interaction like with those pressing in on those gates? How did they reconcile the virtues they learned in their homes and democratic institutions with the cruelty their service often demanded.” She continues: “I found it just as easy to obtain testimony of the United States’ generosity as of its selfishness.” It’s this judgment that Szejnert is interested in: “those who accepted [immigrants] (or rejected them.)” However, to affix the tactical phrase “a people’s history” to her historical text implies a challenge to America’s conventional immigration narrative. In this sense, the book recalls Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which retells the story of America from 1492 through the George W. Bush years from the perspective of the persecuted and the marginal. While it damns the actions of the ruling class, Zinn’s book never intended to discredit “America” per se. Rather, the point of his history was to situate the agitation for rights in the face of institutional oppression as integral to the country’s identity—even as its history has shown that progress was always stymied by the select few who exercised power over the disenfranchised and the dispossessed. Conversely, Szejnert’s People’s History is quieter and less didactic, despite sharing a similar interest in polyphony and tracing a familiar historical arc with a darker pencil. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Originally an execution site for pirates, what was then known as Little Oyster Island was purchased by Samuel Ellis in 1774. The island was eventually used for military exercises and held artillery batteries, British prisoners of war, and more pirates due for execution; in its second stint as a capital punishment site, bodies were donated to Manhattan’s College of Surgeons for use as cadavers. Although the property was willed to Ellis’s children, inheritance battles and considerations for the national interest led to its being sold to the federal government in 1808.
From 1855 to 1890, people immigrating to the United States were received at Castle Garden, a fort located in Battery Park. Ironically, it was benevolence, rather than xenophobia, that led to the collective decision to turn over the process from New York municipal control to the federal government. Bedloe’s Island, which houses the Statue of Liberty, was the first choice, but the adjacent Ellis Island was ultimately chosen, as the result of an uproar from both the statue’s creator, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, and Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper the New York World, which characterized the idea of receiving aspiring US citizens on the same site as the statue as “blasphemous,” and turning Lady Liberty “into the Tower of Babel,” respectively. Munitions were removed from Ellis, canals were dredged to better accommodate ferry traffic, and President Benjamin Harrison installed the island’s inaugural commissioner, John Baptiste Weber, at the Port of New York.
Szejnert chronicles Harrison’s decision to send Weber to Russia in the 1890s while the island’s station was being completed to discern why it was that large numbers of Jewish people in Eastern Europe wanted to immigrate to the United States. The episode illustrates what has remained endemic about the US vision of immigration as a kind of condescending benevolence: “It is inhumane of us to push these people back into the pit from which they have crawled,” Weber writes in his report to Harrison. “When we do this we should extinguish the torch [in] the outstretched hand of the Goddess of Liberty in New York’s beautiful bay.” Paradoxically, this new wave of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was considered less desirable than the previous wave, which consisted primarily of English, Irish, and German people.
After Weber returned from his trip in 1892, when a steamer christened the Nevada arrived at Ellis Island, Weber met the ship at the harbor. Its passengers were the first immigrants to arrive there—a majority of whom were Russian Jews. However, concerned about the optics of who constituted a good immigrant, officials hand-selected Annie Moore of Cork, Ireland, as “the first guest at Ellis Island,” and awarded a $10 Liberty coin.
Much of the tension in Szejnert’s book resides in the contradiction between America’s immigration lore and the casual biases and political considerations required to construct it. There is a small cast of recurring characters (Fiorello La Guardia, a second-generation immigrant who served as the 99th mayor of New York City and who began his career working as an interpreter on Ellis Island between 1907 and 1910, features prominently as a symbol of upward mobility and assimilation), but most of Szejnert’s subjects depart as quietly as they arrive. The book is neatly organized into parts with segmented sections, most of which take on a nautical theme channeling the ebbs and flows of human passage (“Rising Tide,” “Flood,” “Still Waters”), but for the most part it is in the narrative structure that Szejnert most departs from Zinn. Her case studies rely on a steady accumulation of evidence with little or no commentary as to their impact or implications for the people involved. Considered in light of the sweltering street-level politics of contemporary America, this may strike some as a cop-out on first read. But going through the motivations of individuals’ moral failures is not the same as catering to both sides, and Szejnert’s stories, with their documentation of bureaucratic labyrinths and cruelties both overt and absent-minded, ultimately speak to everyday injustices left unsaid unless someone like Szejnert gives voice to them.
