Author: frankisemptiness

July 5th, 2018

On Monday afternoon, Karin hurried into the bedroom holding her phone up to my face.

“Look! See the picture?!”

It was an ultrasound image.

The picture had been sent by Gabi (I’ve been spelling her name incorrectly for quite a while. I have been writing it as “Gabby”). Gabi is Hans’ fiancee, and she is soon to be the mother of their first child. The photo didn’t show much. At least it didn’t to me. Thinking back, I’m not sure if Karin and I saw ultrasound images of our children prior to birth. All I could tell from Gabi’s picture was that there was a fetus in her womb. It was a new beginning for human life, and that freaked me out a little.

Hans called after that. He discussed the upcoming birth in his usual taciturn manner. He was concerned with how medical bills would get paid (as he should be). Hans told me that he really didn’t care about the gender of the child. He just wants the kid to be healthy. I think that is a good way to look at the situation. As an aside, Hans was not a healthy baby. He had a very rough start in this world, and somehow that affects him even now.

Hans called again yesterday. He spoke exclusively to Karin. However, she insisted on having him on speaker-phone, so I heard everything. Hans went on a seemingly endless rant about gun control. He was adamant that all children learn how to handle a firearm, especially his children. He asserted that the problem with guns involved ignorance. If people knew more about guns, they wouldn’t see them as an uncontrollable evil. I tend to agree with Hans on this issue. However, once he gets wound up about firearms, he just keeps going.

Karin said something to the effect that guns should not be in the hands of people that are mentally unstable.

Hans responded hesitantly, “I’m unstable sometimes.”

Karin asked him, “Well, should you have guns?”

He replied, “I know my limits.”

Hans went on, “I had flashbacks from Iraq awhile ago. I slept that night with my AR-15. I had no ammo in it. The loaded magazine was locked up in my car outside.”

I thought about that. My oldest son needs to sleep with a rifle to feel safe.

Hans and Gabi will have a baby. I am sure that baby will get a teddy bear or something like that. The baby will sometimes cling to the stuffed animal to feel safe and secure.

His or her father may need to embrace the cold steel barrel of an AR-15 in order to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 4th, 2018

I walked our daughter’s border collie down our street early this morning. Every house on the road was displaying an American flag. Every house except for our own. We never fly a flag. We don’t even own a flag.

This might prompt the question: “Why?”

The main reason for us not flying Old Glory is pure contrariness on my part. When everybody else is all pumped up with patriotic fervor, I feel the need to dissent. I usually take the opposing viewpoint in any situation.

I suppose that having a German national for a wife makes us less interested in flag-waving. The Germans generally don’t wave flags with much enthusiasm. That sort of thing went out of style for them back in 1945.

Another reason is the fact that the American flag means nothing to me. I feel no animosity for it. I would never burn one. On the other hand, I have no devotion to it either. For most people, the flag is highly-charged emotional symbol.  To me, it’s a piece of cloth. It’s kind of pretty, but then most flags are.

I have a Catholic Worker friend, Brian Terrell. He once made the comment to me that national flags are gang symbols. There is some truth to that. A flag represents a specific tribe. Flags often make me think of the novel “Lord of the Flies”. Or maybe the lyrics from the Peter Gabriel song “Games Without Frontiers”:

“Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching’s is blue
They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names.”

It all feels so profoundly juvenile.

It’s kind of strange. I graduated from West Point, and served as an Army officer for six years after that. Our oldest son fought in Iraq. By rights, I should be the guy with the biggest and bestest flag on the block. I’m the guy who should be nearly bursting with pride on Independence Day.

But I’m not.

Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 3rd, 2018

Yesterday, we were on Highway 794 heading north toward downtown Milwaukee. I was driving. Karin was crocheting. Karin doesn’t mind driving, but she prefers to do handwork in the car. Since this is the case, I am generally in the driver’s seat.

