Here are the biggest applause lines from the press conference and de facto rally the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees put on Wednesday in the packed auditorium of the former Catholic school it occupies in downtown Utica, one of whose slogans is “The City That Loves Refugees”:
“Leaders bring people together. They don’t divide and conquer,” from Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri.
The Democrat got a standing ovation from the crowd, which filled the 160 chairs, the perimeter of the once and still-poorly lighted school auditorium and at least the front of the upstairs balcony.
He got a little more mixed reception when he wasn’t entirely clear about being a sanctuary city. He said the only difference from self-declared sanctuary cities is Utica will cooperate with law enforcement. When pressed, though, he said the city would not give names of suspected undocumented immigrants to federal authorities, nor would it report people stopped for small-time violations.
A woman stood up to tell him it would be much better if the city council went on record with an official declaration of itself as a sanctuary city.
“Utica is the town that loves refugees. It is also the town that refugees love. May we always be worthy of that love.” Shelley Callahan, director of the refugee center. Less happy was news that the center faces layoffs because without refugees coming, it won’t get money from the national resettlement program, though it does have more income sources than many other refugee centers.
(For details, see the Utica Observer Dispatch)
“I can’t dance around the issue. I’m gonna say what this is: This is really a ban on Islam. That’s what it is.” New York Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, a Democrat whose district includes the city. Later, he told me that despite the order not containing a reference to “Muslims,” it’s pretty clear that was the intent and effect, especially given Trump’s campaign statements.
Brindisi said one of his grandmothers came from Syria, while others of his grandparents came from Italy. That wasn’t a big applause line, since it’s not unusual. Utica takes great pride on its 19th and early-20th century immigrants, primarily from Europe, and even today notes the lingering effects of Italian East Utica, Irish South, and German and Polish West. Now, it’s Bosnians changing neighborhoods in East Utica, with Karen from Myanmar coming on strong.
Brindisi got a hearty and happy reaction to pointing out contributions of immigrants and refugees to the area’s culture and especially economy. The refugee center notes that 17.6 percent of the city’s 62,000 residents are foreign born, and 22 percent speak something other than English at home. Many news stories over the past 20 years have noted the city’s reversal in population loss since it began taking in Bosnian refugees after the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. A major former Protestant church downtown is now a Bosnian mosque.
Brindisi concluded: “If it wasn’t for refuges, if it wasn’t for immigrants, Utica and many upstate cities would be a hollow shell, because it’s those people who have moved into our communities, revitalized areas of our city and are contributing back to our economy.”
As for loss of aid to organizations serving refugees, look to the Assembly as it works on the state budget for fiscal 2018, which starts April 1, for help for refugee centers in New York, he added. Brindisi is a member of the party that runs the chamber and the party of the governor.
When you see some wrong being done, “Stand up and speak out.” State Sen. James Griffo, a Republican from the Utica area.
Griffo is a veteran of the Republican-controlled Senate and likely has earned the ability to exercise the occasional leeway from the party line on local issues. He noted presidents have wrestled with immigration for decades but expressed confidence that it can be worked out. That didn't get as much applause.
“Just make sure you guys don’t park in the street, OK?” That was Uticans’ reaction to the building of a mosque years ago, as opposed to the vocal resentment toward a mosque being built in New York City near the site of the former World Trade Center, according to Rick Short, head of marketing and communications at Indium Corp. The Utica-bred and based maker of supplies and components used in electronics, semiconductor, thin film, thermal management, and solar markets. It’s perhaps the Utica area’s largest industrial employer and corporate benefactor. With Utica being the kind of city where people know each other and work out differences, Indium is proud to be based and staying here, Short said, to applause.
Founded in 1934, according to its web site, Indium has global technical support and factories located in China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Britain and the United States. He didn't say anything about how Trump’s talk of taxing imports more and punishing companies that send work overseas would affect the company. This was about refugees, after all.
And there was the woman who stood up and said she’s a teacher worried about myths and disinformation spreading on how refugees are vetted. She’s worried about the young people who might fall victim to that disinformation and people who act on it.
The most reaction, though, was for two people: One there and one not.