A horrifying parallel between early 20th and early 21st century immigration policy is the emphasis on merit, and whether prospective immigrants would be able to provide for themselves without government assistance. It takes the community of Olean, N.Y., for example, to prevent 9-year-old Paula Pitum from being deported in 1914. Two years earlier, her father, Chaim, emigrated from Russia and sent for his wife and two children. When his daughter, Paula, arrives, she is deemed “retarded” in her Ellis Island examination, and therefore risks being declared a public charge. Stunningly, her entire family save for Chaim is ordered deported; appeals to the secretary of labor manage to reverse the decision for everyone but Paula. Testimonies from her elementary school teacher that Paula’s “house is kept clean and cozy, and the children are well-dressed and look happy” grant her a one-year reprieve, which is inevitably extended because of World War I. But in 1919 the immigration authorities target her again. “She has no one to go to in Russia,” her father testifies. “She might better be thrown into the ocean.” Chaim’s own citizenship (and his purchases of Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps) convince a judge to let Paula stay—at least until 1921, when she is forced to undergo a mental competency examination yet again. Ultimately, it will take the Supreme Court’s ordering a judicial review of her case, a $3,000 fee, and reports on Paula’s progress at six-month intervals for her to remain in a country she has called her home for 11 years.
Paula’s story overlaps with the United States’ imposing its first immigration quotas, in 1921. Each nationality was assigned a cap on entries, amounting to 3 percent of the total members of that nationality living in the country as of 1910. “As we know, the number of ‘worse’ immigrants…has been growing year after year,” Szejnert notes, “so setting a point of reference 11 years in the past demonstrates clearly whom the law’s authors support and whom they do not.” That is to say, they are prioritizing immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK. Sounds an awful lot like not wanting to allow in people from “shithole countries.”
One of the more prescient arguments Szejnert makes draws a link between the eugenic aspect of America’s approach to immigration historically and white nationalist politics more broadly. In 1924, Congress passed a second quota act, limiting nationalities to 2 percent of the US population, based on 1890 figures. The change effectively downgraded the island from a center that processes immigrants to a detention center to house the suspicious—or those who were being deported. As a congressman, La Guardia voted against the bill as as “vicious, cruel discrimination against Italians and Jews mainly,” but it passed anyway. A few weeks afterward, the Klu Klux Klan staged a march through New Jersey “display[ing] threatening paraphernalia—white robes, hoods, burning torches and crosses…not so much against African-Americans as against Jews, Slavs, Italians, Asians, Latin Americans, and all immigrants alien to the former Protestant, white America.” Focusing on white ethnic hierarchies enables Szejnert to articulate both the hypocrisy of US policy-makers and the way the overwhelming prioritization of white personhood led to the quota system’s becoming, in all its ludicrousness, essentially a narcissism of petty differences. For the former, Szejnert points to a cartoon by the illustrator Hendrik Willem Van Loon of two pilgrims who have recently exited the Mayflower only to be stopped by a Native American on the shores of Plymouth Rock: “You can’t come in. The quota for 1620 is full.”
But as Paula Pitum’s troubles illustrate, the citizenship of anyone who isn’t the “good” kind of white is at the mercy of fashion or current events. Sumi Utsushigawa, a second-generation immigrant born in Los Angeles, had her family’s citizenship status forcefully upended by World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s directive to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to prepare a list of “enemy aliens.” Utsushigawa’s father, a photographer for the LA Times and the LA Examiner, was arrested by the FBI in 1942. In order to survive, her family began selling furniture, appliances, and photography equipment at cut-rate prices. Eventually, her family, and thousands of other Japanese Americans, were interned at Ellis Island, which had been converted into a Coast Guard base. This ostensible act of national security had the opposite effect of turning its own citizens against it; Utsushigawa recalls “the first generation weep[ing] when they realize[d] it was really true that Japan lost” after the country’s unconditional surrender following the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “All the great messengers of life have been there to point a way and they all teach the same thing,” Utsushigawa says:
The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If you did, there would be peace. There would be no conflict. But nobody practices their religion. They wear it on Sundays or on the Sabbath.