During the previous day, Karin had been busy with her dye pots. She uses a propane cooker on the patio to simmer various types of chemical solutions. She used to do that sort of thing on our kitchen stove. It was an activity which may have initially fooled a person into thinking that there was food cooking. However, even a whiff of the fumes coming from the pots made it clear that there was nothing edible involved in this process. It is far better that Karin does her work outside.

While we were driving, I asked Karin, “Are you counting?”

(Anybody who knows a knitter/crocheter understands why I asked that question. Interrupting a knitter who is busy counting stitches is always a bad move. Trust me on this.)

Karin was finishing a row. She stopped and asked what I wanted.

I told her that I wanted to understand what she had been doing yesterday. I knew that she was working with an indigo dye, but I really didn’t comprehend the method involved. All I knew for sure was that there were all sorts of paraphernalia scattered  over the patio and throughout much of the house: measuring cups and spoons, thermometers, litmus paper, rubber gloves, pieces of cloth and/or entire garments, containers of chemicals, roots, leaves, and flowers. While she was working, there was a hardly an empty horizontal surface anywhere in the building. Dyeing requires a lot of stuff, and I don’t know what all this stuff is.

I asked, “So, the liquid in the big pot on the patio was indigo dye, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you heat it up?”

“The pH has to be right for the dye to take. It has to be pretty alkaline. A pH of eleven is best for the dye to hold fast to the material. Well, for wool a pH of nine is better because a pH of eleven damages the fiber, but for cotton, eleven works well.”

“The indigo won’t stick to the cloth on its own?”

“The indigo won’t stick without the addition of a color reducer.”

“Why would you want to use a color reducer? Why would you want to reduce the color?”

“The color reducer makes the indigo water-soluble. It isn’t water-soluble on its own.”

“But won’t a color reducer make the indigo less blue?”

“In the water, you want the color to be a yellowish-green. Once you soak the cloth in the liquid, and you pull it out again, it hits the open air and turns bright blue.”

Karin smiled, “It’s like magic.”

Indeed.

I married an alchemist. Dyeing fiber is more of an art than it is a science. It’s a little like cooking. Karin has a certain procedure to follow, but the results are consistently inconsistent. That appears to be part of her attraction to dyeing. There are all sorts of variables, many of them unknown. Every time she dyes some fiber, there are differences with the types of dyes and the types of materials to be dyed. It is almost impossible for Karin to replicate a dye lot, just as it is almost impossible for a yarn manufacturer to exactly reproduce the same color in a batch of material. For Karin, every dyeing attempt is a new adventure. Unlike the medieval alchemists, who sought to convert lead into gold or to find the philosopher’s stone, Karin seeks the perfect color. The old alchemists never turned lead into gold. Karin will never find the perfect color, but she will find colors that she likes.

There is more to the process. There is always more to it.

Karin uses alum to help fix the colors in the materials. Alum is aluminum sulfate or maybe aluminum acetate. It’s a chemical base. She uses chemicals to “scour” the fiber (remove oils from wool and pectin from cotton) in order to make the fiber absorb the dye in a consistent way.

Karin uses a synthetic type of indigo. Generally, she prefers to dye with natural colors. Golden rod makes for a bright yellow. Walnuts create a deep brown.

I asked her, “What about red? Will the blood root make a bright red? (I had sent her blood root back from southern Illinois).”

“If you use it right, it will. I might ferment it.”

“Why?”

“If it is fermented, the material absorbs and holds it better.”

“Oh.”

There is hardly a plant in the local area that Karin not attempted to use as a dye: choke cherries, St. John’s wort, the flowers of day lilies. It’s endless. That fact appeals to Karin.

Acids can tweak the color from the dyes. Karin sometimes uses vinegar to turn a red to purple, or maybe ammonia to change that red to pink or orange. Often, she does not know beforehand what the effect of the acid will be. That is also part of the fun.

She is experimenting with eco-printing. That will require an entire essay of its own.

 

 

 

 

June 30th, 2018

It’s been a long week, a very long week.

