What Does Assimilation Look Like - In Iowa

                                                                     Photo:     wiki.triastelematica.org

For a look at assimilation of immigrants in the US, we need go no further than the heartland - small town rural Iowa where the first bilingual classes in the state began, where initial fears gave way to acceptance, where businesses are now thriving rather than folding.

Downtown West Liberty, Iowa, is quintessentially Midwestern American, both quaint and historic, with brick buildings lining brick streets. A typical stroll involves walking past the bank, a renovated theater, a hair salon, restaurants and stores.

West Liberty Mayor Chad Thomas says that unlike a lot of other small Midwestern towns that are dying, West Liberty is alive.

"I see a lot of businesses that are open, and not vacant storefronts," Thomas says. "Probably half of the businesses are Hispanic-owned."

Next to Paul Revere's Pizza on 3rd Street is Tienda La Luna, and next to the American Legion Hall is the popular Acapulco Mexican Bakery.

Now at 3,700 people and counting, the eastern Iowa town is growing and thriving, Thomas says.

"If you didn't have the Hispanic population here in town, yeah, we would be much more like a lot of smaller towns, and there would be a lot more storefronts that are empty," he says.

And unlike other parts of the Midwest that are attracting Latino immigrants, the Hispanic population in West Liberty is not new.

"I mean, we're very unique in that there's folks in this community, in the Hispanic community, that are here in their fifth and sixth generation," Thomas says.

In the 2000 census, West Liberty was already well over 40 percent Latino, and has been steadily growing for decades.

The first big surge in Latino immigrants arrived in the 1930s for jobs in what was then a Louis Rich turkey processing plant.

That plant, now called West Liberty Foods, is still a draw for some newcomers. But most of the recent increase in the Hispanic population comes from growing, established families who came for the Louis Rich jobs, stayed and planted roots in this quiet, safe and friendly small town.

HARD WORK

Jose Zacarias is among them. The 56-year-old moved to West Liberty from Mexico in 1984, working first in the turkey processing plant, a job he said was dirty, grueling and dangerous. By learning English, he was able to get better factory jobs. They were farther away, but Zacarias continued living in West Liberty.

He bought a big old farmhouse on the outskirts of West Liberty 20 years ago and raised three boys there. He called it and the two acres around him "a quiet piece of heaven" — until the new high school was built nearby a few years ago.

INITIAL FEARS

He considers many Anglos among his closest friends, and says the white and Hispanic communities in West Liberty get along well. But he says it wasn't always this way.

"When I arrived here in '84, they told me that such and such businessman wouldn't allow it, like for instance, the bar owners, wouldn't allow Mexican customers there, or they despise them openly, or things like that," Zacarias says.

But Zacarias and others in West Liberty say such conflicts gradually faded away, especially as Hispanics became more economically integrated into the community, and as the schools better integrated the community's children.

School with a WAITING LIST

The West Liberty school system has what was the first dual-language program in the state.

Students take all of their classes in both Spanish and English, switching from an English-language teacher in the morning to a Spanish-language teacher in the afternoon.

West Liberty Elementary School principal Nancy Gardner says the program is voluntary, with half of the spots reserved for kids who speak English primarily at home, and half for those who speak Spanish.

INTEGRATION

"And in the end, all the students then become bilingual, biliterate and bicultural," Gardner says.

The dual language program is now in its 14th year, and last spring graduated its first high school senior class of students who started as kindergartners.

The program is so successful, several Anglo families have moved to West Liberty from nearby Iowa City, Muscatine and other towns specifically to enroll their kids. The program, which now has a waiting list, is being duplicated in a handful of other Iowa school districts with growing Hispanic populations.

Read more from this source:  http://www.iowaimmigrationeducation.org/index.cfm?nodeID=19036&audienceID=1&action=display&newsID=15065

Anti-Latino Racism Slams CNN National News Desk Editor

Nick Valencia is a national news desk editor and former head of the CNN Spanish Desk.  He's a third-generation American citizen recently confronted by racist comments coming from a hate filled woman in Georgia:

Atlanta (CNN) -- "Go home!" she yelled at me. "Why don't you go back home to Mexico before you ruin this country like you ruined your own!"
I was standing in a crowd at the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta, where I live. A few minutes earlier I'd met a group of five people who'd been standing in front of me -- here from Mexico City -- and I had begun speaking Spanish with them.
Atlanta has a growing Latino community, and I am actively involved. Whenever I get the chance to speak to someone in Spanish here, I introduce myself. My new acquaintances and I were talking about what a great time we were having and how remarkable the city of Atlanta was for bringing back the festival to Piedmont Park.
And that's when I heard the yelling woman next to me. As if "go home" wasn't clear enough, the woman -- a 20-something Caucasian -- repeated the words in Spanish.
"Vete!"
I froze. I didn't quite know what to say, and I didn't want to believe she was talking to me or the group of people I had just met.