And in this context, Fiorello La Guardia pops up yet again. As mayor of New York (and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense), he closes Japanese clubs and gathering places in the city and orders Japanese New Yorkers to stay in their homes. “Fiorello is absolutely convinced the good of America demands vigilance,” Szejnert writes, which encapsulates everything that is right and wrong with how the US views immigration. During the political convention season, many commentators were left baffled by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s asserting that her Indian American family faced descrimination when she was growing up but nonetheless concluding that it “is a lie” to call the United States a racist nation, but, as Szejnert’s conscientious and methodical book suggests, immigrant experience is trained precisely toward this contradiction. The brass ring for minorities is assimilation; to coalesce around a shunning of the “other” amounts to adopting American values. Maintaining this aspirational hegemony seems just as plausible a reason for why Donald Trump increased his 2020 vote totals with Black, Latino, and Asian voters by 4 percent, 3 percent, and 5 percent, respectively—despite wholesale assaults on immigration—as the right’s boilerplate pillorying of the Democrat’s “radical agenda.”
While there is a distinct lack of Black and brown voices in the stories recounted in Ellis Island, that absence is made even more jarring in the sense that it affirms how removed those voices were—and are—from the levers of power. One brief but notable exception is Thomas W. Matthew, the founder of the National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO), who squatted at Ellis Island in 1954 along with 63 other men, women, and children for 13 days. Ellis Island had closed its doors permanently that year, the result of dwindling immigration numbers—103,000 during the postwar decade, compared with over 1 million in 1907—and vastly different means of travel. In addition to airplanes overtaking ocean liners as the dominant method of intercontinental travel, La Guardia’s namesake airport provided thousands of jobs for workers who might otherwise have been staffed at Ellis, which was prohibitively expensive to keep open based on its population.
The island remained dormant for 11 years, until Lyndon B. Johnson designated it a National Park in 1965. Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson were pegged at different times to design the park, and both projects languished because of a lack of congressional funding. The Vietnam War was raging in 1969 when NEGRO showed up asking for a resocialization center, a series of workshops, and the restoration of the island’s Great Hall as an immigration monument and meeting place for different ethnic groups. What they got was the right to use Ellis Island for five years, restricted to its south end, with the acknowledgment that the park would be keeping tabs on them. A planned fundraiser to purchase the island failed, and as winter approached, Matthew’s ranks dwindled down to four before they abandoned the project entirely, leaving Ellis poised between a begrudged acknowledgement of the island’s contributions, and a frustration that it could be doing so much more—and should be.


thenation--2020-12-22--You Can Refuse to Work for Fossil Fuel Companies—These Law Students Show How

We hoped to begin this term of law school enjoying the clear skies and clean air of Northern California .
The climate crisis had other ideas .
Smoke from the fires that swept across California crept into our lungs and dyed the sky orange .
We logged on to our virtual classes anyway .
And we ’ ve continued to , even as fire season drags into December , breaking records for most acres burned in a single year .
Here in California , up to 3,000 of our neighbors died from 40 days of smoke in the beginning of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better world , top law firms would help these victims seek justice and hold bad actors accountable .
Instead , they ’ re making the crisis worse .
That ’ s why , in October 2020 , a small group of students at Yale Law School published the 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard , which assigned a data-driven Climate Score to the top 100 law firms .
The report ’ s findings galvanized law students across the country , transforming individual discomfort with firm behavior into a mass movement .
Hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States and abroad have signed the Law Student Climate Pledge , questioned firms ’ s behavior at recruitment events , and had meaningful discussions with classmates pursuing careers at these firms .
This story was produced for Student Nation , a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words .
For more Student Nation , check out our archive .
Are you a student with a campus activism story ?
Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at samantha @ thenation.com .
The Student Nation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from The Puffin Foundation The legal profession facilitates every aspect of the fossil fuel industry ’ s success .