Karin and I are working hard to help a loved one re-enter society after a nearly eight month stretch in jail. We knew that this would be difficult. We had no illusions about that. I am not complaining (well, maybe I am). If the situation is challenging for Karin and myself, it is absolutely overwhelming for the young woman who is coming back into a world that doesn’t give a damn about her.

There is so much for everyone to do. The young woman needs so many things, and she needs most of them right away. She needs housing, transportation, work, medical care, and love. Mostly, she needs love.

Love is hard. This young woman is teaching me about what love truly is. It’s a bitch. It really is. Love requires sacrifice and honesty and compassion. Love, if it means anything, costs something. That “something” includes time, money, energy, and trust. It involves faith and courage, because there are no guarantees of material success. It’s a total crap shoot. If a person truly does something out of love, then they do it without any thought of repayment. There may be no “feel good” pay back. A person does it simply because it must be done.

In the course of this week, we have met with a probation officer. We have gone to a homeless shelter. We have been to the DMV and a sober living house, and I can’t even remember where else we have all been. The week’s activities are becoming a blur. We have made no plans for each day, because each day has been a whole new world. That is just how all this works.

I wonder how it is for somebody who gets out of jail, but has nobody to help. How does a person without support start a new life all alone? Is that person set up to fail?

A few people have offered to help us with our work. I am ever so grateful for that. A few people have told us that they will “raise us up in their prayers”, which sometimes translates to “okay, I don’t really have to get my hands dirty”. I know I sound cynical, but I might be right about this, at least once in a while. I actually do believe in the power of prayer. I just think that it should also manifest itself in a tangible way.

God, this is such a mess. It is also a grand adventure. Things might work out great. It might all end is disaster. I know that. We all know that. But we are going to try anyway. We are going to live and love and ride this crazy roller coaster.

Because it is the right thing to do.

 

 

 

 

June 24th, 2018

Kenosha is not an interesting town, not even in the best of circumstances. At 3:00 in the morning, it is utterly desolate. Karin and I were parked in the nearly empty juror’s parking lot at the county jail. We were waiting for somebody we loved to walk out the back door. This particular door is drab and grey, and it is the only door through which inmates are released. If a person did not know it was there, it would never be noticed. Perhaps it is meant to be that way. The release door at the Carson County Detention Center in Las Vegas is just the same. These doors are like wormholes that discharge beings from another world.

We came to the jail with two things: a fully charged cell phone for our inmate, and her beloved border collie. I walked around the darkened parking lot with the dog while we waited. Karin sat back in the car, and said a rosary. I could see the clock at Metra station at the end of the street. The hands moved so slowly.

The only activity while we waiting was from the cops working third shift. I half expected that one of them would come over to our car and ask what we were doing there. Nobody gave us a second glance. Apparently, this ungodly hour was the standard release time for Kenosha County. Why? I have no idea. I suspect there is no good reason for the police to release people at 3:00 AM. They do it simply because they can. 

Another car pulled into the lot. It was a white Lincoln. A young black woman got out and looked around. She seemed confused. Finally, she asked me if the grey door was the correct door for picking up her brother. I told her it was. It was oddly comforting that she was there too. Misery loves company.

I sat down on the curb. The dog sat down next to me. I listened to the birds and watched the wind rustle through the leaves of the trees. I had time to think, and to remember.

I remembered a year ago, when I had been busted for engaging in civil disobedience at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas. I spent the day in custody at the CCDC. They finally got tired of me there, and I was released, along with about a dozen other guys, at about 9:00 PM. I remembered the one-way exit door. It was the strangest feeling to leave the dim confines of the jail, and then suddenly be under the glaring neon lights of the Golden Nugget Casino.

I was fortunate that night. One of the other peace activists was waiting in his car to take myself and a couple other troublemakers away from that depressing place. Marcus Pegasus whisked us to a Salvadoran restaurant for hot food and cold beer. It is a joy to have somebody there when you get out of the slammer. Jail is scary. A friend who is there for you is a great comfort.

I remembered that at least one person who was released with me was a homeless guy, or at least he appeared to be. He had nobody there for him that night. He had nobody to care for him. He had no meal waiting for him. He had no place to stay that night.

