{"id":9326,"date":"2024-10-31T08:48:01","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T14:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=9326"},"modified":"2024-10-30T21:48:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:48:57","slug":"lift-the-torch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2024\/10\/31\/lift-the-torch\/","title":{"rendered":"Lift the Torch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, a city of about 70,000 just south of Jersey City in the greater New York metropolitan area. \u00a0 Bayonne sits on a peninsula, with New York Bay on one side and Newark Bay on the other, the two of them connected by the deepwater channel called the Kill Von Kull.\u00a0 For most of my childhood I lived across the street from the Kill.\u00a0 I could watch the freighters come and go, day and night, flying flags from all the countries of the world. \u00a0 The Bayonne Bridge, down at the other end of First Street, connected the city to Staten Island.\u00a0 Despite its proximity to the Big Apple, Bayonne was never a suburb; very few of its residents commuted to work, at least back then.\u00a0 Bayonne was its own place, a densely packed industrial city where generations of locals had been born and raised, gone to school, found jobs, got married, had children.\u00a0 Most of them worked blue collar jobs, for Texaco or one of the other oil refineries in town, or for Best Foods, or for Maidenform. \u00a0 Or else they worked on the docks, like my father, a longshoreman. \u00a0 Bayonne was home to a huge naval base, where battleships and destroyers and transports of all types were dry docked and serviced from World War II to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Bayonne was very much a workingman’s city.\u00a0\u00a0 It was also an ethnic city.\u00a0\u00a0 We had Irish, Italians, Poles, Germans, and a scattering of other nationalities.\u00a0\u00a0 Some Protestants and some Jews, but they were heavily outnumbered by the Roman Catholics.\u00a0\u00a0 Each ethnic group had its own parish, its own church, its own Catholic school… its own feast days and festivals, its own softball teams.\u00a0\u00a0 There were rivalries between the various ethnicities, there were tasteless jokes… but I do not recall any real hatred.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When our parents and grandparents talked about “the old country,” some meant Italy, some meant Poland, some meant Ireland… but they were all Americans now.\u00a0 The things that set them apart were unimportant compared to the things they had in common.<\/p>\n

They were all immigrants.<\/p>\n

Or the sons and daughters of\u00a0 immigrants.\u00a0 Or the grandsons and granddaughters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or… well, go back as many generations as you like.\u00a0\u00a0 My Irish ancestors came over during the potato famine.\u00a0\u00a0 I am a mongrel myself.\u00a0 Irish, German, Jewish, Italian, a bit of English, a dollop of Welsh… a probably more.\u00a0 I had Irish friends, Italian friends, Jewish friends, you name it.\u00a0\u00a0 Only a few were first generation, mind you, but everyone knew their heritage, and everyone was proud of it.\u00a0 And proud of being American.<\/p>\n

I could see Staten Island from the windows of our apartment in the projects.\u00a0\u00a0 From the Hook on the northeast shore of Bayonne, however, you could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n

I wonder, can you see the Statue from Trump Tower?\u00a0 Somehow I doubt it.<\/p>\n

Though Lady Liberty was a gift of France (our first friend, and oldest ally) nothing has ever been so quintessentially American.\u00a0\u00a0 For generations of immigrants, she was the first thing they saw as their ships pulled into New York harbor (steaming past Bayonne and its docks on the way).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She stood for all that was best of this new country.\u00a0 For hope.\u00a0 For freedom.\u00a0 For the dream of a new life.<\/p>\n

We are a nation of immigrants.\u00a0\u00a0 Except for my Native American friend, all of us came from somewhere else.\u00a0\u00a0 Immigrants were not often welcome with open arms.\u00a0\u00a0 The Dutch were not thrilled when the English took New Amsterdam.\u00a0\u00a0 The English resented the arrival of so many Irish.\u00a0 The Irish and the Italians did not love each other, and neither of them were thrilled to see so many Poles getting off the ships.\u00a0 And the Jews… nobody wanted the Jews.\u00a0\u00a0 But in time, all of them learned to get along.\u00a0\u00a0 There were gangs, there was crime, there were riots… but the immigrants worked together, played together… ate each other’s food, played ball together, slept with each other, married each other to produce mongrels like me.\u00a0\u00a0 The melting pot worked its magic.\u00a0\u00a0 We all became Americans.\u00a0 No matter where our parents came from.<\/p>\n

Emma Lazarus said it best, in the words on Lady Liberty’s base.<\/p>\n

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The New Colossus<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Emma Lazarus<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/header>\n
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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,<\/div>\n
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;<\/div>\n
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand<\/div>\n
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame<\/div>\n
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name<\/div>\n
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand<\/div>\n
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command<\/div>\n
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.<\/div>\n
\u201cKeep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!\u201d cries she<\/div>\n
With silent lips. \u201cGive me your tired, your poor,<\/div>\n
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,<\/div>\n
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<\/div>\n
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,<\/div>\n
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 That’s America to me.\u00a0\u00a0 The best of America.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 MAGA talks of making America great again.\u00a0\u00a0 But America is great because<\/em> of its immigrants.\u00a0 They and their descendants built her cities and her railroads, fought in her wars, contested her elections (and stepped aside peacefully when they lost).\u00a0\u00a0 Far from the “world wide welcome” that Lazarus wrote of, Trump and his followers spew hatred,\u00a0 talk of mass deportations, of denying citizenship even to children born in the USA.\u00a0 They want to ban immigrants who worship the wrong gods and come from the wrong countries.\u00a0\u00a0 They spew hatred every time they speak of those seeking new lives in America.\u00a0\u00a0 (They are eating the dogs?<\/em>).<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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And who are these people they loathe so much?\u00a0 Why, they are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the “wretched refuse” of those teeming shores.\u00a0\u00a0 (Billionaires would be welcome, of course.\u00a0 So long as they bring their money).\u00a0\u00a0 Donald Trump himself is descended from immigrants; German on his father’s side, Scottish on his mother’s.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His grandfather may well have been an illegal immigrant; the facts are unclear.\u00a0\u00a0 The Trumps found welcome with the Mother of Exiles.\u00a0 Now the Donald wants to build a wall to keep everyone else out.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\u00a0It makes me sad.\u00a0 It makes me sick.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, certainly, there are bad people crossing the border.\u00a0 But there were bad people and criminals in all those other waves of immigration too.\u00a0\u00a0 Those huddled masses are not entirely made up of saints, and never were. \u00a0 Most of the people crossing the border, then as now, were ordinary people, looking for a better life, yearning to breathe free.\u00a0\u00a0 Dreaming the same dream that the Poles and the Irish and the Chinese and the Russians and all the others did in their day.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0“I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”\u00a0 Lady Liberty proclaims.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0If Trump has his way, that lamp will go out forever.<\/div>\n
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I was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, a city of about 70,000 just south of Jersey City in the greater New York metropolitan area. \u00a0 Bayonne sits on a peninsula, with New York Bay on one side and Newark Bay on the other, the two of them connected by the deepwater channel called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[34],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9326"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9385,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326\/revisions\/9385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}