Lawyers lobby against environmental regulation , conduct the transactional work behind new fossil fuel infrastructure , quash lawsuits from cities seeking climate damages , and much more .
The Dakota Access Pipeline ( DAPL ) illustrates the relationship between law firms and the fossil fuel industry .
As the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes organized protests against the pipeline , an army of lawyers worked late into the night and long into their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supply .
Lawyers had a hand in nearly every aspect of the project , from securing financing to lobbying against the environmental regulations that would halt the pipeline .
At least eight of the top 100 law firms fought for DAPL .
Unfortunately , DAPL is not an outlier .
The Scorecard takes a magnifying glass to law firms , evaluating whether their lawsuits mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change ; their financial holdings in fossil fuels ; and their lobbying clients .
The findings are alarming .
Between 2015 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked on 10 times more cases exacerbating climate change than addressing it .
The top firms facilitated $ 1.3 trillion in transactions for the fossil fuel industry and earned five times more lobbying for fossil fuel companies than for those producing renewable energy .
For too long , the idea of universal access to representation has quashed criticism of law firm clients .
But we believe that there is a world of difference between ensuring access to counsel for vulnerable members of our community and mobilizing legions of firm lawyers to further tip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with their own legal departments .
Lawyers have an essential role to play in climate change mitigation .
Many law firms already work on behalf of the renewable energy companies charting a path out of the climate crisis .
When these companies seek to expand their clean energy efforts or lobby for government action , they call their lawyers , too .
But the trend is clear .
Eighty-two of the top 100 firms did more to contribute to the climate crisis than to mitigate it .
Only four refused to work on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signing the Law Firm Climate Responsibility Pledge , firms can commit to rejecting new fossil fuel industry clients , phasing out current fossil fuel clients , and continuing to engage in renewable energy work and litigation to fight climate change .
American Bar Association model rules allow lawyers to stop representing a client for any “ good cause , ” including the client ’ s insistence on “ taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.
” We should all disagree with a business model @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and displacement .
Law firm clients who take climate change seriously should sever relationships with law firms whose values don ’ t match their own .
Finally , law students have a role to play .
If young lawyers refuse to work for firms that represent the fossil fuel industry , the culture of complicity will change .
California ’ s wildfire season and other climate catastrophes will only get worse .
We ’ ll again be confined indoors .
Smoke will seep into our homes and workplaces .
Farmworkers will labor through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Blackouts will endanger those whose medical devices rely on power .
Lives will be lost , homes will be destroyed , and we ’ ll be left picking up the pieces .
Enough is enough .
As law students and Californians , we are acutely aware of the damage that the fossil fuel industry and its lawyers are causing .
Law firms and lawyers have an opportunity to be on the right side of history .
Will they take it ?
Want to learn more about Law Students for Climate Accountability ?
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follow us on Twitter or Instagram .

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We hoped to begin this term of law school enjoying the clear skies and clean air of Northern California. The climate crisis had other ideas.
Smoke from the fires that swept across California crept into our lungs and dyed the sky orange. We logged on to our virtual classes anyway. And we’ve continued to, even as fire season drags into December, breaking records for most acres burned in a single year.
Here in California, up to 3,000 of our neighbors died from 40 days of smoke in the beginning of the 2020 fire season. In a better world, top law firms would help these victims seek justice and hold bad actors accountable. Instead, they’re making the crisis worse.
That’s why, in October 2020, a small group of students at Yale Law School published the 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard, which assigned a data-driven Climate Score to the top 100 law firms. The report’s findings galvanized law students across the country, transforming individual discomfort with firm behavior into a mass movement. Hundreds of students from 47 law schools in the United States and abroad have signed the Law Student Climate Pledge, questioned firms’s behavior at recruitment events, and had meaningful discussions with classmates pursuing careers at these firms. This story was produced for Student Nation, a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words. For more Student Nation, check out our archive. Are you a student with a campus activism story? Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at [email protected]. The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation
The legal profession facilitates every aspect of the fossil fuel industry’s success. Lawyers lobby against environmental regulation, conduct the transactional work behind new fossil fuel infrastructure, quash lawsuits from cities seeking climate damages, and much more.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) illustrates the relationship between law firms and the fossil fuel industry. As the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes organized protests against the pipeline, an army of lawyers worked late into the night and long into their weekends to threaten indigenous heritage and water supply. Lawyers had a hand in nearly every aspect of the project, from securing financing to lobbying against the environmental regulations that would halt the pipeline. At least eight of the top 100 law firms fought for DAPL.