That haunts me.

At  3:30 AM, our loved one came through the door. The dog ran up to her. They both got into the car.

We drove home.

 

June 21st, 2018

The church is almost exactly seven miles from our house. Karin and I usually go there for daily Mass. We drive together to St. Rita, and sometimes I choose to walk home. The church is at the northern edge of Racine and our home sits near the southern border of Oak Creek. In between Racine and Oak Creek lies the village of Caledonia. Caledonia is semi-rural with small farms, isolated sub-divisions, and working class bars.

Highway 32 connects our home with St. Rita. If I walk back to our house, I follow Hwy 32 part of the way. The rest of my journey follows a nearby bicycle path. The bike path is paralleled by a railroad spur to the west and high tension wires on the east. Both the railroad tracks and the power lines run directly north to the Oak Creek power plant. Quite often trains consisting of scores of coal cars rest on the railroad siding. These trains can extend for one mile, and sometimes two. The cars are fully loaded, and they are all destined to empty out at the power plant, where the fires never cease. The power lines quietly hum and crackle as I walk alongside them. I am generally alone on the bike path, my feet crunching on the crushed limestone that covers the trail.

As I walk north, I can see the twin stacks of the power plant in the distance. The plant dominates everything in the area. The stacks can be seen billowing out steam from five miles away. When I get to within two miles of the power plant, all the land between Hwy 32 and Lake Michigan belongs to We Energies. The electric utility has its own little empire on the eastern edge of Caledonia and Oak Creek. Coming from the south, I can see a mountain of coal sitting near the plant. The black pile is higher than the surrounding buildings. However, it is only visible from certain angles, because We Energies has massive berms built along Hwy 32. The berms block anybody from seeing the power plant, except for the stacks that rise up above everything else like the towers from The Lord of the Rings.

A portion of the bike path comes very close to the highway. There used to be homes on the western side of the road, across from the power plant’s property. Most of those are gone. We Energies has gradually and relentlessly bought up the land to the west of the road. The purchased homes are systematically razed to the ground. Grass and scrawny tress are planted over the former home sites. It is nearly impossible to tell that people actually lived next to We Energies.

There is an exception. One house remains directly across from the power plant. It is poorly maintained, and the property is studded with large hand-painted signs. These signs have been there at least for ten tears. The power plant had a major expansion back in 2008. Some of us opposed this, but that was the year of the Great Recession. We Energies trumpeted the message that the expansion would bring new jobs. The economy at that time was scary , so the politicians from local the municipalities cut deals with the utility. Money changed hands. In 2009 the coal-fired plant doubled in size.

The signs are scrawled with messages like: “We Can’t Breath, Sleep, Live”, or “Corporate Corrupt Collusion Continues”, and “Coaledonia”. Nobody reads the signs, except for me. The posted speed limit on Hwy 32 is 45 mph. Few people do less than sixty. They go by too fast to see the signs, and they probably wouldn’t be interested in them anyway. I always see the signs. I stop my walk and I read them. Somehow, they fascinate me. They are both inspiring and pathetic. The signs cannot change the fact that the power plant is there, and it will not go away. However, the signs stand in silent protest. They will be there until the day that We Energies buys up that land. They will stand until both they and the old house are torn down by corporate greed.

I don’t mind power plants. I like electricity as much as the next person. However, there are other ways to produce energy. There are cleaner ways to do it. There are smarter ways to do it.

Karin and I have an apple tree in our backyard. Every year it produces a crop of Golden Delicious apples. Every year the apples are stained with black spots.

Where do the spots come from?

June 19th, 2018

She was looking at possible jail time. That is never good. It was especially not good for this individual because that also put her at risk for deportation. The woman had come to America to escape the gang violence in Honduras. She may have been legal when she got here, but probably not any more.

This woman has not had an easy time of it since she came to the United States. Her partner was arrested for an offense, and then detained by I.C.E. agents. It is likely that she won’t see him again. The woman has a three-month-old boy, and she is the only parent available to care for him. The woman is currently jobless and homeless. She ran afoul of our state’s driving laws, and that put her in danger of losing her child, and anything she has in this world.