Nick Valencia

As a third-generation Mexican-American growing up in Los Angeles, I had never encountered such overt racism. In fact, because my family was long since assimilated, among my Latino friends I was always considered the "pocho" or "white boy" of the group. (As I write this, a part of me knows somewhere in L.A., a friend of mine will be proud to know someone actually considered me Mexican enough to yell "go home" at me.)
My Mexican friends remind me that I am American first, Mexican second and that my English is better than my Spanish.
"Yes," I tell them. "But I can never walk into a room and be white."
Evidently, to some the brown color of my skin means I'm not even American. My friends and family tell me what I experienced that night is a microcosm of what is happening to Latinos across the country. You don't have to look hard to find it. In news stories, in political discourse, on talk radio, in everyday conversation it seems it has become OK to treat Latinos in a negative and antagonistic way -- whether they are new immigrants or longtime Americans. The anti-immigration legislation sweeping across the United States has made this plain. People in my Latino networks say they've noticed the change. And now I understand what they mean.
Like many Americans whose grandparents or parents came here from somewhere else, I live at the intersection of my two cultures. I eat tacos, but I love cheeseburgers. I go salsa dancing, and listen to rock n' roll. I speak Spanish and English, and depending on the crowd, sometimes Spanglish. I love my country and my cultural community. My duality is my reality, just like the 50 million other Latinos in the United States.
I have been luckier than many. Before this incident, the closest I'd ever come to blatant racism was in junior high. I was in the jazz band and played first trumpet. One day our jazz band teacher invited in his predecessor, a local legend who had made Eagle Rock High School's jazz program famous in the 1980s.
The visiting instructor pointed me out and asked me to play him 16 bars of music. I did, but he quickly interrupted.
"Stop, stop, stop. I don't want to hear any of that mariachi music. This is jazz."
I didn't think anything of it. Instead I felt terrible that the legend standing in front of me didn't think I was good enough. I went home that night, and like every night, at 6:30 p.m. my family sat down for dinner to talk about our day.
"How was your day, Nicky?" my dad asked.
So I told him. Outraged, the next day he went to my principal and filed a formal complaint. The legend didn't come back to visit the jazz program again. Weeks later we received a letter in the mail from him apologizing for his insensitive comments. My family saved the letter.
My father was hypersensitive to ethnic identity and deeply proud of his Latino heritage. The son of a naturalized immigrant from El Salvador and a Mexican mother from Texas, he grew up in Los Angeles during a time of racial tension. When I was young he would tell me stories of the race riots in his high school, violence against people of color, and awful accounts of the struggle he had to make it as a Mexican-American teen in the 1960s.
He died when I was 17 years old, but one of the phrases he implanted in my mind before he passed was a statement activist Cesar Chavez made famous:
"Si se puede" -- "Yes you can."
And now, here I was, at 28, with this stranger yelling at me to "leave." I stood there in the middle of a damp crowd on a late Atlanta evening, not comprehending, the wind still and the vibrations of Coldplay's "Yellow" filling the space in the air.
I didn't say a thing.
I didn't have to.
The crowd around us looked in amazement at this woman. Some of them spoke up to her, telling her she was wrong to talk to us like that. The group of people from Mexico City looked at her in disgust and, realizing from the look on my face that I must not be accustomed to what I was hearing, they turned toward me to offer support.
One of them, a young man, grabbed my hand and raised it high in the air.
"Estamos aqui," he said, which translates to "We are here."
It was the "Si se puede" moment.
The woman continued to taunt us for some minutes, but when we did not reciprocate her hatred, she stopped.
The band played a few more songs before ending the set, and the crowd dispersed across the park into the Saturday evening.
As I walked away, the woman and I locked eyes.
"I don't think you understand who you said that to," I told her. Thinking to myself, I am as American as you are.
"What," she said laughing. "Are you some kind of celebrity or something?"
No. But like the Mexicans I was standing with, I am a human being. And I am home.

See more at:  source

¿Quién aviva las llamas? Who is fanning the flames of hadred?

Who is fanning the flames of distrust, fear and hatred?  Collectively the U.S. seems to need a scapegoat.  But, this is true of many peoples throughout history.  "Well, if it worked for Grandpa, it must be okay with me !"

When we stop believing in the democratic process: Hatred of others.

How did the Norway anti-immigration disaster get started?  Here is what the perpetrator said when asked:

How did you first get involved in your current activities?
When I was around 16-17 years old, I joined the Progressive Party's youth organization [FPU], which was anti-immigration and pro–free market. Every journalist in the country considered the party's members to be racist because of their anti-immigration platform. The Progress Party was under constant attack from every media organization, from NGOs and all other political parties. They were called racists and Nazis and were generally labeled "fascist pigs." The Progress Party appealed to me because I had seen the hypocrisy in society, and I knew even then that they were the only party that opposed multiculturalism.
Around 2000, I realized that the democratic struggle against the Islamization of Europe, and European multiculturalism, was lost. It is simply not possible to compete with democratic regimes that import millions of voters. Forty years of dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would now only take 50 to 70 years before we, Europeans, were the minority. So I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. But the biggest problem then was that there were no options for me at all. There was no known armed culturally conservative, or Christian, anti-jihad movement.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2084895,00.html#ixzz1TAjILuTs

Hard Core Anti Immigration: Where does it take us?

Anders Breivik, Norway

Anders Breivik interviews himself: 

Question: 
                   What motivates you? How have you managed to stay focused and motivated for more than 8 years? Is it bitterness and hatred against the so-called "cultural Marxist/the multiculturalism wonderful elites," or maybe towards Islam?

Anders Answers himself:

No, not at all. If they (the cultural Marxists) against all odds, gave up on multiculturalism tomorrow, if they stopped all Muslim immigration and started the deportation of all Muslims, I would forgive them for their past crimes. If they refuse to surrender until 2020, there will be no turning back. We will eventually wipe out every single one of them. I do not hate Muslims at all. I acknowledge that there are magnificent Muslim individuals in Europe. In fact, I have had several Muslim friends over the years, some who I still respect. This does not mean that I will accept an Islamic presence in Europe. Muslim individuals who are not assimilated 100% by 2020, will be deported as soon as we manage to seize power. Although I admit that I am sick of the current development, I would say I'm driven by my love for Europe, European culture and Europeans. This does not mean I'm against diversity. But valuing diversity does not mean you support the genocide of your own culture and people.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2084895,00.html#ixzz1T54rx400

I hate all crackers.

The crackers are taking all our jobs and eating all our corn.  We need a fence to keep them out.

Well maybe we should make it against the law for crackers to come here.