Unfortunately, DAPL is not an outlier. The Scorecard takes a magnifying glass to law firms, evaluating whether their lawsuits mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change; their financial holdings in fossil fuels; and their lobbying clients. The findings are alarming. Between 2015 and 2019, the top 100 law firms worked on 10 times more cases exacerbating climate change than addressing it. The top firms facilitated $1.3 trillion in transactions for the fossil fuel industry and earned five times more lobbying for fossil fuel companies than for those producing renewable energy. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Current Issue View our current issue
For too long, the idea of universal access to representation has quashed criticism of law firm clients. But we believe that there is a world of difference between ensuring access to counsel for vulnerable members of our community and mobilizing legions of firm lawyers to further tip the scales in favor of massive corporations with their own legal departments.
Lawyers have an essential role to play in climate change mitigation. Many law firms already work on behalf of the renewable energy companies charting a path out of the climate crisis. When these companies seek to expand their clean energy efforts or lobby for government action, they call their lawyers, too.
But the trend is clear. Eighty-two of the top 100 firms did more to contribute to the climate crisis than to mitigate it. Only four refused to work on behalf of fossil fuel companies.
By signing the Law Firm Climate Responsibility Pledge, firms can commit to rejecting new fossil fuel industry clients, phasing out current fossil fuel clients, and continuing to engage in renewable energy work and litigation to fight climate change. American Bar Association model rules allow lawyers to stop representing a client for any “good cause,” including the client’s insistence on “taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.” We should all disagree with a business model that condemns future generations to endless disaster and displacement.
Law firm clients who take climate change seriously should sever relationships with law firms whose values don’t match their own. Finally, law students have a role to play. If young lawyers refuse to work for firms that represent the fossil fuel industry, the culture of complicity will change.
California’s wildfire season and other climate catastrophes will only get worse. We’ll again be confined indoors. Smoke will seep into our homes and workplaces. Farmworkers will labor through searing heat and hazardous air quality. Blackouts will endanger those whose medical devices rely on power.
Lives will be lost, homes will be destroyed, and we’ll be left picking up the pieces.
Enough is enough.
As law students and Californians, we are acutely aware of the damage that the fossil fuel industry and its lawyers are causing.
Law firms and lawyers have an opportunity to be on the right side of history. Will they take it?
Want to learn more about Law Students for Climate Accountability? You can contact LSCA via this form and follow us on Twitter or Instagram.


thenation--2020-12-22--The Latinx Future Will Not Look Like the Latinx Past

The ongoing struggle for racial justice .
The future for immigrant families .
The health and well-being of all Americans .
The very fate of our fragile planet .
The United States faces a crossroads in 2020 .
Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar , The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What ’ s At Stake , a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers .
Follow the whole series here .
This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project .
Some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States after immigrating from Mexico are the long drives to the supermarket my father and I used to take .
As soon as we entered the car , my father would put on his favorite CD , by Los Tigres Del Norte , and immediately “ La Jaula De Oro ” would start to play .
This norteña anthem laments that the journey of migration , the opportunities that await in America , and the struggle to live the American Dream all come with great costs : “ Although this cage is made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ it does not stop being a prison.
” As my dad nodded along , I could tell this was a lesson my father had learned himself , creating a life away from the country of his youth .
But for me , it ended up taking a few years of living here to fully understand the complexity of the lyrics , and the pull they had on my father .
Like many other young immigrants and first-generation Americans , young Latinxs have seen and experienced what the pursuit of the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seeing our parents overworked , mistreated , and ridiculed while they are simultaneously expected to remain grateful for the scraps this country offers them has for decades shaped how our communities live in this country .