I drove the woman and her baby to her mandatory appointments. I also took another Honduran woman (maybe her sister?) along for the ride. The sister had her five-year-old daughter in tow. The woman needed to speak with her public defender in the morning. I picked the four of them up on the south side of Milwaukee, and we went out to Elkhorn, a tiny town in a distant county, in which the office of her lawyer was located.

The ride took almost an hour. We were all a bit nervous. It was unclear that the woman  would be making the ride back home. Our conversation was limited. I speak almost no Spanish, and my passengers knew the same amount of English. The sister had an app on her phone that would translate English to Spanish and vice versa. It was a crude sort of tool. The app allowed us to understand each other in only a very basic sort of way. I think that at times it caused more confusion than anything else.

We arrived at the attorney’s office around 10:00 AM. We were there early, but the public defender was able to see the woman almost immediately. She left her baby in the care of her sister. After a while, I sat on the floor next to the child’s carrier. The boy had dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark complexion. His name was Taylor. The little boy looked up at my sixty-year-old face with curiosity. I leaned close to him, and he tugged on my long, tangled beard. Maybe it was the first one he had ever seen.

The boy grew restless in the absence of his mother. I picked him up and held him in my arms. I used to carry my kids like that many years ago. We went outside the office into the sunshine and the humid heat. Taylor was fascinated by the world around us. He looked at the sky and the clouds. He looked at the trees and the flowers. He listened intently to the sound of the traffic. He had that spontaneous sense of wonder that children have, and adults don’t. This is his new world, and his country. Taylor is an American by birth. He was starting life without a father, and was in danger of losing his mother. I held him close.

The woman’s meeting with her lawyer was brief. When she was done, I realized that we had four hours to kill before her court appearance at the Justice Center in Elkhorn. It was pointless to go back to Milwaukee, so I suggested that we all go to a local park/museum. We drove to the outdoor museum. It was rather large, and it had numerous displays of life in Wisconsin back in the 1800’s. There were people at the different sites who demonstrated old crafts and skills. We visited a blacksmith shop and a farm. Nobody there spoke Spanish, so we made extensive use of the sister’s phone app. After looking around for a while, we had lunch at the museum. Then we took a slow drive to the court house.

We arrived at the early at the court house. We were waiting for a number of other people to accompany the woman to her court appearance. She was not going in there alone. A group was coming at the behest of the New Sanctuary Movement to escort this woman in and out of the court house. We were concerned that she would be detained by I.C.E. She was worried about it too.

At a previous court date, the woman’s lawyer had remarked that it was extremely unlikely that she would be detained by immigration agents. He commented that only 1% of defendants were ever arrested by I.C.E. Statistically, that may be true. On the other hand, just last week, while I was escorting another undocumented person, agents clad in polo shirts and khakis grabbed some guy in a different court house. Overall, the rate of detention may only be 1%, but for that poor bastard it was 100%. We were not taking chances with this young woman.

It used to be, until recently, that escorting an undocumented person to court was a fairly simple process. I would drive the person to court. Go inside with him or her. They completed their legal  affairs, and we left. Things are scarier now. People disappear. It is no longer sufficient for a an undocumented person to be accompanied by just one individual. Now we need to provide an entourage. It seems crazy, but that is where we are at.

About fifteen minutes before show time, we had gathered a gaggle of people outside the court house. One woman brought along signs protesting the treatment of immigrants. I told her to take the signs back to her car. We were not there demonstrate against government policy. We were there to get this woman in and out of this building without incident. The idea was to quietly and quickly take care of business. We did not want to draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves.

Everybody in the group had a job. Several people were designated as huggers. They stuck close to the Honduran woman, and essentially provided her with a human cocoon. A person was assigned to document any attempted arrest. Two trained people were responsible for interacting with the police and/or I.C.E. agents, if necessary. There were two people chosen to be lookouts inside the court house. One person was on the lookout for I.C.E. outside of the building. I was the wheel man. I was going to drive the getaway car.