The love was for the dark-haired guy in prescription glasses and a baggy green Utica College hoodie who told the assembly he went through two years of vetting before he could leave Baghdad to come to the United States. Thulfiquar Alsaadi worked as a translator there for the U.S. Army in camp and in the field, sometimes rescuing wounded soldiers and civilians. His parents, he said in his time on stage before the microphone, have an American immigration case number but now, since Friday, their situation is unknown.
Back home, he said, all hope was shot down for many people when the new order came down Friday, the one shutting down immigration for at least a period from seven Middle Eastern and African countries and indefinitely for Syria. People are afraid, he said. They’re subject to being killed by extremists, enslaved or used as human shields.
Here, though, he’s OK. Yeah, there might be some unkindness toward refugees from that part of the world, but usually people are fine once they know him and his story. Humanity overcomes nationality and fear of the unknown, he’s found.
“I am surrounded by a lot of human beings, human beings before they are Americans.”
Mr. Alsaadi, 31, knows not just the language but some English rhetorical devices. Trump can’t help it, he told a small gaggle of local reporters afterward. Trump’s never lived in a war zone or in a refugee camp, never lived months in a tent. If he did, surely Trump would reverse this order, Alsaadi said.
Claudia Tenney didn’t get any applause. The newly elected member of Congress is a Republican. She took office in January after winning a close three-way race. Her 22nd district stretches from Utica to Binghamton and has traditionally been represented by moderate Republicans or centrist Democrats, mostly the former. She backed Trump. She was credited with helping the refugee center while she was in the Assembly.
A former state Assemblywoman from suburban New Hartford, she’s largely followed the Republican line. She was known in some circles for disparaging the head of the Oneida Nation, which runs the successful Turning Stone casino resort in western Oneida County, one of the Mohawk Valley's largest employers and tourist draws. Along with criticizing prosaic matters like the tribe’s financial support of state and local governments, Tenney questioned the leader's Native American and tribal authenticity, once infamously referring to him on Twitter as “spray-tan Ray.” The Utica Observer Dispatch quoted her this week regarding the immigration order as saying, “people are listening to the hysteria coming from the Democrats” and urging patience for making sure borders are secure against potential terrorists.
Tenney wasn’t there Wednesday, and, unlike U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat and minority leader, had no announced representative on her behalf at the refugee center.
“She doesn’t speak for us,”a woman shouted.
If there were Trump voters or supporters of the executive order at the rally, they didn't speak up. I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying they probably agree with Tenney that there's nothing wrong with holding off to see if the vetting process could be better, or that most of the people at the center Wednesday probably didn't vote for her and probably won't anyway if she runs for re-election.
What was definitely there was a gathering of a couple hundred people, including many refugees and former refugees now well-settled citizens, who are at least willing to show up at an event against the executive order and politicians who back it. They vented and commiserated, to be sure, but they also talked about listening and persuading and using what political power they can muster to make some change on this one issue. There were calls to the elected dignitaries on stage, all party-backed incumbents, to invest some of their political capital on this.
If nothing else, they showed that for all the wariness and outright fear and hatred in the between-the-coasts heartland, there are places that genuinely not only tolerate immigrants from war-torn and failed-state parts of the world but welcome them and benefit from not only them but a expanded world view from having them as neighbors. Oh, and their money, too.
The question now: Will ideas from Wednesday translate into a political movement, and if so, how powerful can it become? Will purple-district Republicans in Congress have to buck their party? Or is Utica just an outlier, the odd small city revived by foreign newcomers and not just voting for the guy who vows to get tough with evil factory-relocators? It is, after all, part of a district that sent to Congress a politician who sided with her party's candidate. Tenney won Oneida County handily against a Binghamton Democrat and Utica-area independent, but lost substantially in the city of Utica proper to the Democrat, Kim Myers. It might be hard to extrapolate a groundswell growing out of one hour at the refugee center in downtown Utica. It's not hard to sense frustration.
Someone said they haven’t been able to get through to Tenney to register their views. Tenney has blamed federal red tape for not getting a district office set up, though one man said he’s left messages twice with her Washington office. Callahan said she’s been told Tenney’s been getting 600 calls a day.
Who’s to say that is or isn’t hysteria.