There has been Latinx activism and organizing in this country for as long as the United States has existed , but for my generation of Latinx youth , things seem different : As a group , we seem to be throwing off the heavy burden this places on our shoulders and are confronting head-on the oppressive systems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of my generation—I ’ m 24—have become more vocal than ever before , organizing around issues that affect our communities and pushing our friends , family , and neighbors to get involved in shaping our political future .
“ I think we are more outspoken ” than the generations that came before , says Nikki .
“ We honor our cultural backgrounds but we are also more likely to stand up for what we believe in and to teach the older generation where their views may be biased.
” Part of the shift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ category Latinx is not a monolith : Our communities are composed of many races , religions , and nationalities .
We come from different countries , different backgrounds .
It ’ s a category that includes wealthy Cuban refugees alongside poor Indigenous Central American migrants , White Latin Americans alongside Afro-Latinxs .
This diversity creates tension , and our generation is working to address the racism , colorism , and xenophobia that exists in many of our communities .
“ Latinos have a lot of work to do when we talk about racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s a lot of anti-Blackness in our culture and we can do better by simply talking to and educating our family and friends.
” Understanding that we all have racial bias , that there are learned behaviors that have been passed down from generation to generation , that white supremacy is a global issue and not specific to America , drives a lot of our organizing .
“ I want for everyone to come together , to become allies , because at the end of the day we are far more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Liz .
Then there ’ s the topic of immigration : Every four years , the presidential candidates make big promises about immigration , saying they ’ ll be the one to finally pass overdue policy reform , or threatening to shut the borders to Latinx immigrants .
But the last comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty legislation was passed almost 35 years ago , so undocumented immigrants can be forgiven for not giving much weight to candidates ’ promises .
The DACA program passed under Obama , which provided a path to citizenship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as minors , has so far survived the Trump administration , but it is far from the comprehensive immigration reform this country needs .
As Berenice , a DACA recipient , told me , “ To some , citizenship may not be much , but citizenship for others is the security blanket that many aspire a whole lifetime to obtain and only a few get.
” Though being undocumented doesn ’ t define you as a person , it does set boundaries as how big you can dream .
Yasmine , a DACA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s so much uncertainty living in the US as an undocumented person .
We can ’ t allow ourselves to dream too much because it can all be easily taken away.
” Or as Berenice explained , “ I feel like I am in constant limbo .
Not knowing the future of DACA has kept me from looking into opening my business.
” Living as an immigrant in the United States these past four years under Trump has created a lot of fear and uncertainty within our communities , and we see the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Growing up , our parents seem like the strongest people in the world , but when we become adults oursselves , we begin to understand how great the burdens placed upon them were , and how much they struggled with them .
“ Young undocumented are at front of immigration reform , but we can ’ t forget about our parents , grandparents and neighbors , ” Kristian , a former Dreamer explains .
“ They deserve protection as well.
” Now that my generation is growing up , we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our parents , our brothers and sisters , and some of us have started a family of our own .
We ’ re thinking of the future , not just for ourselves , but for those who will come after us .
“ I want my little girl to know and learn about her family ’ s history , how both of her grandparents immigrated to the US for a better future .
I want her to feel empowered by her roots and not made to feel less than , ” says Bianca @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our cultures and traditions alive and to not let them be consumed by assimilation .
While honoring our parents and ancestors , we want to create a new Latinx identity in this country , one that ’ s founded on mutual respect and equity .
We finally have the power to become the role models that we desperately wanted to see growing up .

The ongoing struggle for racial justice. The future for immigrant families. The health and well-being of all Americans. The very fate of our fragile planet. The United States faces a crossroads in 2020. Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar, The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What’s At Stake, a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers. Follow the whole series here. This installment was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Some of the earliest memories I have of the United States after immigrating from Mexico are the long drives to the supermarket my father and I used to take. As soon as we entered the car, my father would put on his favorite CD, by Los Tigres Del Norte, and immediately “La Jaula De Oro” would start to play. This norteña anthem laments that the journey of migration, the opportunities that await in America, and the struggle to live the American Dream all come with great costs: “Although this cage is made of gold,” Los Tigres sing, “it does not stop being a prison.” As my dad nodded along, I could tell this was a lesson my father had learned himself, creating a life away from the country of his youth. But for me, it ended up taking a few years of living here to fully understand the complexity of the lyrics, and the pull they had on my father.