If I.C.E. really wanted this woman, would we have been able to stop them? No. We could only make things complicated and uncomfortable for them. I.C.E. does not like publicity. I.C.E. likes things simple and silent.

I waited outside after the woman and her friends and family entered the court house. The air was thick. There was a cold front moving in. Grey, swirling clouds were on the horizon, and they slowly came nearer. I stood outside of my car and watched the sky. The clouds were low and became increasingly darker. The world turned black.

I got a signal from the lookout that the court appearance was over, and everybody was coming out. By this time the storm had broken, and it was pouring rain. I sat in the car as the wind whipped the rain across the parking lot. It took a bit longer than expected for the Hondurans to arrive at the door. The woman had to set up a payment plan for her fine. That always takes a while.

I was okay with waiting. The important thing was that woman had avoided jail time. Jail time and deportation go together. If she only got probation and a fine, she was in good shape. She would be safe for a while.

The woman also had to stop and give the State a DNA sample (mouth swab). That took a few more minutes. I would have preferred to have been on our way. Every minute at the court house is another minute for somebody to screw with you. The goal is to get things done, and then get far away.

We drove back to Milwaukee in the rain. The tension was gone. Everybody could take a deep breath and then exhale.

I dropped the woman and her family off at their house.

The woman looked intently at me and said, “Gracias, gracias, Frank.”

“Da nada.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 15th, 2018

I thought that I was going to read to the kids. Most Friday afternoons I drive from our home in Oak Creek to the south side of Milwaukee to visit the Syrian family. They live in the heart of the Latino district. A taco truck does a thriving business just down the street from their house. I sincerely doubt that the members of the family have ever purchased anything from that vendor. I don’t think that he makes anything that qualifies as halal.

I found a parking space on Scott Street across from their home. Being as it was a warm, sunny afternoon, I expected to see several of the children outside playing, fighting, and doing normal kid activities. The only child from the family that was out of the house was one of the youngest sons, Muhamed. He was playing on a makeshift swing, along with a little friend. Muhamed waved to me as I got out of my car, and yelled, “Frank!”

I waved back, and crossed the busy street. I don’t know Muhamed’s age. I would guess that he is five or so. Muhamed was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, but his friend was wearing a shirt and tie. I didn’t catch the friend’s name. He looked like he was of south Asian descent, maybe Pakistani. They had been taking turns on the swing, but now Muhamed was excited to see me.

Muhamed turned his freckled face up toward me and smiled.

“You come inside!” he said. Then he grasped my hand with his own, and led me to their front door.

We came to the door and one of Muhamed’s older brothers, Ibrahim, answered it. He was wearing a suit and tie. Through the door, I could see that the house was filled with people, mostly excited children. My mind couldn’t quite grasp what was going on. There was so much talking and laughing.

Eid al-Fitr.

It was the celebration of the end of Ramadan. Of course. The Muslims count days like the Jews do: from sunset to sunset. Eid began yesterday after sunset, and now the party was in full swing. The house was packed. In the dining room, the table was overflowing with food: stuffed grape leaves, salads, fruit, candy, cookies, and baklava. There was water and lemonade to drink.

Even if the family has been celebrating on their own, the house would have been full. After all, there are eleven children. There were also guests. Some of the people were like me, local folks who came to assist the kids with schoolwork, or people who just wanted to help this refugee family.

Except for Ibrahim, the seven boys in the family were all dressed casually. The four girls were all dressed in their finest. Maybe that is just what girls do.

The mother, Um Hussein, encouraged (nay, commanded me) to eat and drink. I did.

There was a man who I had met once or twice before. He told me to eat, and I asked his name again. He said it was Turki. I spoke with Turki, who I thought was a family friend. I asked if he has kids. He gave me a perplexed look, and said,

“I have seven sons and four girls. This is my family.”

I think I blushed. If I didn’t, I should have. I felt like an idiot. Of course, he was their father. He was almost always working when I came to visit, so somehow I never connected him to his kids. He pulled out a chair and asked me to sit down.

I stood. I guess that was impolite, but I was restless. Partly, it was due to all the noise and chaos. I don’t handle that well. Also, the celebration reminded me of parties when I was a little boy. I grew up in an old house just like the Syrian home. I had six younger brothers. We had family get-togethers just like this gathering, except that at ours beer and wine flowed freely. I half-remembered the old celebrations, and I felt a pang of sadness. My family is scattered, and those days are gone.

After a while, I felt the need to go. I went up to Turki. He stood and he wanted to give me his seat. I told him that I was leaving.

I took his hand in both of mine, and said, “You have a good family.”

He smiled and thanked me.

I walked through the front door and on to the porch.  Um Hussein was out there with several of the children.

She looked at me severely, as always, and said, “I am happy you come.”

She paused and asked, “You happy that you come?”

I said, “Yes.”

She smiled just a bit. “Good.”

I saw Muhamed kneeling on the sidewalk, eating a Tootsie Roll. I knelt down next to him, and told him goodbye.

He said, “You come next Friday?!”

“Yes.”

“We read?”

“Yes.”

He smiled at me. “Good”.

I waved to the kids and said, “Ma’asalaama.”

They replied the same way and waved back. Nizar shouted, “Goodbye, Frank!”

I got into the car. I drove off.

As I stopped in the traffic on 16th Street, I could almost still feel Muhamed’s little hand in mine.

 

 

 

 

June 13th, 2018

Court rooms are like emergency rooms: nobody really wants to be in either of those places. A person is in a court room because they have to be there. On Monday I escorted two undocumented men to a court room, because they had to be there. I have done this sort of thing before, and it has been generally uneventful. This time it was very eventful.

Usually, when I write about people, I do not use pseudonyms. In this essay I will. Because of the things that occurred at the courthouse, my paranoia is quite high. I do not want to endanger the persons that I am trying to help. So, three individuals will be referred to by names that are not their own. I don’t like to do this, but it seems to be necessary.

Jose is middle-aged. He is a painter at a company in one of the exurbs of Milwaukee. Because southeastern Wisconsin has little or no public transportation, Jose has to drive a long distance from his home to his workplace. Because the government of Wisconsin is run by reactionary cretins, a person who is undocumented unable to get a drivers license. Jose is undocumented. Therefore, he can’t get a license, and he drives to work without one. Due to the law of probabilities, Jose eventually gets caught by the cops while driving without a license. Then he gets arrested and has to go to court. Then he meets me.

I had met Jose several weeks ago. I have taken him and his son, Jose Jr., to the court twice already, prior to this most recent visit. Jose speaks a minimal amount of English. Sadly, I speak the same amount of Spanish (un poquito). Jose’s son serves as his interpreter in most cases. Jose Jr. is a very intelligent young man. He is going to college and he is working a job. He has ambitions of becoming a lawyer. In particular, he wants to be an immigration lawyer. His heart is in it. He would do well.

The elder Jose is in a bit of trouble. The judge has identified him as a repeat offender with regards to driving without a license. That’s no good. That means he is potentially looking at jail time. Jail time for an undocumented person is an open invitation for I.C.E. to come and take him away. The immigrant in question is no longer a moving target. That is bad. Seriously bad.

Anyway, on Monday, I took Jose times two to the court. I also took another person, Marcos, with me. Marcos was going for his first court appearance. He had pretty much the same scenario. Marcos had been driving without a license. Almost all the Latinos that appeared in that courtroom were there for the same offense.

The court in this particular county only has a Spanish interpreter there on one afternoon every month. Economically, for the county it makes sense. There is an unintended consequence to this arrangement. What happens is that all the undocumented persons show up in that court room at the same time each month. This makes it very convenient for I.C.E. agents to find their prey. I do not believe that the local enforcement officers at this court work together with I.C.E. However, these cops don’t impede the I.C.E. agents either. The sheriff deputies in the courthouse are consistently courteous and helpful. They just turn a blind eye to the activities of the immigration enforcers.