Like many other young immigrants and first-generation Americans, young Latinxs have seen and experienced what the pursuit of the American Dream can do to a body. Seeing our parents overworked, mistreated, and ridiculed while they are simultaneously expected to remain grateful for the scraps this country offers them has for decades shaped how our communities live in this country. There has been Latinx activism and organizing in this country for as long as the United States has existed, but for my generation of Latinx youth, things seem different: As a group, we seem to be throwing off the heavy burden this places on our shoulders and are confronting head-on the oppressive systems that shape our lives.
Latinx youth of my generation—I’m 24—have become more vocal than ever before, organizing around issues that affect our communities and pushing our friends, family, and neighbors to get involved in shaping our political future. “I think we are more outspoken” than the generations that came before, says Nikki. “We honor our cultural backgrounds but we are also more likely to stand up for what we believe in and to teach the older generation where their views may be biased.”
Part of the shift has come from the recognition that the category Latinx is not a monolith: Our communities are composed of many races, religions, and nationalities. We come from different countries, different backgrounds. It’s a category that includes wealthy Cuban refugees alongside poor Indigenous Central American migrants, White Latin Americans alongside Afro-Latinxs. This diversity creates tension, and our generation is working to address the racism, colorism, and xenophobia that exists in many of our communities. “Latinos have a lot of work to do when we talk about racism,” Liz told me. “There’s a lot of anti-Blackness in our culture and we can do better by simply talking to and educating our family and friends.” Understanding that we all have racial bias, that there are learned behaviors that have been passed down from generation to generation, that white supremacy is a global issue and not specific to America, drives a lot of our organizing. “I want for everyone to come together, to become allies, because at the end of the day we are far more similar than we are different.” says Liz.
Then there’s the topic of immigration: Every four years, the presidential candidates make big promises about immigration, saying they’ll be the one to finally pass overdue policy reform, or threatening to shut the borders to Latinx immigrants. But the last comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty legislation was passed almost 35 years ago, so undocumented immigrants can be forgiven for not giving much weight to candidates’ promises. The Obama-era DACA program, which provided work authorization and protection from deportation for undocumented people brought to the country as minors, has so far survived the Trump administration, but it is far from the comprehensive immigration reform this country needs. As Berenice, a DACA recipient, told me, “To some, citizenship may not be much, but citizenship for others is the security blanket that many aspire a whole lifetime to obtain and only a few get.” Though being undocumented doesn’t define you as a person, it does set boundaries as how big you can dream. Yasmine, a DACA recipient, adds, “There’s so much uncertainty living in the US as an undocumented person. We can’t allow ourselves to dream too much because it can all be easily taken away.” Or as Berenice explained, “I feel like I am in constant limbo. Not knowing the future of DACA has kept me from looking into opening my business.”
Living as an immigrant in the United States these past four years under Trump has created a lot of fear and uncertainty within our communities, and we see the toll this has taken on our parents. Growing up, our parents seem like the strongest people in the world, but when we become adults oursselves, we begin to understand how great the burdens placed upon them were, and how much they struggled with them. “Young undocumented are at front of immigration reform, but we can’t forget about our parents, grandparents and neighbors,” Kristian, a former Dreamer explains. “They deserve protection as well.”
Now that my generation is growing up, we’re entering the workforce, taking care of our parents, our brothers and sisters, and some of us have started a family of our own. We’re thinking of the future, not just for ourselves, but for those who will come after us. “I want my little girl to know and learn about her family’s history, how both of her grandparents immigrated to the US for a better future. I want her to feel empowered by her roots and not made to feel less than,” says Bianca. We feel the responsibility to keep our cultures and traditions alive and to not let them be consumed by assimilation. While honoring our parents and ancestors, we want to create a new Latinx identity in this country, one that’s founded on mutual respect and equity. We finally have the power to become the role models that we desperately wanted to see growing up.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that DACA provided recipients with a path to citizenship. It does not. This article has been updated.