I sat in the court room with Jose and Marcos. After having done this sort of thing for a while, I have become aware that there are always the “usual suspects” in the room (I am thinking of the quote from Claude Rains in the movie Casablanca). Certain people always show up, at least for that hearing. I always see the judge, the bailiff, the court stenographers, the lawyers, and the defendants. The defendants are all Latino. Everybody else is white.

Not this time. There were two guys in this court room who did not belong in the picture. They sat in the back row, staring silently at the judge. The two men wore polo shirts and khakis. They were big guys, kind of buff. They had file folders in their hands. They didn’t speak to anyone, not even each other.

I lost interest in the two strangers. I focused on Jose when he went up to bat with his attorney. Jose pleaded “not guilty”. That was a smart move. That gives him and his lawyer more time to cut a deal with the State. I know other people who have done the same thing. Jose needs to avoid jail time. A fine and/or probation would be okay. His next appearance will be his opportunity to make his bid.

The judge released Jose on bond. He needed to get fingerprints before he could leave the premises. Jose and son went out of the court room to talk to his attorney. I followed them. I asked Jose squared if they wanted me to go with them for the fingerprinting. They said yes. I was a bit concerned about leaving Marcos alone in the court room, but I can’t bi-locate. I chose to go with the Jose’s.

The location for getting fingerprints is in the same space as the visiting area for the county jail. I have been in a county jail, so I am always a bit edgy when I go near one. Initially, we couldn’t find the office for the fingerprinting. The office had darkened windows and there no sign even indicating that it was an office. It was only after Jose Jr. rang a buzzer that somebody told us where we needed to be.  The process for fingerprinting was mercifully quick, seeing as they already had Jose Sr.’s prints on file from the time of his arrest.

We all returned to the court room. Marcos and his lawyer were just finishing up when we arrived. Marcos had pleaded guilty. The judge gave him a $25 fine, plus the court costs. The court costs were expensive. The fine was kind of an after thought. Once the judge pronounced sentence, Marcos had to give a DNA sample to the State of Wisconsin. That is a mouth swab. He had to do that before leaving the building.

We all went out to the lobby of the courthouse to find somebody to do the DNA sample. Marcos and two of his family members were there, along with Jose times two, and myself. There were people coming and going. I was concentrating on keeping track of Marcos. A deputy was typing up the paperwork for the DNA sample.

Then the senior Jose smiled at me and motioned me to the exit. He said,

“Hey, you come outside with me? We talk?”

I followed him through the exit.

He pointed to the parking lot. The two guys in polo shirts were getting into an unmarked Suburban with no rear windows.

Jose said, “They I.C.E. They take some guy. Just now.”

Apparently, the two undercover agents snatched some poor bastard as he entered the court house. I had never even noticed. Jose had. So had his son. The agents had moved swiftly and silently, and everybody else had just gone about their business.

Jose and I stood in the doorway until the Suburban drove away.

Jose asked, “We go to your car? We wait there?”

He got into my Toyota. I was worried about Marcos. I was about to leave to check on him, but Jose said,

“You stay with me here? Yes?”

Of course, yes. We both sat in my car, and I sweated out the minutes until I saw Marcos and Jose Jr. come out of the court house. They got into the car, and we left promptly.

Later that day, I spoke with my son, Stefan, about the whole ordeal. Stefan has a Latina girlfriend, and he has often worked with Mexican welders.

Stefan said drily, “Those I.C.E. guys, those are some shady fuckers.”

He went on, “They are just American KGB. Can you imagine being an I.C.E. agent, and going home to your family? Your kid asks you, ‘What did you do today, Dad?’, and you answer, ‘I was a shady fucker all day.’ Shit.”

Stefan shook his head.

“Shady fuckers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 14th, 2018

Recently, I had the same letter printed in the Chicago Tribune, the Capitol Times, and the Racine Journal Times. Trifecta.

The article is as follows: